Is Alexa a REALRANK? Well, it tracks traffic but…

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With the PR Nuke Out still on, Izea finally launched this week, and I’ve already got my stats working . In fact, I’m lucky as I have stats running back to late November last year! So I get quite a head start… Still, a lot of questions remain unanswered…. I’m hoping this series of post will help to answer some of them.

So what is Izea? What is its intended purpose and how well does it implement the ideas? In this series of posts, published daily, I’ll be looking at Alexa, PageRank, Technorati, and Izea’s RealRank.

Let’s take a look.

What is IzeaRanks? What is it trying to solve?

There are a variety of sources available on the internet that aim to measure traffic; however, most of the sources that provide such information are for the private consumption of stats by webmasters and site owners.

There aren’t so many external and independent sources of information, and not many reliable ways to rank one site vs. another. The few that I know of are well known to many: Alexa, PageRank, Technorati, and Compete. It’s into this marketplace that Izea’s RealRank has come .

Alexa: Very partial, somewhat unreliable

Alexa:Alexa is one of the more popular metrics used by advertisers to measure traffic to a website, pageviews within that site, and ‘reach of the website’. You can take a look at my current stats by clicking on the image below:

alexa stats for january

These stats are for the current month of January, 2008. The limitations of such stats for advertisers are obvious as they disproportionately measure traffic from a particular group or groups of users that may or may not be representative. The theory goes as your site becomes more popular the stats will more closely approximate what is going on… which is great if you are Yahoo! or Google.

For most bloggers, these stats tell a woefully incomplete story, especially about where readers come from, what they look at in particular, who the visitors are, etc., though some comparison is helpful. Of course, I would still recommend that you add this code to your website: the more information for advertisers the better. In fact you can see the box on my sidebar. And I won’t be moving it any time soon. If you want to install it, read more here.

alexa stats in your blog

Despite my recommendation, I’m under illusions that, since the stats are drawn from a relatively small userbase of toolbar users and java code (which you can add to your site), the metrics are highly suspect. Case in point: I’ve got a ranking similar to about six-eight months ago with traffic that is more than double what I was getting. My traffic has jumped since May, and my Alexa ranking is relatively weaker.

The upside for Alexa (and it still is the leader in this respect as an external source of information), though, unlike the following two suggestions is that they attempt to measure traffic on a regular basis to websites, not just blogs, and they attempt to provide a long term measure of such traffic.

Post two in the series will look at PageRank, look for that on Monday…

Disclaimer

First I should say that I’ve been a blogger with Payperpost for quite some time, and as such I’ve been working with them to provide interesting content for advertisers. Izea is a company that proposes to build upon the foundations that Payperpost has established.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, 123beta, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Adeline and Hazel, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Allie is Wired, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, Stix, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, Global American Discourse, The Pink Flamingo, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

InvestorBlogger’s Quick Recap: Posts, links, and Carnival News

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Another week is nearly over, it’s lunch time in New York City soon, and stomachs are grumbling, so I’ll fill you in on the InvestorBlogger news as you crunch through your sandwich at your desk or on your Asus Eee PC or wherever you are.

It’s been a busy week on InvestorBlogger, though the posting schedule is definitely slower than in the last part of 2007. I’ve slowed down the posting schedule, and lengthened the posts over the last few weeks as I’ve been seeking to explore in more depth the world of investing, business, blogging, and technology and the neat intersection of these four areas.

The Week’s Posts (or most of them!)

So here’s a quick recap of the posts that I’ve done this week:

Last Saturday, I started work on the new theme which I shared with readers, and I challenged them with the question – New Theme: Is it time to revitalize your blog? – in which I looked at different ways you can find a new look for your blog;

Then on Sunday, I took some lovely sunset pictures with my Lumix camera; and the weather was so mild, it was a wonderful trip!

On Monday, I declared war against Google with my ultimatum – Going to War Against Google’s Hubris: Three Actions You Can Take Today. Of course, a quick trip through the archives will show that this is a theme I’ve dwelt on before;

On Tuesday, I blogged about promotion and your blog or business in which I challenged readers not to focus too much on the nickels and dimes and this post was a challenge to write as it brought together some ideas I’d been thinking about for a while;

On Wednesday, I examined a website that was promoting e-minis as a way to trade online, and I was surprised that such a method was available;

And on Thursday, I challenged those of you with a windfall on what you should do when you strike it rich; sudden wealth syndrome can lead to some disastrous consequences, and smaller amounts seem to generate bigger problems!

