What I want to address:

“Now the question becomes: are these algorithmic authorities any worse than the corporate goliaths they are displacing?”

I’m someone deeply embedded in the digital publishing world. My business, and my clients’ businesses, are affected by these algorithms. And I would argue they are worse.

Here’s why.

Algorithmic Authority Can Change Almost Daily

Algorithms that determine the authority status of a person or publication (or pretend to) often change. They don’t remain static or depend on thoughtful analysis by people qualified to judge authority.

Instead, they rely on surface-level measurements such as the number of backlinks to a page.

These factors change all the time.

Actual authority doesn’t change as frequently. And true authority tends to grow over time. A corporate entity changing measurement standards cannot displace that true, earned authority.

Measurements of Algorithmic Authority are Easily Manipulated

Unfortunately, algorithms aren’t perfect. They look at data. But they don’t control the humans behind that data.

Almost as soon as we see obvious algorithm changes from players like Google, people find ways to exploit them.

By this point, internet marketers treat algorithm-chasing as sport.

Algorithms Aren’t Free From Human Input

Google’s PageRank algorithm featured in the above post. So let’s focus on that example.

Google can override algorithmic assessments by applying penalties. They can even outright de-index a website. This can happen if you don’t follow their rules as the self-appointed internet police.

For instance, with PageRank Google can eliminate or decrease your site’s rank if you use an advertising model they don’t approve of — like selling links directly.

Excuse my side tangent, but a few words on Google’s manual actions related to their algorithm and paid links:

Legitimate reasons exist in online publishing to sell links that don’t involve any “black hat” intent to manipulate search rankings.

That said, two problems exist on Google’s end.

First, private link sale advertisements exist as direct competition for their own link-based contextual ad network (Adwords / Adsense).

Second, their algorithms can’t determine advertisements from other links adequately. They over-rely on backlinks as a metric. That both led to an increased demand for text link ads and an increased crackdown on them.

If you use this kind of ad model without following their rules they treat you like a scam artist. It doesn’t matter how relevant or transparent the ads on your site are. It doesn’t matter if your content serves as the most authoritative content on its subject matter. They make no differentiation between relevant ads that offer value and search engine spam.

While I’ve worked in the online publishing, webmaster, and search engine optimization (SEO) communities for years, the bulk of my clients include small businesses and independent professionals. They’re often true experts in their fields.

Because of this, I take issue with Google’s largely self-serving manual actions overriding their algorithm.

Rather than fixing their over-reliance on backlinks, Google created a system where online publishers were expected to change the default behavior of how links on the web work.

This means including a “nofollow” attribute on any link that might violate their guidelines. Publishers can’t simply link where they wanted to anymore without risk of penalization. They now have to tell Google whether or not they want each link, or type of link, on their site crawled.

Problem: They Put the Onus on Publishers

Publishers of all sizes and experience levels now have to tell Google’s bots which links to follow and crawl in their code, and which not to. So publishers are expected to help overcome Google’s design flaws.

Now, those who routinely game the system can find ways to work around this. They just make it less obvious when links were sponsored. As an online publisher managing over a dozen sites at any given time, I’ve seen more than my share of these requests. And while I don’t accept them, I’ve seen how Google’s policies can hurt transparency more than they help.

But what about those smaller publishers, often true authorities (which popularity can poorly indicate)?

Independent researchers, academics, industry professionals, entrepreneurs… If slapped with a manual penalty for doing something Google disapproves of — not necessarily selling links — are they really less authoritative in their area of expertise?

Of course not.

Algorithms are deeply flawed and incapable of distinguishing between real authority vs popularity. Human intervention mucks things up even more. Just because you don’t see human interference with algorithmic outputs, it doesn’t mean that interference doesn’t exist.

Tools like PageRank should not be factored into anything authority-related.  It can never be a legitimate measure of authority.

Algorithmic Authority in 2016: Update on Google PageRank

Google no longer updates Toolbar Pagerank. That means while they still can rank sites behind the scenes you cannot see your PageRank publicly. Before this, updates were infrequent — about once per year toward the end. If you come across a tool or rankings list showing PageRank for sites, they are woefully outdated. On the surface, this is a good thing. But I’m still concerned over PageRank simply becoming more of a hidden metric in an effort to stop marketers and SEO people from exploiting its obvious flaws without the underlying flaws being fixed.

The inaccuracies of authority / influence ranking tools or algorithms aren’t new. They’ve been discussed for quite some time, such as following the “best” list craze that relied on them to paint a false picture of influence in blogging.

Popularity doesn’t determine influence. And algorithms don’t determine, or accurately calculate, authority.

