Friends, Romans, countrymen, followers, page views, in-bound links, share of voice, unique visitors and subscribers. These are just some of the more common ways serious content creators (and those who hope to reach them) measure online influence. However there are big flaws in all of these metrics.
Followers and/or RSS subscribers are nice to count. But given the Attention Crash, it's a good bet that many of these people aren't as engaged with your content as you might hope. For example, I follow several hundred people on Friendfeed but I only see a fraction of their stuff because I don't have time to actively read or even scan.
Unique visitors and page views - which I said was dying back in 2006 and is dead as far as I am concerned - are also largely empty numbers. Lots of people visit my blog. However, many of them arrive via Google, the web's version of Ellis Island. And then they're gone.
After thinking about this a lot I have reached the conclusion that Google Page Rank is the ultimate way to measure online influence. It's far from perfect. However, several other metric candidates I addressed in February 2007 haven't panned out. There are three reasons why Google Page Rank rules.
1) Page Rank is something you earn by producing high quality content that people link to - or what John Bell describes as socially connected
2) It enables you to influence people on the Internet's biggest stage - Google - and just as people are searching for the topics you are knowledgeable about. This means it amplifies your influence because the press start at search engines when researching stories
3) Finally, Page Rank is channel agnostic and takes the entire online ecosystem into account. It judges you based on links from all kinds of sources, not just people who live in the same fish tank. In other words, it goes beyond people who hang out on Twitter who love people who Tweet or bloggers who link to other bloggers, etc. It eschews the echo chamber
PageRank takes time to earn. There are no shortcuts. Google is democratic and rewards professionals and amateurs equally if they do their job well. Create high quality content that earns links from other quality sources and, over time, your Google Page Rank grows as does your influence and responsibility.
(Yes, I did say responsibility. My blog has a Page Rank of 7. If I were to actively blog about Edelman's clients, it could alter Google results and thus their reputation. That wouldn't be ethical now would it?)
Many bloggers monitor their Google Page Rank. The AdAge Power 150 and the Healthcare 100 lists allow you to sort bloggers this way. But Page Rank influence is not limited to blogs.
Did you know that individual identities on social networks like Friendfeed and Twitter have Page Ranks that are independent of the main site itself? Its; true. Someone new on Twitter has a Page Rank of zero. While those who have been on the site longer have a higher rank. The same goes for Friendfeed where I have a Page Rank of 4 but Robert Scoble has a 6.
It would be interesting to take lists like the Twitterholic 100 or the FFHolic 100, both of which rank influencers based on followers, and run them through a Page Rank checker. While followers and Page Rank are probably linked I wonder if some interesting anomalies might pop up in the process. (If you want to check the Page Rank for any site you can use this bookmarket. However, note that results can vary based on the tool you use to check.)
Until someone comes up with a better metric, Page Rank to me is the ultimate measure of online influence. Do you agree?
