Will RealRank Turn Out To Be A White Knight?

Have no fear, RealRank is here. If your blog has been one of the "victims" that got cut down to size by the recent Google slapfest, maybe this new metric from Izea, the parent company of PayPerPost, will bring new hope.

So what is Izea RealRank?

Izea believe they have a solution (RealRank) to gather "Real" traffic information and rank sites based on their standing within the network.

Here's their "relatively simple" formula that will provide bloggers and advertisers a measuring yardstick:

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

It appears like RealRank is going to be a traffic-centric measuring system. Of course, we are always looking for a better mousetrap, but is there something missing from this idea to gauge the standing of a website or blog?

Traffic is an important factor - you bet, it is.

As an advertiser, you would be asking if a traffic of 5,000 daily visitors who glide in and out hardly noticing anything on a site, would it be worth placing an ad there?

Or is it better to advertise at a site with 500 unque readers per day who would notice your ad and read your content? Lars-Christian puts forth this thought regarding the traffic issue in his post RealRank -- A Stillborn Idea From Izea.

If "500 unique readers" is a better proposition, then obviously that particular site must have "quality content" to boot in order to attract these kind of visitors. They will have some kind of affinity with the site and are likely to be repeat visitors. That's where we come back to PageRank and understand that "authority" status is as much a consideration in the measurement of ranking.

Moreover, there is always the question of "traffic buying" that could turn this whole thing into a farce and puts us back to square one.

Following the Google pagerank slapfest that has antagonized a great number of webmasters, Izea RealRank may look like a white knight riding to the rescue to some people at least - but I'd rather have some reservation about it. It is expected to be released within two weeks, then we'll see how it works out. Don't bet too much on it.


Of related interests:
Are You One of 85,000 PayPerPost Bloggers?
The "Do No Evil" Empire Strikes Back