I recently saw an online group post about a top 100 tea blogs list by Feedspot, which I’m critiquing here. According to the listing part of the criteria is as follows:
“The Best Tea blogs from thousands of top Tea blogs in our index using search and social metrics.”
Facebook and Twitter follower counts are cited, so there is some justification, although for some entries both are listed as “n/a.” I’ll mention what they missed, and why the list doesn’t work related to that. Of course, many of the entrants are good blogs and reference sites, with a lot of familiar names: World of Tea (which changed names and theme), TChing, Tea DB, and Tea For Me Please. It includes some of my favorites: My Thoughts are Like Butterflies, Oolong Owl, Sororitea Sisters (good for basic reviews), and Lord Devotea’s Tea Spouts, which is nice for opinion posts (rants).
A lot of entries are sales sites. If a vendor creates reference content that’s a different thing, and many do also put out a blog. Evaluating if content transitioned from product marketing description to actual background information would be difficult (if a blog really is a blog). The Hojo vendor articles seem like a good example of such an effort; they create nice articles, even though I’m not sure their content is 100% accurate.
What’s missing might be a bigger problem than what’s there. I’ll cite my FB group discussion comments about that:
It’s missing Steep Stories, Tea Geek, Tea Addict’s Journal, The Half Dipper, Death by Tea, Tea in the Ancient World (my own blog), and the Global Tea Hut’s magazine.
Also Tea Master’s Blog, probably the best reference about Taiwanese oolongs, and Tea Journeyman, a good basic review blog. Tea Obsession is now inactive but the old posts are a great reference on Dan Cong. Mattcha’s Blog has moved onto other scope, after a period of inactivity, but old posts are still a great reference on Korean teas.
Steep Stories is my favorite blog, and for overall reference Tea Addict’s Journal is pretty far up the list, definitely top 10. Tea Geek is mostly inactive now but still a good reference blog. My Japanese Green Tea is the best Japeanese tea reference blog I know of, and Puerh.fr is a great classic pu’er reference site.
This list is just not a well-informed effort.
It is what it is, a blog ranking site that cuts and pastes search results material, a Top 100 Tea Blogs list that stops at number 86. If a bot made that list then it’s not a very thorough bot. I checked the Top 60 Whiskey Blogs list there and that leaves off at # 53.
What goes into a good tea blog? About tea review methodology.
Whatever someone happens to like in a tea blog defines what is good, so any list would be subjective; unless it was only an attempt at ranking stats. Stories can be nice, or a lifestyle theme, about everyday experiences, or research. If the criteria used is Facebook and Twitter followers along with Google search metrics that actually sort of works; it’s clear and objective.
I’m not implying that tea reviews are at the core of a good tea blog (although many are only that, for content), but I did comment on how those map out further in that online discussion. It related to a criticism by someone else that many blogs aren’t informative, that they really don’t describe how good the teas being reviewed are.
It’s natural for reviewers to not want to say negative things about teas, to communicate what is positive instead, probably at least partly related to being given free samples for review. A reviewer skipping mention of teas they don’t like only solves part of the problem. No matter how that’s cut off there would always be some boundary condition, or aspects that don’t work as well in some teas, or typical attributes that could be there but aren’t. Different bloggers deal with all that in different ways.
Some reviews express so little description that this particular problem hardly comes up, but that’s an exception. More often bloggers include no subjective content at all, to the degree that’s even possible, mentioning aspect descriptions but not how much they like the aspects or tea in general. It works better than it sounds but that approach skips a lot.
There are two other potential approaches that tend to never come up: placing the tea quality on a scale related to what else they’ve tried, or evaluating trueness to type, if it’s what one would expect from that version. Bloggers almost never mention value either; teas are sold as better or worse with pricing indicating that level, implying it. If you buy one Longjing for $8 per 50 grams and a second for $25 you’d expect the second to be better, even if the descriptions were a close match. There’s no way to really wrap all this up in the form of conclusions, just talking through the background a bit.
Of course, actual vendor pages are something else; they’re describing what they sell, and may or may not include any other content. Lots of vendors do go further but more don’t.
