We rolled out RealRank yesterday and the first set of ranks calculated at 2am last night. Everything went swimmingly.
I do want to point out though that a RealRank is a rank, and it can move considerably over time. It represents your position within the world of all users who have installed ITK on their blog, so if 50,000 people suddenly all start using it, your place in the world could rapidly change. Until we open this thing up to the public the numbers will be relatively low; at present we are just focussing on bloggers that have recently signed in to PayPerPost. It gives us a nice way to test the performance and results on a smaller, but expanding subset of the entire network.
I have seen some very excited posts by people who currently have rankings in the hundreds. I am not saying that those will change with certainty, but with each blog that adds ITK the chances do increase. Up until this point there hasn't been a big push from us on adoption of ITK within the network, but that is going to change. As bloggers are segmented out of more and more opps you will see higher levels of adoption within PPP, not to mention the push on the public ranking site and SocialSpark.
It's also worth noting that if you don't have anything to measure, no traffic to your blog, you'll get a rank of 0. This means that a daily RealRank could fluctuate wildly, just as everyone's traffic does. Once we have a week of data, we'll be exposing a weekly RealRank on everyone's blogger dashboards. This will be a moving average of your daily RealRank. If your traffic suddenly dries up for an extended period of time you'll see the weekly rank start to slide down towards zero giving you time to respond.
The thing to remember here is that this is all based on real data. Your numbers may change from increased participation and competition, however your numbers aren't going to change because we decide we don't like the content on your blog or the ad units you are serving from a competitor. The formula will always be published and any changes made overtime will be based on the communities feedback to better the system. This is your ranking system. It is here to serve you.
Finally, thanks for all the twitters, IM's and emails offering words of encouragement. It's been an adventure so far, but I think the real adventure is just about to begin. This is all very exciting stuff.
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Comments (RSS)
abelle said...
as i said before, i am excited and worried at the same time. i'm excited for others, yet worried for me. i can't install my ITK because my blog's HTML is not editable. congratulations, anyway. i just hope that other bloggers like me won't be left out :(
Nov 21, 2007 9:12:07 AM
Beth said...
I just have one question. Up until a little after 2am, under My Blogs, it said PPP tools were installed. Once the RealRank was rolled out, I had the message that I needed to install the code. Apparently when changing a few things on the footer of my site, I deleted the code-why did PPP not pick this up? So as of now my RealRank is 0, even though I receive a lot of traffic. Will this be reflected within 24 hours since I re-installed the code?
Nov 21, 2007 9:14:32 AM
abelle said...
addt'l:
my realrank is 0; i know it's because of the uninstalled ITK. i'm just hoping my other blog gets approved; but since it's a blogspot.com blog, i know there are many advertisers who exclude posties from this site.
Nov 21, 2007 9:23:08 AM
MyGoodFinds said...
So this means that lower the number the better right?
Nov 21, 2007 10:20:56 AM
MyGoodFinds said...
Abelle,
It's not that expensive to have your site hosted on your own domain. At a very minimum, even if you posted one $5 post per week and make $20 per month. You still keep $15. Think that $5 per month of hosting as an investment. It's really worth it.
Nov 21, 2007 10:25:25 AM
Daethian said...
Where do we find the code to install this?
Nov 21, 2007 10:28:14 AM
Darlene said...
Is it the lower the better? Hope to hear from you soon!
Nov 21, 2007 10:38:04 AM
Daethian said...
Nov 21, 2007 10:41:59 AM
MacBros said...
ERRORS!
Evey page (Even here) I'm getting an error message in Firefox
"itk.socialspark.com has sent an incorrect or unexpected message. Error Code - 12263"
Nov 21, 2007 10:42:43 AM
Pete Wright said...
We have seen some notes about errors similar to yours MacBros. We're looking into it. Thankfully it's a small number.
Should have this identified and addressed within the hour.
Nov 21, 2007 10:50:21 AM
Peter Wright said...
Daethian: Log into payperpost.com, and click on the MyBlogs tab. Listed next to each of your blogs is a button that says Get Code. Click it and then follow the instructions.
Nov 21, 2007 10:51:36 AM
Pete Wright said...
Darlene: Yes, lower is better.
Nov 21, 2007 10:52:22 AM
wRitErsbLock said...
looking forward to seeing how this plays out
Nov 21, 2007 10:59:23 AM
happynutritionist said...
Abelle,
I purchased domain names for all my blogspot blogs, and the increase in the opportunities available to me has way more than paid for the purchase of the domain names.
IZEA!
Thanks for all your doing for us, this new system can seem intimidating depending upon where you sit in the ranks, but it will be a great motivator to keep promoting our blogs, and great for advertisers.
Claudia :-)
Nov 21, 2007 11:03:19 AM
Sarah said...
Is there a scale, or at least an idea of what the "highest" number is?
Nov 21, 2007 12:04:51 PM
Liza said...
I am really excited to see some new measurment system and want to thank the IZEA team for developping a rank that unlike Alexa or PR cannot be gamed, bought or adjusted.
Just a small Q: I see I have Rank of 398 on my highest traffic blog. Does it work like Alexa, where being Nr 1 means best, or..?
Nov 21, 2007 12:20:35 PM
Katy said...
