If you’re wondering why you’re not reaching the top of the Top 100 Gardening Sites, let alone even getting a look in, it’s probably because the whole system’s being gamed.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at these;

Java Teak (#2) doesn’t even have any banners showing on their sites. Neither do Green-24 (#3), Yardiac.com (#4) (even their blog fails to include it), Hort.net (#9), YardLover.com (#16) and Avalon Gardens (#24).

Then there are sites such as Cetsohbet (#8) [link since removed] that have nothing to do with gardening at all. In fact, it clearly states in its description that it’s a “Dating Server GlobaL Internet wen PortaL Free Site” yet ranks in the top 10 of “gardening” sites.

And why is Rex Seedco at #1. Take a look at this site and you’ll notice that there is not one, but two banners counting each pageview as double.

At best, the banner you sport on your blog’s sidebar is building PageRank for Top 100 Gardening Sites but it’s doing nothing for your blog.

How can this site be gamed?

Firstly, the sites I’ve mentioned above aren’t including their banners in HTML code. Their hiding them within Javascript links that still allows the counting code to work but does nothing to advertise Top 100 Gardening Sites (not that this is of much concern to us). However, it does mean that there’s no transparency in which blogs or websites they include them on.

For example, I currently have 4 blogs that I look after and each of them get a considerable amount of traffic. If I were to hide the counting code (the code you downloaded and put in your sidebar) in each of those blogs it would lift me considerably in the rankings.

One would assume this, at the least.

But, it’s not true. Top 100 Gardening Sites claims that it calculates your views over the past 10 days and averages it out. However, this blog (at #40) receives on average 1250 page views per day while Kathy Purdy’s, Cold Climate Gardening at #30 receives 450 per day – based on Sitemeter stats.

Go figure how 3 times more page views results in being 10 rankings lower.

BTW – I’m not picking on Kathy as she’s the only one in the Top 30 who is transparent enough to show her site stats. Who knows what’s going on with the other 29?

The system needs to be fixed

If Top 100 Gardening Sites is going to be a credible source of value in the gardening blogosphere/web then it needs to seriously look at some of the issues that are letting it down. If they don’t bloggers and webmasters are going to become disillusioned and discard any possible value that could be credited from it.
My hope is that Top 100 look into these issues and start to demand more, and give more, transparency from/to users.

It’s a great idea but people will hunt for something else unless they fix these problems.