EatonWeb is a blog directory that has certainly been around for a long time, although it seems to have a much smaller database than many other blog directories. From its homepage, you can click on general categories and most of their subcategories to find a listing of blogs within those respective categories. The default ordering of these blogs is determined by two sets of factors: the strength metric and the momentum metric.
The strength metric is determined by more than a dozen factors. However, Eatonweb is not forthcoming about what these factors actually are. We do know from their announcements that they no longer weigh page rank very strongly in this metric as they no longer believe page rank means much in terms of quality. I totally agree with this. Page rank is totally over-rated. Furthermore, it can be very misleading in determining the true quality of a blog in terms of the information it provides and how often it is updated. In fact, it's not even a reliable indicator of how well an ad performs.
The momentum metric is a rating of how much a blog changes over time. In other words, they are roughly tracking if the blog delivers fresh content and relatively how much fresh content. This is a very worthwhile metric, in my opinion, as so many blogs start off strong and then sit stagnant for months, even years. You can also choose to order blogs with one metric or the other.
I definitely like the concept of ordering blogs with the two metrics and being able to pick one metric or the other to re-order blogs. However, I do not think that Eatonweb carries this concept to its full potential. For example, if you do a keyword search, there is no way to re-order the results by selecting only one or the other metric.
Also, if you click on a single metric button, they do not have the categories for a single metric organized in a way that is obvious. It's a little confusing in fact but you can list the blogs by one metric in a single category or subcategory buy clicking on a link at the top after you pick a metric and load that page. I do very much like the fact that you can click on the "read more" link at the bottom of each blog listing and get an actual number for each metric. I don't know what each number means exactly but it does make it nice for relative comparisons.
The button for listing your blog on Eatonweb is rather big but it blends in so much with the background it is hard to see at first. I was trying to find the submit link in text at the top and bottom of the homepage and really had to struggle for a minute or so before I finally figured out that was the graphic in the left sidebar. Also, this graphic looks like an ad and I'm trained to ignore ads on the sidebars of websites. I really think they should add a text link for submitting sites!
