The Need for a New Gauge: Moving Beyond Visual or “Toolbar” PR Rankings - Developing a third-party tool
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Now let's get back to the idea of developing a third party tool that is not affiliated with Google or any of the other engines. My buddy Rand (better know as “randfish” within the various SEO forums) let it be known that he was developing such a tool right as I was about half finished with this article. So I decided to try and land a quick interview with him, so that he could discuss some of the finer details regarding this project. Here is a transcript of our conversation:
Question: How long have you been in the SEO industry, and what type of business do you engage in (affiliate revenue, advertising revenue, professional SEO firm, in-house SEO for an established company)?
I’ve been in Web development since 1996, but I got into SEO in 2000 (working with other companies and people) – I’ve only been around the forums (and doing the hands-on SEO work) since 2003, and I launched SEOmoz in 2004. Our business model is to run every part of the Web business for several companies (in different sectors – retail, finance, software), so we manage design, development, promotion, SEO, usability, the works.
Question: Why do you think that the SEO community in general turns to visual or "toolbar" PR when it comes to gauging the value of a link from a specific Web page? Also, in your opinion, why does visual PR fall short in this regard?
PR was, at one time, a reasonably good way to measure the value of a link in terms of how Google ranked sites. PageRank by itself virtually dictated the order of results for several years after Google’s launch, until they became a more sophisticated search engine. Right now, link buyers probably do this out of both habit and laziness. It’s a very easy way to get a rough idea that the site isn’t banned by Google and has a relative degree of link popularity. PR is still good for this last system – it can give a very rough, relative estimate of the link popularity for a given site/page. What’s unfortunate is that so many link buyers (and probably sellers too) don’t realize that this is not what governs the value of links anymore. A highly linked-to site that also links to you no longer provides the boost it did in 2001 or even 2003. Today, link analysis sophistication has been taken to a far greater level, and that’s where toolbar PR falls short.
Question: What was the last straw that convinced you to undertake this project of building a third-party tool that could gauge the value of a specific Web page?
I believe there was actually a thread at SEOChat forums that convinced me. There was a lot of discussion on what to measure, etc. and I thought that a tool that automatically pulled as many of those factors as possible would be useful. The tools I make aren’t the “end all, be all;” they’re just designed to pull information automatically to save time and effort for SEOs. Many times, especially on days when the tools are popular or linked to by a big SEO site, the wait can be 20 or even 30 minutes, but it’s still time when you can work while it sits in the background and runs (plus it’s free).
Question: How long have you been working on this project?
I’ve been working on SEOmoz since the fall of 2004, including the tools. The link pricing tool specifically has been in development for just under three weeks, and I’ve only recently put together the calculations that will be used to grade the factors (which involves lots of nasty equations to get a scale that feels right).
Question: Can you give me a little insight into some of the features that this tool will possess? Why are webmasters going to be compelled to use it?
It’s going to be scraping a lot of information that you would normally attempt to pull yourself when deciding whether to buy a link. As I said before, the information it returns isn’t completely authoritative, but it can help to give you an idea of what to do. The tool can’t take into account how many visitors the page gets or how many will click on your link, so it’s really just designed to estimate the value in terms of link popularity at the search engines.
Probably the most compelling reason to use it will be to give a rough idea of the range a link is in – like the kw difficulty tool which I use all the time to gauge the range of effort required to rank, this will provide a similar rough estimate of what to pay.
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