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PACmeter - Popularity, Authority, Credibility Online: How To Measure Them?Popularity The quality of being widely accepted, sought after or admired. www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn Authority Power of influence, either granted to or developed by individuals, that leads to others doing what those individuals direct. www.dhs.state.or.us/admin/ois/pmo/publications/pmo_glossary.html A measure of how reliable a source of information is. Is the article wriitten by a recognized expert in the field? Is it based on research? www.mc.cc.md.us/library/libtp/glossary.htm Credibility The quality of being believable or trustworthy. www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn The quality of being plausible, believable, dependable, or worthy of confidence. If you use the Internet Explorer browser, both the Google Toolbar and the Alexa Toolbar have a feature which shows the popularity of the Web site you are currently viewing. The Google PageRank is used by many companies, agencies and consulting firms to easily assess the authority and popularity of any Web site. In recent times even the advertising prices of a site have been determined in relationship to the Google PageRank. Alexa's uses traffic popularity, which measures how many users of the Alexa Toolbar visit a certain site. But given the rapid demise of Internet Explorer and the fast growing interest of many Web publishers to increase their credibility and authority online there is a renewed interest in research, tools and services that can facilitate the task of measuring a Web site credibility, authority and popularity on the Internet. Though most Web site owners have direct access to detailed, precise and easily manageable data coming form their own Web servers logs (these are files on a Web server which are automatically created and which contain precise data about each visitor origin, path through your site, time on each page and much more) very few know how to access, manage and make sense of this information, let alone being able to be able in some way to compare such stats with the ones of other comparable or competing Web sites. Log analysis tools and live tracking services offer very valuable means to measure the traffic of a Web site, its demographics and technographics but offer very little in the way of helping an independent Web publisher assess the credibility, authority or popularity of Web sites that are not under her control. This mini-guide brings together the best public resources available today on the Web that facilitate the task of assessing the credibility, authority and popularity of any Web site. When this is not directly feasible it offers resources and guidelines on how to personally assess and evaluate such factors. In general, it can be said that there is not one unique, reliable indicator of credibility, authority and popularity for public Web sites. Rather, there are a multiplicity of Web indicators that can be utilized to gather valuable data about a web site depending on the specific needs and scope of such research. For ease of explanation I have grouped these Web credibility indicators in five basic sets: a) Public Link Popularity Indicators b) Google PageRank c) Site Stats - (from server logs, live tracker, ad impressions, etc.) d) Advertising Performance Indicators e) Other Popularity Indicators Public Link Popularity Indicators
Link popularity is probably the most objective and publicly accessible credibility and authority indicator for anyone Web site. The link popularity of a site can be calculated through the ability of major search engines to report on backward links to anyone site through a simple manual query that anyone can carr out. Unfortunately there are also a few drawbacks: the syntax to carry out this type of search varies across search engines. Worse than this, not all pages of every Web site are indexed and even Google is not able to provide a fully exhaustive calculus of the absolute number of sites connecting to a domain. So, like in similar situations, one can draw some valuable indications by looking at multiple results from different sources. Here are some things I have learned along the way: 1) Finding Inbound Links in Google 2) Finding Inbound Links in Yahoo Search syntax: link:URL (e.g.: link:http://www.masternewmedia.org/) 3) Finding Inbound Links With Other Major Search Engines 4) Linking Popularity Check by MarketLeap This is an excellent, free, top quality service which allows you to effectively measure the link popularity of any Web site. This service allows to compare a selected site with up to three other sites, and also to a larger preselected sample of Web sites from the same interest area. Reviewed in "How To Measure Link Popularity"
5) Link Popularity Check by MarketPosition Online, Web-based service which measures the link popularity of any Web site against three reference URLs. A very effective and simple to use Windows utility (freeware). It checks very rapidly on Hobot/Google, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Hotbot/Inktomi and MSN Search to see all of the inblund links to all of the sites you specify. It then dinamically builds a list of all the sites according to their link popularity overall score. Used with relevant competitors and other sites in the same sector it offers a very valuable and reliable indicator of a Web site authority in its field. It contains no adware or spyware and it is a reliable, trusted tool. It is free because it is sponsored by Axandra software. 7) LinkSurvey Link Survey is a link popularity checking tool that is a must for any Webmaster. Just enter in the Website(s) for which you want to check the link popularity, and hit the start button. Immediately, Link Survey sends a query out to many popular search engines and displays the results in a table format. From there, you can use the built-in, multi-tabbed Web browser to check out the Web sites that have linked to your pre-selected site. Link Survey also allws data export your to text, HTML, Excel file formats. Free and simple free online service that helps you generate link lists from three major search engines. Results can also be emailed each month. 9) Compute Your Own Web Traffic Rank Jakob Nielsen own empirical approach to derive site popularity relative to its largest competitor. Though the method is dated over 6 years, and it references Alexa's (dubious) abilities, it nonetheless offers a complementary perspective on how to measure popularity and it adds one extra measurement weapon to our ammunition set. Google Page Rank
Google PageRank is one of the very classic credibility and authority indicators on the Web and also one of the most trusted and reliable ones. If you use the Internet Explorer browser, the Google Toolbar shows the popularity of any Web site you are currently viewing by way of a small green indicator called PageRank™. PageRank™ is an exclusive technology of Google which evaluates the popularity of your Website's pages with a ranking value ranging between 0 and 10. However, in order to know this Rank, you have to download and to install the Google Toolbar. Prog (formerly proogle) Measures Google PageRank without needing to have the toolbar, plus it provides listing of all of the inbound links with relative PageRank for each one. Another Web-based solution to measure Google PageRank without needing to have the toolbar. Minimalist approach, no distractions, fast response. Check PageRank with Mozilla/Firefox. View PageRank for multiple Web sites at once without installing Google Toolbar. Alternatively use: http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php MyRank Online http://my.rank.online.fr/ (not available anymore) MyRankOnline was created to enable webmasters to easily publish the PageRank of their site on their own Web pages without any Toolbar. Guide to Understanding Google Page Rank Google Pagerank Explained, Defined, Best Reference Resources PageRank Explained Correctly With Examples Webcredible HandbookOrder Webcredible Handbook (from £170) 567kb PDFWhat is the Webcredible Handbook?The Webcredible Handbook is the resource for user-friendly website development. It`s 101 pages in length, divided into 18 chapters and contains 128 checkpoints for best practice web design and development. The Webcredible Handbook is based on our two years research into user-friendly websites and is broken up into four distinct sections:
The Handbook doesn`t discuss the benefits of having a user-friendly website nor any rhetoric behind it. Instead it`s a straight-to-the-point, no-nonsense how to guide for user-friendly websites. How do I get the handbook?Easy! Just click on the download link at the top (or bottom) of the page. Payment is done through PayPal so you`ll need a credit card handy. PayPal use advanced encryption to ensure your card details are safe. Once payment is complete you`ll be taken through to the page where you can download the Webcredible Handbook, a 1.1Mb PDF report. If you`d prefer to pay offline then please contact us. You can also download three sample chapters from the Handbook for free. Again, just click on the download link at the top (or bottom) of the page. Who should read the handbook?The Handbook is ideal for anyone involved with website development: designers, developers, programmers and marketing and IT professionals. It does assume very basic HTML and CSS knowledge in some places. Reader reviewsSteve Parks, Calgary, Canada Aziz Tarafder, San Francisco, USA Robert Smith, London, England Table of contentsWeb usability (32 checkpoints)
Web accessibility (33 checkpoints)
Web credibility (30 checkpoints)
Search engine optimisation (33 checkpoints)
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