Awesome, thank you for all the hard work to get this rolled out for us in the Marketplace!
Nov 21, 2007 12:21:42 PM
Jaz said...
I just LOVE the words "segmented out". Meaning people are LEFT OUT of things because they didn't have the sense to have high traffic on their blogs when you started this. Sigh.
At the risk of yet again being totally IGNORED like I was the other day....because no one wants to see this reality...you folks are becoming a lot like Google. At least Google only did page rank and segmented us out if they didn't like us. OH WAIT, that's what you are doing.
Frankly, I thought that izea or argus or whatever it is you want to call it was going to be better than what we had before. I am probably going to have bad fruit thrown at me for all this but I see some serious problems with what you guys are up to. I see that our privacy is going to be in question. I see that you are "segmenting us out" as you see fit. I see a whole lot of being left out because we aren't "good enough" for you. What makes that different from Google?
Maybe I see this all wrong but I am taking things from what you people say is what's coming. Just that.
How is that different from google?????
Nov 21, 2007 12:46:47 PM
Pete Wright said...
Hi Jaz,
I think the differences between us and Google with regard to RealRank are profound. Google recently decided that many of you should not have a page rank, for their own reasons. We're letting everyone have a RealRank.
Segmentation is something entirely different. Segmentation is what an advertiser uses to target a group of bloggers with an opportunity. They want a good return on their investment so they will specify when creating the opportunity that the bloggers have to have a certain rank, be in a certain part of the world and so on. There's nothing insidious there, just advertiser needs. If your blog doesn't meet an advertiser's requirements then it would be fruitless for both you and the advertiser to go ahead and take the opportunity. Segmentation and RealRank are entirely separate things. Anyone can get a RealRank. Not everyone can get every type of opportunity.
As regards privacy, there are no more privacy concerns with RealRank and SocialSpark than there are with Alexa publishing your blog's stats, MyBlogLog showing who visited your blog and so on. We also allow anyone to opt out of having information published, and the settings to manage that can be found under the Account section of PayPerPost.com currently.
Hope that answers your concerns.
Nov 21, 2007 12:54:34 PM
techie said...
Crap. I think something was wrong when I added the beta testing code for stats. I hate when that happens and now I have to wait a day until I see my rank.
Should be interesting to see.
Nov 21, 2007 1:09:05 PM
Margaret said...
I have a question about ranking updates.
When I look at my blog page after logging in, my Google pr says N/A whereas according to my Google toolbar, it's actually 0/10 -- maybe that's not significant to you, but it seems to me from what you've outlined here to be significant. Also, my Alexa rankings don't get updated like the FAQ's say they will (every 48 hours). I've sometimes waited weeks for the correct ranking to appear and by then, it's often dropped again.
I'm working VERY hard to improve my rankings and I also work VERY hard at writing quality posts on my blog. To have that hard work be ignored by IZEA is pretty discouraging.
I also believe that it's going to be really hard for someone just beginning to blog to qualify for any of the better assignments if all the assignments are ever based on is page rank.
Margaret
Nov 21, 2007 1:10:58 PM
OK said...
In my humble opinion, RealRank is great mainly for advertisers looking for blogs with the highest traffic currently. If every advertiser in this category decides to hit on these blogs only, I wouldn't envy the bloggers because of the heavy workload involved.
I feel that RealRank, ideally, should motivate all advertisers to look at the scores first before segmenting the opportunities. That way, those outside the North American zone with worldwide readership can have a better chance at grabbing opportunities - and exposing their new products to a new market, which often eludes some sales and marketing teams.
Congratulations, Izea/PPP for creating RealRank. However, there really is no need to go head-on with Google because every organization has its own way of making the Net a better place to blog in. Just my own view. cheers.
Nov 21, 2007 3:01:27 PM
Ann said...
Basically, what it seems to boil down to is this: Keep writing on your blogs. Write like crazy, or not so crazy. But write. Comment on other blogs. Join social networks. Get involved with worthy blogging causes. Say things on your blog that people respond to. Write. Write. Write.
Any ranking system will depend on how much traffic your blog has and whether or not you're writing things that people relate to and want to read.
Isn't that what we all started blogging for to begin with?
Nov 21, 2007 3:14:06 PM
TrevoratIzea said...
Hey Margaret,
N/A showing in your PR is the same as 0.
Nov 21, 2007 3:19:25 PM
AJP said...
As I see it, the main hurdle will be getting advertisers to look at more than Page Rank. Although some opps discriminate based on domain (and exclude blogspot),they aren't that prevalent and I find that I am excluded from more opps because they require a higher PR than mine. This is slightly ironic as just the very act of putting sponsored posts on your blog will cause Google to lower your page rank. Then there are the advertisers who want PR5 or better and offer $5.00. I think that the advertisers are going to need to reconsider these offers since they may find few who are willing to risk their PR for so little remuneration.
If the advertisers are encouraged to use RealRank to segment their opps, then they should also be encouraged to reconsider which domains they will exclude. There are lots of blogs on free domains that get high traffic (and incidentally, many that also have a high PR). The snobbery over domains should be the last consideration for anyone and is antiquated. Content, traffic and quality. Those things are what matter.
Nov 21, 2007 3:25:50 PM