Andy Beal has access to Sphere, a blog analysis tool that I have yet to see.  You can’t sign up for it right now (they’re not giving any new accounts); it sounds like a tool I’d like to use.  Here’s Andy’s description of Sphere.

Links: Sphere, Matt Marshall

First, it looks at link structures. For example, Om Malik is an authoritative blogger on telecom matters, enjoying numerous links from other well-known bloggers on the topic. If Om points to a blogger also writing about telecom, Sphere awards that blogger a boost in his relevance ranking, and his posts are considered are ranked higher. But if Om Malik goes off on a tangent, and posts something about the Yankees, he is no longer an expert. Sphere treats any links by Om to bloggers writing on the Yankees as less important. Sphere does this by doing a semantic analysis of the blog posts.

That’s a pretty neat feature and certainly welcomed. It’s about time we got a tool that knows whether the blog post comes from someone who is an authority in the discussed subject.

I am hoping Sphere has some visual analysis  tools to evaluate blog relatedness - I’m looking for that (but not the Touchgraph/Google tool that’s been out for a couple years).