Who is the new SlashDot: TechCrunch, Ars Technica or GigaOM?

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch wrote yesterday "Survey Says: PR People Love Our No-Embargo Policy."

I chatted with a few PR pros last night after we read Erick's post. From my informal poll, a more accurate headline might be "Survey Says: TechCrunch is the New Slashdot". The embargo policy is interesting - but we are flexible. TechCrunch can do what it wants - as long as it has the influence it has - PR folks will adjust. 

TechCrunch is the new SlashDot (in its day, a mention on SlashDot caused the "SlashDot Effect"  - where the mentioned web site would slow down or temporarily close due to the increased traffic). The TechCrunch community is very large, active and passionate.

What is more interesting to me about this poll is who is listed after TechCrunch.

The folks in this poll named the top  tech blogs: TechCrunch, GigaOm, Engadget, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Silicon Valley Insider, Meritalk, ReadWriteWeb, LifeHacker. The top 10 Tech Pub blogs were WSJ, New York Times, CNET, BusinessWeek, ZiffDavis, Wired, CIO, eWeek, NetworkWorld and InformationWeek.

MeriTalk and Silicon Valley Insider in the top 10? GigaOm as number 2? Ars Technica at #10?

This surprised me. So I did some quick research that I wanted to share:

• I looked at each of blogs web site traffic as reported by Compete.com
• I looked at the Google Analytics for a few recent launches 

Traffic Comparisons:

For starters, lets use Compete.com to track the number of unique visitors to these blogs in March. Compete.com is notoriously sporadic in its findings. RSS feeds push out content in a way where readers aren't counted. But even with the flaws in using Compete - I think this creates some degree of accurate comparison.

Case Studies

Since Compete.com is arguably inaccurate, let's look at the Google Analytics on 2 recent launches I've seen:

Launch 1

- An Ars Technica article delivered 6x as much traffic as a NY Times blog. 

- The NY Times Bits blog delivered 5x as much traffic as OSStatic (GigaOm) 

Launch 2:

- Ars Technica drove 7x the traffic as GigaOm.

- GigaOm drove 2x the traffic as a corporate Twitter feed.

- A corporate Twitter feed drove 8x the traffic as a TechTarget article.

Conclusion

A top 10 list is different for each announcement, for each client. So I won't do my own top 10 list. But reviewing these poll stats, I do wonder what information the PR industry uses to gauge the most influential blogs.

What are your thoughts and experiences?