Roots vs. Leafs: An observation about blogosphere

It's interesting that I get far more than 10000 unique daily unique page views on the site along with a similar number of aggregator views daily without even posting much. At least that was true for the last couple of months. Today is my "get back to blogging day". At the same time, the number of tracked direct referrals that I get when someone navigates to an entry via a link on another site is relatively low and accounts for less than 3% of the daily traffic.

I am sure I am the last to realize this phenomenon, but: I conclude that I must have a "root blog". That means that the overwhelming majority of readers don't find me via links; instead, I am on their daily reading list or in their RSS aggregator. I don't really get many on-topic inbound links, but I give links. Other great examples for "higher order" root blogs are those of Robert Scoble and Don Box, because once they link to me, the number of direct referrals rises significantly.

When I started blogging (when blogosphere was much smaller), I had a "leaf blog" that wouldn't get many reads except through other people's links. It's interesting to observe how those things change.