What happens when top industry analytics firm Forrester “applies its review methodology to 16 blogs”? Well, for starters Forrester proves they don’t know a damned thing about blogging. Analyst Megan Burns’ report, titled Best And Worst Of Blog Design, 2006, aims to ply their skill of the trade to some of the world’s top blogs — Engadget included. The kicker: not a single blog passed muster. The study pits Engadget, Google, SouthWest Airlines, Gizmodo, USA Today, Dell, BoingBoing, The New York Times, and competitor Jupitermedia among others — but not Forrester’s own attempt at a blog (which I might mention falls short of leading by example with a mere 800 views a day). Plainly, Ms. Burns apparently “found a slew of usability issues like confusing terminology, hard-to-find navigation, and missing information about the blogs’ authors. In addition to making it difficult to find valuable content, these design flaws create barriers that keep users from participating in the two-way conversation that defines blogging.”

Our reader of reference against which we’re tested? He’s “familiar with the Internet and goes online for email, banking, reading news, and occasional online shopping. He has heard of blogs but has never visited one.” There, we lost him already, damn it. See how fast that was? Surely Engadget could never survive as a business with these harsh odds stacked against us! Read on…

It’s probably not even worth my picking apart this report — which is somewhat reminiscent of watching one’s grandmother write at length on buzz marketing (unless her last name is Edelman). But the simple fact is Forrester’s conservative and staid criteria don’t even begin to account for the fact that blogs make up a complex living ecosystem of niche publications, each with a disparate voices, objectives, and target demographics — all of which are directly represented in the presentation of the publications. No, our site doesn’t say “subscribe,” as they suggest it should — it says “RSS.” Yes, our category nav is pushed below the fold by ads. Why? Because RSS is the language our millions of readers — who spend more time reading the news than they do clicking around on the categories — understand. For Forrester to suggest otherwise not only shows a deep-rooted disconnect with its subject matter but — oh, wait a sec. Forrester’s own blog uses the usability-failing term “Forrester’s RSS Feed,” instead of their own recommended nomenclature. Hmm.

So how’d we do, anyway? Well, by their wholly unclear criteria and scoring methodologies, Engadget ranked at a -11, the same as Daily Kos, and only better than Sun, Novell, and Gizmodo (for the record, the NYT still failed by 11 points with a score of 9). But fear not, Forrester’s Senior Public Relations Specialist was lightning fast to send this report to me today — just in time to register for their $250 Blog Design Is Broken teleconference, hosted by none other than the study’s author Megan Burns (and Ross Popoff-Walker). I’m sure by now it’s obvious whether they’ll count me in attendance, but I won’t deny being curious about the publishers who buy into this sad sad scare-report, possibly divined straight from this poorly-designed site’s front page or RSS feed. But the joke’s on you, Forrester, even this blog is outperforming yours; try going to school before you teach.

Oh, and here’s the report.