Power 150 Adds Alexa Metric
In response to your constructive feedback, the Power 150 ranking of marketing and media blogs is evolving yet again with the addition of an Alexa traffic metric. The Ad Age Power 150 team and I have been discussing and testing improvements for the last few months and this morning the Alexa addition was rolled out.
Many have argued that Alexa constitutes a stronger measurement of popularity than Google, Technorati and Bloglines combined. Sure that can be debated, but five distinct factors now being weighed in the total score unquestionably makes the list a more comprehensive and well-balanced measurement tool.
To all the Bloglines haters out there, we can’t eliminate Bloglines yet because there are no alternatives. Google Reader doesn’t offer an open API yet (Hello Google?!), which is necessary since the Power 150 is fully automated and receives its data directly from the source (i.e., Google, Technorati, Alexa, Bloglines). And while Feedburner does offer an open API, it is a voluntary system that only reports member data… and not every blogger is a member.
So, to ease the Bloglines burden, we’ve scaled its weight on the overall score back a bit. Here are the new scales:
// Google Page Rank: 1 to 10
// Todd And Points: 1 to 15
// Bloglines Subscribers: 1 to 15
// Alexa Traffic Rank: 1 to 30
// Technorati Ranking: 1 to 30
The sum is a nice round 100 possible points and probably a pretty accurate reflection of the marketing and media blog market. We know that each metric isn’t perfect, but we feel we’re working with the best the web has to offer (an automated system that updates daily) at the moment.
As always, please feel free to share your feedback and suggestions. The Ad Age team and I are constantly looking for ways to enhance the list and make it an even stronger tool.