Even if a person did try to evaluate tea review or research theme content, versus condense a Google search ranking, they would need to be very familiar with tea to do so. That listing site, Feedspot, seems to be more an automated rating system with a link forwarding function, like Bloglovin (a feed reader), designed to also include ranking along with subject type sorting. At least it did work well as a starting point for talking about my own favorites and what goes into a tea review.
Images provided by author.
It’s always nice to be in the Top 10 – I hadn’t been aware of this award by Feedspot. I have to agree with your comments about tea reviews. I’ve made the decision not to post a review about something that I’m sent that I don’t like. Rather than write a partial review, only highlighting what I can say something positive about, I’ve decided not to write anything at all. I don’t want to mislead my readers nor feel an obligation to the person who sent the sample. i make it clear, before they send anything, that I won’t write a review if I don’t like the tea/product. No one has ever objected to this.
That list seems better in the top 10; either Google search results work better higher up or they’ve copied some other list that wasn’t bad. Half the rest are vendor pages, which may or may not contain any blog or reference content beyond product descriptions. I take the same approach related to review selection; teas I don’t like usually wouldn’t be interesting to hear about. I probably get around to saying less than I might about typical flaws in teas for that, but they tend to match up with strengths of teas, with positive aspects as others.
John –
Thank you for this thoughtful review. I believe it’s spot on. I think it ties in a bit with one of your previous posts about the economics of experiences. In my opinion, someone who has developed a particular interest in the connoisseurship of tea (something that I believe adds much depth to the experience of drinking tea), is able to extract a grander experience from smaller aspects of drinking tea or reading about the more detailed aspects of traditional teas as described in blogs. The remainder majority that do not pursue a connoisseurship with tea, are likely to need more elaborate experiences with consumption and/or vicariously through descriptions of the experience, from others.
The result may be that you get a fork in blog experiences between the ones that are a connoisseurs delight of details that may be too mundane for most, vs more dramatic and emotional experiences and/or descriptions of elaborate, strange or expensive concoctions. My 2 cents.
It is interesting writing a range of posts that I think completely different people would be interested in. I’ve been beating the subject of sheng pu’er review to death for 9 months but it takes longer to really fill in background for that type, it’s just probably not necessary for readers to hear of all of it. Posts about travel related to tea, cafe visits, or even tangents off tea might not appeal to readers on the page of reviews. Reviews are a funny thing; reading some to get ideas about a new type makes sense, but at some point it’s about trying a tea, not researching it, so description only goes so far. I get it why bloggers tend to stop doing reviews or even stop blogging altogether after awhile.
Hi John,
This is a well-written article, and I would like to thank you for sharing your opinion.
I do agree with you, and I have to say that as peer T-ching author and blogger, we have to be careful about mentioning about our own products in the article.
Although I carry our own products, I try not to make our articles to be about “selling” our product. I do love tea, and hoping to share my passion with others.
I will keep your thoughts in mind when writing the next article.
Kei
Tea vendors who offer content in addition to product description can do a great job with adding value and attracting attention. I like written text myself, and text blogs paired with vendor sales pages are most common, but video seems to have more potential for drawing interest and sharing ideas. I suppose that would have worked as a sub-theme in this post, that there is more than one type of media now, and multiple channels. Russian vendors and consumers seem to use Instagram most now, even for interview posts in the “story” function there. Youtube is better for reaching an American audience, especially introductory content, on how to brew tea and such. Online discussion can bring in the same kinds of conflict issues, that there’s a thin line between discussing background and selling, but a vendor having an interest in both seems valid, and an appropriate balance can be struck.
Hi John,
Thank you very much for your reply. I agree with you that non-text contents are the trend. I will be offering video contents soon. I just did facebook live from World Tea Expo where we had a booth which had more than expected views. https://business.facebook.com/kametaro.nishida/videos/407387259733619/?hc_ref=ART4AmiSwvo0H6GAmDwwa3oS65vuQxlzL8jVtXacU37TtH-ZAjlkMP8oIcF1fy5VxaU
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