The First Ever Tots100 Index of British Parenting Blogs and Bloggers

Here at Talking Tots, we're pretty keen on new technologies. We have our own website, we write our own blog, and we're even learning to love things like Twitter and Spotify (Madonna's back catalogue at the click of a button - what's not to love?)

We also love to read other blogs - particularly those written by fellow parents, mumpreneurs and Mummy-related ventures. But when we looked for a list of influential parenting blogs from the UK, we realised that a list doesn't really exist - although Susanna at British Mummy Blogs has made a great start here.

Although Mummy blogs are a newer phenomenon in the UK than in the US, we knew there were hundreds of British Mummy bloggers just waiting to be discovered. We pulled together a list of around 250 UK blogs, but we had no idea which blogs were being read by parents, and which were most influential. So, with lots of help and advice from social media guru Brendan Cooper, we've put together our own list.

The Tots100 Index is the first index of the top 100 British parenting blogs and bloggers. How did we find our top 100? We took the 250 blogs we found and created a scoring system that rewards blogs for three things: currency (ie the blog has been updated regularly and recently), influence (other people link to the blog) and popularity (lots of people read it). We'll be updating the Tots100 Index regularly, and including details of movements up and down the index in future editions.

(For a more detailed explanation of how the rankings work, and how to submit a blog to the Index, read down to the bottom of the post.)

We hope those of you looking for great British parenting blogs will find the list useful, and perhaps you'll find a few new favourites in our directory - there are some brilliantly useful, funny, inspiring and moving bloggers in our index and we've loved discovering all of them.

Best Wishes,

Tracey and Lisa
The Tots100 Top British Parent Blogs and Bloggers:

Rank Blog Score
1 Petite Anglaise 741
2 Wife in the North 718
3 Jo Beaufoix 701
4 Alpha Mummy 696
5 My Boyfriend is a Tw@t 687
6 Crystal Jigsaw 681
7 Babyccino 670
8 A Modern Mother 640
9 Single Parent Dad 629
10 Notes from Inside my Head 610
11 The Potty Diaries 608
12 Bambino Goodies 597
13 The Bedside Crow 591
14 Man About the House 568
15 Woman of Experience 562
16 Bringing up Charlie 559
17 Millennium Housewife 522
18 Sticky Fingers 520
19 Noble Savage 517
20 Dulwich Wife 508
21 Little Mummy 507
22 Flower Fairies and Fairy Cakes 507
23 A Midwife's Muse 504
24 3 Kids, No Job 500
25 Mother at Large 499
26 Cotton Pickin' Days 498
27 Family Affairs 483
28 Menopausal Old Bag 475
29 Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman 472
30 Musings of a Juggling Mother 467
31 Home Office Mum 465
32 Breastfeeding Mums' Blog 461
33 Working Mum on Verge 449
34 Thames Valley Mums 446
35 Nappy Valley 445
36 More Than Just a Mother 442
37 Violet Posy 441
38 Nunhead Ramblings 432
39 You've Got Your Hands Full 428
40 Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy? 405
41 Dulwich Divorcee 395
42 The Bush Babies 390
43 Family of Five 383
44 WAHM-BAM 382
45 Don't Panic - RTFM 379
46 I Promise That I Will Do My Best 378
47 My Life Now 367
48 A Confused Take That Fan 366
49 Single and Surviving 363
50 The Brinkster 362
51 Mom or Mum Wars 359
52 Most/Least 355
53 Good Enough Mum 323
54 Not Supermum 318
55 Suffolk Writings 313
56 Posh Mum 311
56 The Smell of Little Pong 311
58 Family Friendly Working 300
59 Keir Royale 286
60 39 and Counting 283
61 Motherhood: the final frontier 279
62 Tales from the Naughty Step 277
63 Married with Four 260
64 Mrs Trefusis 259
65 Mothers on the Verge 258
66 The Baby Juggler 255
67 Being Lucy Diamond 254
68 Miss Meep's Guide to Living 253
69 Teen Coach Blog 244
70 Lemon Drizzle 241
71 Arabella Miller 235
72 Family Relationships 229
73 Positive Parenting 222
74 Chunky Monkey 202
75 Is that me? How did that happen? 198
75 More to Life than Laundry 198
77 View from Nappy Mountain 189
78 Mothers Who Work 186
79 Little Sheep Learning 184
80 Totsy's Place 183
81 Diary of a Surprise Mum 179
82 Rosie Scribble 177
83 Pink Fairy Cake 172
84 Don't Tear Your Hair Out 171
85 Motherworld 166
85 Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em 166
87 Family Treehouse 149
88 Adventures of a Sleepless Toddler 133
89 Mummo Mia 128
90 Music Bugs 125
91 It's a Mum's Life 123
92 Milky Moo 119
93 Jessica's Trust 118
94 Sleepy Tots Blog 91
95 Perfectly Happy Mum 74
96 Amanda's Adventures in Chocolate 63
96 Pixie Minx 63
98 Mum's the Business 61
99 Tots 2 Travel 54
100 Time Management Mum 43

What Do The Scores Mean?

120 blogs were originally included in the index. Each blog was assigned a score from 1 (bottom ranked) to 120 (top ranked) in seven categories:

1. Technorati Authority: number of blogs linking to this blog in the last six months
2. Technorati Inlinks: number of inbound links, excluding self-referring hits
3. Yahoo Inlinks: number of inbound links in last six months (excl self-referring hits)
4. Google Blog Hits: number of posts/links/weblinks in Google
5. Google Hits Recent: number of links from the last 30 days
6. Readers: number of subscribers based on Feedburner and Google Reader
7. HowSociable: the blogger's visibility outside the blog, measuring activity on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

This meant a blog scoring the highest score in each of these categories would achieve a maximum score of 840 points. The lowest possible score was 7.

These aren't perfect metrics but we believe that combining measurements from Google, Technorati and Yahoo ensures an accurate reflection of a blog's influence, while the inclusion of HowSociable clearly showed how the top bloggers use social media to boost their blog's profile.

There are a couple of blogs on the index that haven't been updated in a few months, but still scored highly because of high numbers of residual links. We expect these links to reduce over time, and the blogs will fall down the index - but we'll be removing any blogs that haven't been updated in 6 months or more for the next index.

We welcome suggestions of how to improve the Index, as well as suggestions of new blogs to include in the next index. Our criteria for inclusion are simple: the blog must be by/about parents, be written by a British parent or a parent in the UK, and you need to score higher than someone already in the index.