DISQUS

Ted Murphy · 2 years ago

Hey David,
The reason that we created RealRank has nothing to do with Google's recent moves, we announced RealRank prior to any of that. We created RealRank because the current metrics available to advertisers are flawed. They are either skewed and unpredictable (Google PR) or based on flawed data (Alexa). The IZEA Toolkit (ITK), which RealRank is part of, is different because it reports actual blog stats, not just approximations.

The problem with PR in particular is that PR and traffic have no direct correlation. You can have a PR of 5 and 100 visitors a day or a PR 3 and 10,000 visitors a day. Advertisers buy media based on reach and demographic, neither of which are provided by PR. We have understood that this was a problem for some time and have been working on providing advertisers with a solution.

RealRank, combined with actual site analytics, attempts to provide advertisers with a more accurate picture of a blogs traffic. Actual stats help them understand the true reach and demographics of the blog while RealRank shows the standing of the blog relative to other blogs in the program.

RealRank is self serving only in that we want our advertisers to get the best ROI possible. We want to help them identify the right blogs possible for their buy so they continue to spend money with us. Influencing or skewing the numbers would only hurt us long term as it would lower the quality of the service we provide. It would be foolish (and most likely illegal) for us to game the system.

The RR algorithm itself will not be exposed, but the basic formula will be made public. We don’t think we should hide that away in a black box. The formula should be straightforward and easy to understand.

“It’s a failed product to start with” and
“IZEA’s RealRank is not going to survive and nobody outside of PayPerPost will ever use this or use it as any sort of metric in determining a site’s value.”

As an entrepreneur I would hope that you would have a more open mind to new ideas. People said the same about PPP when it launched and we have now created an entirely new industry. You should let us at least roll it out before making such statements. If you don’t like what we are doing tell us and help us make it better, we listen and we want to make something that all bloggers find valuable.

I am happy you enjoy RockStartup. The team behind the show is fantastic.

davidb · 2 years ago

Ted,

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the thoughtful reply.

First, I knew PPP would survive from the onset. I like the idea and I knew it would work even though I may not agree with the whole concept I definitely know there are thousands of other people who agree with it and will use it.

My remarks on it being a failed product are directly related to you guys saying you're going to expose the algorithm -- if you do that you won't have a chance of making it work in my opinion -- but your telling me that you actually aren't exposing it, so that's a positive step.

My next question would be how and why would anyone outside of PPP use it? I'm guessing this would take quite a bit of work to establish RealRank as a true, objective metric.

Objectivity has been something your company has been lacking in the eyes of many so this may be an uphill battle. I know, I know, Google Pagerank isn't the most objective metric going either, but you're marketing RealRank as being the answer to a biased Pagerank -- so it's your lead here.

My post came out as kind of harsh and it wasn't meant to be that way. I like what you're doing over there from a startup standpoint even though I'll never use it.

As for RockStartup, make the shows a little bit longer... That'd be great. Let me know if you're ever in the Rhode Island area as well, I'd like to grab a coffee with you.