Then on Friday, I wrote Adios Adsense, which was a swansong for Google as much as for Adsense. I really hope I’m wrong about Google, but it looks like the Google Machine is beginning to believe too much of its own hype.

Saturday evening’s post will look at Izea’s new RealRank and compare that with some competitors. So do check back later this weekend or subscribe to our feed! You can also check out our Carnival of Making Real Money for more great reading, as well as our wonderful archives.  This week’s carnival will be published Sunday as usual.

Do check out the newest advertisers on the blog. But most important of all, have a wonderful weekend!

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, 123beta, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Adeline and Hazel, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Allie is Wired, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, Stix, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, Celebrity Smack, Global American Discourse, The Pink Flamingo, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Goodbye Adsense, it’s been sweet’n’sour…

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raw deal AdsensGoodbye Adsense, it’s been sweet’n’sour…

I’ve had an Adsense Account for a very long time, but it hasn’t really generated much in the way of additional revenue though the nearly annual check for $100 has been a nice supplement in some ways. Oddly, it had been performing better on InvestorBlogger than in a long time with the addition of the Shylock Plugin. But this week brought an opportunity disguised as a challenge; and a challenge disguised as an opportunity.

First, the opportunity was wrought by none other than the Google machine, which not content with reducing clickable areas on Google Ads, reducing PRs on many blogs, now acted to cut payout terms for referrals for those who were lucky enough to be in a primary country (currently, the US, Canada and Japan). For those of the rest of the world, referrals were cut to zero (and that’s backdated to July of 2007!)

The Eleventh Hour for Adsense

Too many changes for me, and just added an eleventh reason to my list of why Adsense is now bad for bloggers. Shoemoney has already weighed in on the debate, citing it as a slap in the face of foreign webmasters with the words: “They are terminating your referral program completely. That’s right! If you are not in the Americas, or Japan, your done.” The discussion on his blog has already gone to 123 comments.

Problogger who hails from the land downunder is also mightily chagrined, and in an update to his posts points out that the rule is retrospective: “So for “international” publishers – every person that you and I have sent to AdSense since the end of July last year that reaches a conversion point in the coming months will earn us nothing at all.” His discussion has already merited 95 responses at this point.

Goodbye, Adios, Ciao, Adsense…

So, with a heavy heart I cleared out the last of my Adsense on InvestorBlogger. But at the same point, I was boyed by a challenge. An advertiser had been contacting me looking for advertising space on my blog. I had just themed for Christmas, and didn’t see the point when I’d be doing a new theme in the New Year.

New Year: New Opportunities

Persistent, though, and I was finally able to match his requirements with spots for five advertisements or banners on the blog, with two long 728×90 slots and three traditional banners. This was timely as I didn’t want to load my site up with more than a few basic banners. I’ve also installed another plugin that will facilitate additional advertising opportunities. More later…. So, really a silver lining. And I’ll be retaining Adsense on my other websites as its far too difficult to remove them all at this point. But performance isn’t improving.

In the meantime do take a look at the banners on this site, and check out the investing products that are on offer. Since these aren’t Adsense ads, I can encourage clicks to them all. In the meantime, let’s see how Google’s stockprice fares… Mmm.

Hubris Revisited: Google’s Role Model – the Big 4 Music Companies!

I can’t help thinking though that I’m beginning to see a rerun of the problems that are afflicting the CD companies not just a few years ago, but still to this day. Raise prices, offer limited selections, cut your backlists of offerings, screw your artists royally, promote only those bland enough artists that can survive the global markets, and rail against the technology of the day as illegal.

Then worse, start suing your ‘former’ customers, watch your stocks stumble and sales drop by double digit percentages year after year… Could this be what happens to Google? But on Internet time?

Google is already cutting back on the websites payouts via Adsense, cropping rankings, dropping referrals, soon they will be deleting listings from their catalogue… all the time trying to promote the 20% of websites that make up the 80% of their traffic.

But what mostly they forget is that those 20% of websites are only part of a web-o-sphere that is vast. And many websites get truckloads of traffic from sites that aren’t even ranked properly … all those ones and twos begin to add up.

So, Google, I guess you won’t listen to me, but my readers will, and they will form their own opinions, regardless of what you do. Let’s hear it here!

(ed. added graphic and some additional comments.)