I stumbled across a new but yet another ranking algorithm which appears to be limited to a select few members of the “elite” bloggers, or should I say more specifically, WordPress blogger?

Apparently, it appears that according to SocialBlogroll, if you have a working, full fuctioning public OPML, which looks like this,

http://www.your-blog-name.com/wp-links-opml.php

Then you are THE BLOGGER! Stick it to the man! Being THE BLOGGER means you have the most Blogroll links. Interesting, you say? I have to agree although I rather take a King Crab Spider Sushi roll anytime.

How did you find out about this?

Thank you for asking. I actually found out about this by accident. Don’t worry, I don’t think SocialBlogroll intended to do this on purpose. Maybe they just need a little help with marketing outside of their niche.

Actually, I do think they intended to do this on purpose. Digging in deeper, it became apparent there are exclusive “gatekeepers” who have the power to let you into the community where your blogroll will be counted for the vote.

Wait a minute! What vote? Who are you talking about? I wanna vote! Elect me for your next president!

Apparently, it is not about who cares about you. It is about who knows you. According to the F.A.Q. section,

In order to appear on this system you must be recommended by one of our chosen gatekeepers.

I did a little spelunking around and it turns out to be mostly a group of bloggers who are into SEO, PPC, marketing and a few other topics. I was surprised to see there was no such tags for Personal Finance which is a hot niche these days.

Anyways, I discovered about this when I was reading Another Good Reason to NOT Have a Blogroll by Chris Garrett. (Yes, I am name-dropping here but I hope these bloggers didn’t fall on their heads.) As a result, I went over to Maki’s site who was having a link attack and talked about SocialBlogroll. (Quick! Some blogger, get him an inhaler!)

Does this really works?

I was curious about this because of a few reasons so I did some investigation. The answer is I don’t know. However, because of Chris Garret’s article and SocialBlogroll’s F.A.Q, I did manage to discover a few things.

Your OPML file will only display the links in your blogroll if you have them set to be visible. What! You mean they can be invisible too? Yes, they can if you have selected the NO option in the Edit Link page of your Manage Blogroll dashboard. Not even Superman can see them with his x-ray vision.

However, I noticed one interesting thing when I was experimenting with the blogroll and visibility. You do not have to have a blogroll in your sidebar. As long as your link is visible (that means YES) and I mean yes, it must be visible, then it will show up in your OPML file.

I suppose that may be the best of both worlds, the blogroll haters and the blogroll lovers can still be ranked whether they have a blogroll or not.

So there you have it folks, a blogroll here and a sushi roll there. Here’s a poll. (Hey, it rhymes!)

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Now, I hope this is worthy of a linkbait and my site survives a Digg.

Tell me, what do you think about blogrolls? Or sushi rolls, for that matter?