socialmedian: Page Rank is the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence

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Page Rank is the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence

Submitted by Louisgray from Google Reader

Oct 05, 2008

Summary

Friends, Romans, countrymen, followers, page views, in-bound links, share of voice, unique visitors and subscribers. These are just some of the more common ways serious content creators (and those who hope to reach them) measure online influence. However there are big flaws in all of these metrics.

Followers and/or RSS subscribers are nice to count. But given the Attention Crash, it's a good bet that many of these people aren't as engaged with your content as you might hope. For example, I follow several hundred people on Friendfeed but I only see a fraction of their stuff because I don't have time to actively read or even scan.

Unique visitors and page views - which I said was dying back in 2006 and is dead as far as I am concerned - are also largely empty numbers. Lots of people visit my blog. However, many of them arrive via Google, the web's version of Ellis Island. And then they're gone.

After thinking about this a lot I have reached the conclusion that Google Page Rank is the ultimate way to measure online influence. It's far from perfect. However

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Comments (10)

Piercemattiepr,

Oct 06, 2008

I semi disagree. Using blogs as an example, I know several well known and highly influential beauty and fashion blogs who previously held a page rank of 6. When Google last did it's major shake up a few months ago and stated that affiliate links needed to have a "no follow" tag in the code, these blogs suddenly became a 3. They had been using affiliate links in their posts without no follow tags. To any advertiser, marketer or PR person coming upon these blogs for the first time after the Page Rank striping, a 3 is mediocre and it would be assumed that they may not have much of an influence in the blogosphere--and they would be mistaken. Of course, you also have those bloggers who have been around a while that may be jumping off of the Blogger.com bandwagon and establishing their own domains. Automatically they start from scratch with page rank even if their traffic came with them.

However, I do agree that it is something that takes time to build and is earned and I do think page rank is part of a well rounded look at the quality of a site.

What do you think of the splogs out there that have gained page rank despite being entirely stolen content?

Site Guy,

Oct 06, 2008

Lies! They're all lies!

Barcelonaphotoblog,

Oct 06, 2008

I wouldn't say the ultimate. Not the most important, yes. Google lowered PR again to many sites last week. Let's face it PR is given to us by someone, who sets the rules so people come and think we are important when we may not be. So PR is not reliable. But unfortunately that someone rules the market and can literally obliterate you. This is like real life, you maybe a wonderful person, a brilliant persona, but if the pack is against you because some stupid fraud leader says you are not to be trusted, then you are doomed.

Transitenator,

Oct 06, 2008

I disagree in a lot of points.

Barcelonaphotoblog,

Oct 06, 2008

The equation maybe totally logical, mathematically perfect but it is tweaked every often and gives quite unfair results on many occasions because it can be manipulated and used to exert coercive power over clients.

Friarminor,

Oct 07, 2008

Ultimate is such a strong word. Inconsistent and mysterious might fit better.

Rah33ls,

Oct 07, 2008

google juice...if you can't beat 'em...join 'em. a good time to buy in? their stock is down around 50%...

Karenswim,

Oct 07, 2008

PageRank may be a long established metric but I am not sure that I would characterize it as a the ultimate measure of online influence. Content is now dispersed throughout the web via aggregators. People may read, discuss and engage around content on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk or even a Ning Community. Many of those people are not visiting your url but it in no way dilutes your influence. One of the issues we face in social media is that the technology has outpaced our ability to measure the results.

Rah33ls,

Oct 07, 2008

as the web becomes more dynamic (some people call this 'flow') - we'll need different search experiences. one example already exists. live search (summaize/twitter).

Piercemattiepr,

Oct 07, 2008

@karenswim This is exactly what I was discussing with someone the other day! Influence is more spread out and not solely contained to one location for a specific "influencer." The conversations that take place may be fragmented because of this, but it doesn't make them or the person initiating the conversation any less important or influential due to the page rank being higher or lower for a particular profile/page.