For now, be cautious about where we place our trust. That, and stop amplifying subjective and faulty evaluations on behalf of ourselves and our clients. And maybe stop seeking validation through algorithms and the ranking lists that employ them in the first place.

The post Algorithmic Authority and Why it Can’t be Trusted appeared first on NakedPR.

Todd And and I had a brief back and forth in the comments on that post, and unfortunately I was off a little while last week and am just getting around to responding now (sorry Todd). Todd had a few questions about potentially improving the Power150 Index that I’d like to address:

“So, while our attempt at adding multiple metrics was in good faith, Alexa might not be the best answer. I’ve shared your blog post with the Ad Age team. Again, as background, the Ad Age folks and I were receiving complaints about Bloglines and suggestions for adding Alexa. We thought we were responding favorably to the community by reducing the Bloglines weight and adding Alexa. It seems like Alexa is not welcomed, so let me ask a couple questions…

1. In your opinion, should Alexa even be a metric on the Power 150? If so, how would you weight it in proportion to Technorati, Google PR and Bloglines?
2. Are there any other metrics that you recommend for ranking blogs that offer an open API?
3. We know there is no such thing as a perfectly accurate ranking, but is there anything else you suggest to make the Power 150 stronger – keeping in mind that it is fully automated and requires third-party metrics to have open APIs?”

Here are my thoughts:

1. I’d say that (as much as I think Alexa’s worthless in this regard), it certainly has a place in the Power150 Index. When you’re using other metrics that are easily manipulated, subjective, or simply very “non-scientific” (like Google’s arbitrary PageRank punishments to sites using advertising models they don’t like), then why not add Alexa to the mix? I don’t know exactly how it’s weighted, but I can’t comprehend why something benefiting webmasters as a whole would be given more weight than something specifically targeted to blogs. If anything, it certainly was given too much weight, or we wouldn’t have suddenly seen increases in webmaster-oriented blogs as opposed to “true” marketing, advertising, media, and PR blogs. The target audience of the blogger shouldn’t have much weight in where they rank.
2. I’d suggest adding a LOT of metrics if you want anything remotely authoritative (in a true sense and not just perception). A handful of metrics is nothing with something like blog rankings. If you really want to improve it, start adding things more relevant to bloggers (such as social bookmarking services). Here’s a list of 300 APIs available with plenty of possibilities for blog rankings – most notably Feedburner (public access may be opt-in, but that’s really no different than Alexa relying only on those opting to install their toolbar, is it?).

I think my answer to number 2 covered number 3. Like Todd said, there are no perfect blog rankings (and I highly doubt there ever will be). The biggest issue with the Power150 is its lack of metrics forcing each one (poor in and of themselves) to carry far too much weight.

The post Improving the Power150 appeared first on NakedPR.

This sounds like it’s a band-aid to a bigger problem of not being able to adequately measure blog popularity and/or influence, which is something a lot of companies are struggling with.

While it’s nice to see some blogs recognized that I hadn’t noticed here before, it’s still extremely far from accurate.

The problem with Alexa isn’t that there’s a “tech bias.” It’s that there’s a “webmaster bias” – the group most likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed as they often use it to check their own sites’ rankings. So if a blog has a heavy webmaster readership (Shoemoney and even Copyblogger for instance, which is cited all over webmaster communities), it’s going to rank higher than a blog targeting more traditional marketing and media folks.

You’re also neglecting the fact that Alexa rankings are one of the most manipulated rankings in existence. I’m hoping that’s due to former ignorance on the subject and not a blatant disregard for it, as it’s been a known fact for quite some time. Then again, Technorati is being manipulated quite a bit with sold and traded favorites. You’re trying to make a judgment call on a blog’s importance, using factors that are either still subjective or based on things able to be manipulated fairly easily.

Long story short, the Power150 won’t ever be a truly accurate representation of the top blogs in marketing and media. No blog ranking ever will be. We see list after list surface attempting to rank blogs using faulty metrics, and unfortunately manipulation is just the name of the game when it comes to the Web and webmasters / bloggers trying to increase rankings, visitors, and profits.

Well kudos for trying, but at least for now the Power 150 is another nice piece of link bait, and not a whole lot more. As much as I’d be interested to see a truly useful blog ranking in any industry, I just don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future. But in the meantime, it does get kind of dry seeing newer quality blogs neglected over factors determined predominantly by age. Maybe we need a ranking of the best blogs from the last year… completely subjective of course.

The post Alexa and the Power 150: What are They Thinking? appeared first on NakedPR.