Just a bit of fun, let’s see you calculate your TR (tumbleweed rank) ratio and see what your score is.
TR? WTF am I on about?
Well, how many times have you blogged on something and received less than 2 comments on your post? Why 2? Well, it might be you have a wife or a husband or a GF or a BF or a stalking loon who just happens to like anything you write and comments on anything and everything. If this is so, then sorry, but for the purposes of TR (tumbleweed rank) they just don’t count. Sure, so you may well have 2 adherents who love you bad and stuff, lucky or unlucky(dependant upon your view) you, most of us just have the one, or none even.
The measurement criterion is thus.
Count your last 3 months number of posts and then subtract the number of posts that were commented on. With the remainding number, calculate what this is as a percentage of your 3 month post rate.
If your % of non comment posts is less than 10% of your overall post rate then you are a TR1, 20% TR2, 30% TR3, etc 36% would be a TR4 (rounded to the nearest multiple of 10)
So, in my case – Ive made 53 posts of which 23 received less than 2 comments. My blog therefore is currently TR4 (43.3% of my blog posts received no comments)
If you don’t have a big readership then the chances are you probably have had your fair share of no response type blog posts. These might well have been savage rants brought on by some sub cerebal neurotic dysfunction, or the more likely scenario might just be that your utterly crap post written with 1740’s pre georgian verve and panache, just failed to inspire. Perhaps they were the type of posts that just lost it, as in rambled on and on with no real point, other than the one you knew in your head, yet failed miserably to communicate to your readers.
Whatever the reason we’ve all made them, we’ve all heard that silent wind. If you have a TR of 5 or greater than I’d say that either you a) need to up your readership rate or b) need to seriously look at some of the stuff you are writing and make a big hmmn noise!
Cos I’m really sad, after easter I’m going to make a function that calculates it for you. I’ll release as the TR WP plugin :D
It’ll have a little icon of some tumbleweed with a little face and a number. Just think,if you ever stumbled across a blog with TR5 or greater, then you could be a real sweetie and help them reduce their TR 
Happy Easter all 
I think that 2 might actually be too low of a number. As soon as one person comments, then I write a comment in response. So, shortly after there is one comment, there is usually two. Maybe something like comments from two different sources (other than yourself). That makes it a little harder to calculate, but it might be more accurate measure of whether or not crickets are chirping.
heh – good point, loving the ‘crickets chirping’ analogy
Anchor Text Matters
How much thought do you give to the anchor text used on your blog or web site? I’m not talking about the anchor text of your incoming links, but the anchor text you use in every post to link out to your fellow bloggers.
All of us are guilty, from tim…
I was reading the post and it really got me thinking about creating a “Posts you probably missed” plugin
I have thought about top posts, but it isn’t very useful without also being able to highlight posts which people would find useful but missed out on. Related posts helps a lot, but doesn’t necessarily cut it.
If you are a blogger who always tries to create content of a consistently high standard, and some posts just ignite while others just get ignored, I think the ability of highlighting posts from the previous… maybe 6 months, that should have got more attention would be useful.
Also make sure you don’t count trackbacks, unless you exclude the ones you give yourself – there are plugins to stop that happening, but I like the additional linking.
A Tumbleweed factor, plus a list of 10 tumbleweed posts would be a perfect solution, and uses most of the same data.
Good point Andy and nice idea too. When one is 1st starting out in the blogosphere, some really good posts are just missed and lost in the ether. After all if you didn’t have the eyeballs who’d know even.
I’d certainly use a plugin like that, I think it definitely has a place in the sidebar somewehere ‘Ten posts you may have missed..’.I’d blog about it too!
Andy over at….has made this really cool….;)
I will wait for your Tumbleweed one, and combine it with maybe some top posts code and create a hack if you don’t
Honestly I am not a programmer, I just hack stuff from other people or have to pay people to realise my designs, which isn’t great on ROI.
You can get more links for a top 10 list of plugins in a couple of days than I managed for my disclosure policy plugin over 4 months.
Ok deal, I’ll try and get started on it over the weekend.
Ok, all done…
http://www.yackyack.co.uk/2007/04/18/tumbleweed-plugin/
[...] Posts:5 Posts you may have missed pluginIn a recent thread, Andy talked about building a ‘posts….What’s your tumbleweed ratio?Just a bit of fun, let’s see you calculate your….Blogging and continuing missed [...]
This sounds like a fun idea. Wish I had thought of it first. Two points – one philosophical, one methodological. There are those out there who might see this as a chilling agent and not post for fear of ridicule – this is, of course not what you want to happen! More relevantly, many of us read an item, agree and pass on without comment. Low blogg rate does not = a low readership. Still, this is a good idea. As my wife refuses to use the internet, I am on my own. Good luck.
Seems to be a great succes. Well done.
Hi Reggie
I hear that, not everyone likes to get in there and make a comment.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, and I do hope you manage to convince your wife that the net is something worth embracing!
Rob, your mails seem to be treated as spam by my ISP. This should not be! R
Reggie, some ISP’s can be pretty brutal on that front, their loss!
Dear Rob,
Just to let you know that by using only a few of yyour tips our attempt to get up and running seems to have succeeded. Thank you again. R v.Z
[...] Watts over at Yack Yack wants you to ask yourself “What’s my tumbleweed ratio?“. He’s even going to put together a Wordpress plugin that figures it out for you. For [...]