Can RealRank Replace PageRank?

November 16, 2007

Can RealRank Replace PageRank?

Written by Hyder under Internet

Google’s PageRank score has long been a barometer of a site’s popularity, to the point that it became such an obsession for some people to get one as high as possible that a whole industry employing natural, and underground, tactics grew around it. Whenever underground tactics are used to gain leverage and benefit from a system set in place it is not a good sign of things to come. Proof of this is the advent of RealRank, which is developed by none other than those who have shown the world the vulnerability of Google’s PageRank and algorithm in broad daylight, PayPerPost - who are now IZEA.

What Is RealRank?

RealRank is a new ranking system developed by Izea which relies on a site/blogs actual visitors, inbound links and pageviews to determine its rank.

Think of it as PageRank meets Alexa meets Analytics type of thingamajig. {heh, my spell check accepted thingamajig?}

The percentage breakdown is as below -

70% weighted towards visitors per day
20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
10% weighted towards pageviews per day

It has not launched yet at time of writing, but is expected to be released within two weeks. Granted this system will have it’s initial bugs and flaws, and might be even met with resentment in the beginning. But as all things I think it deserves a chance.

How Real is it?

Here’s a couple of things that I think most of us are asking right now -

Can this be used on any website, or just a blog?
Do I have to register to download a piece of JavaScript to install on my blog?
Is it going to give out a point based Rank, similar to what we are used to. Like RealRank of 5/10 etc…?
Will it fluctuate on a daily basis, or will a website/blog be assigned a RealRank based on an average over a certain time period?
How easy can it be to game this? Remember how your video could be number 1 on YouTube simply with multiple tabs and refresh every X seconds? Let’s hope it blocks the installers IP address from being counted. What about those with dynamic IP’s?
Will it be a separate entity from SocialSpark, even though it will be tied together with that?

I’m sure there’s many more questions that a lot of bloggers and website owners have about this new system. We’ll just have to wait for the release in a few weeks to find out.

To note, PageRank and Alexa have given birth to countless small and large businesses. All aimed at making sure your site gets to Number 1 and stays there.

I wonder how many small and large businesses will mushroom around RealRank?

ads from Shopzilla

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.

13 Readers Commented »

Michael on November 16th, 2007

1

Google focused so much of their efforts in the recent PageRank update on penalizing websites that sell links. Izea had to do something because there core business is involved in selling links.

Thomas Sinfield on November 16th, 2007

2

Interesting concept. Will be interesting to see how it really works.

Jamaipanese on November 16th, 2007

3

I’m all for it, the more options for ranking the merrier.

google seemed to be nuking ppp blogs, my blog is now a pr 0 since two days ago after being a pr 4. It seems many ppp users are affected.

ad on November 16th, 2007

4

this is hillarious:
Unlike Google, we are open to feedback. We will publish the actual formulas for all to view.

Egonitron on November 16th, 2007

5

I was at PostieCon when they unveiled SocialSpark. It looks like it could be very promising. SocialSpark also has a built-in ROIRank, which should be very useful to advertisers. They have a real good chance of upping Google with rank on this one if enough people use it, which I think they should. It’s so ridiculously accurate, everybody should install the SocialSpark tool, even if you don’t plan on advertising with them.