First off I would like to mention that I’m not all that fussed with either of them, but of the two I much prefer Alexa. The main problem I have with Google‘s Page Rank is the way it seems to dominate some bloggers lives. They are so taken up with trying to improve their PR that it affects their blogging style, or worse still, ruins their blogging experience. I noticed long ago that I became a much better and happier blogger once I stopped worrying about PR.

With Alexa it’s entirely different as it’s rating is supposedly due to the amount of traffic that your blog receives. Most people assume that it’s all derived from those surfers who have the Alexa Toolbar installed on their browser. If this is the sole method Alexa uses to acquire data then I would say it was rather limiting as toolbars are only available on Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I have several blogs and so I decided to compare the Alexa Rating of the two busiest ones, this one and What A Load Of Bullshit. Of the two Wassup Blog has the better ranking 71,076 compared to 431,546, but of the two What A Load Of Bullshit gets more traffic. If this is the case why does Wassup Blog have the better ranking? Surely it can’t be because there are more people with the toolbar that visit one blog over the other?

A couple of months back I started to increase my posting frequency to see if that would increase my ranking. I figured more posts would generate more visits which would in turn increase the ranking as more visits equals more traffic. I can safely say it worked as my ranking went from 120,000 to just over 60,000. Unfortunately I was unable to keep the momentum up due to things happening in my offline life and once I slacked off I noticed my Alexa ranking starting to slowly increase.

So on these findings I could make the assumption that posting frequency increases your Alexa Ranking but I know that Mitch of I’m Just Sharing posts more frequently than I do and yet his Alexa Ranking is 115,681, and whist I don’t have access to his Google Analytic my Cool Blog Links site shows that Wassup Blog gets more traffic than he does although still not as much as my Load of Bullshit blog.

This gets me to thinking that perhaps there is another or several factors that Alexa uses in it’s algorithm? If you think about it they would be pretty silly to just rely on one factor, their Alexa Toolbar, to base the way they rank individual sites, although one can safely say that traffic has a lot to do with it.

So, I got to thinking, what is it about my site that differs so much from Mitch’s that enables me to outrank him? The answer could well be  because I have Alexa’s widget, as can be seen in my sidebar, installed on my sites where Mitch does not. This leads me to assume that the widget passes on certain information to Alexa, information that is used to help gauge a more accurate ranking.

So, although my Load Of Bullshit site get’s more traffic than Wassup Blog I update it a lot less frequently. Could it be that the Alexa widget is able to pick up when new posts are made using that as one of the many factors in it’s algorithm?

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Ever since my famous post Why I No Longer Link To The Likes Of ProBlogger And John Chow, I haven’t had all that much to do with the so called ‘A Listers’, but unfortunately I was brought face to face with one of them who, like Darth Vader, seems to have joined the dark side.

I was reading Lis Sowerbutt’s a review of Brian Clark’s Scribe SEO, and for those of you who know Lis you know she is a no nonsense blogger. She doesn’t hold back when she has an opinion and this review was no different. She was up front and told it just as she saw it.

Unfortunately Brian Clark, the author of the plugin, that you have to pay through the nose for, took umbrage at Lis’s review and rather than being diplomatic about it and discussing the issues that Lis, his customer, had with the plugin in the hope of getting them resolved, he went straight for the jugular. He ended his first comment to Lis by saying;

Also, I read your meta description of this post, and it says the opposite of your on-page conclusion regarding “scam.” I’d advise you change that, or our next conversation will be about libel.

This was in reference to her meta description, which can be read at the top of the browser, that stated ‘Scribe SEO – Review Of Scribe SEO – is it a scam?‘ Notice she didn’t say it was a scam, she was merely asking the question, and she was obviously targeting certain keywords. Anyway, I found this article listing the top 10 definitions of libel and as far as I could tell Lis’s post  doesn’t fit any of them, not by a long shot.

Brian’s left several comments in that post and the bulk of them says little for his character. But this post is not an attack at Brian at all. I wanted people to see how his reaction to a bad review has caused him more harm than good.

I’ve been involved in the retail industry for some 35 years and no matter what part I played in it, whether as a salesman or as a business owner, the one consistent thing I’ve learned is that the customer is always right. There has been many a time when I’ve known them to be 100% in the wrong but I’ve never made a point of it. I would try to point them in the right direction, but if they insisted I let them have their way. They are the customer and they’re the ones that butter my bread.

I was taught right at the beginning that if you gave a customer a good experience they may tell one or two others about it, but you give them a bad experience and they would make sure the whole world knew about it. Brian’s actions in the comment section of that post was about as bad as it could get. More than once he called Lis a liar when she did nothing but give her honest opinion.

Heaven forbid it had anything to do with the shortcomings of the plugin itself. Heck, he even went so far as to say;

SEO experts like Rae Hoffman, Michael Gray and Stephan Spencer have reviewed the Scribe technology, and they give a thumbs up. Much more credible sources than you given the topic.

as if throwing around the names of some bigwigs would lend credence to his argument. I reckon his biggest failing is that he doesn’t recognize hie own customer base. The plugin isn’t aimed at the SEO experts who know what they’re doing, it’s aimed at SEO newbies who have no idea how it works and perhaps if they failed to get the settings right it would give a false result.

I know of many occasions when, as a hi-fi TV/ Video salesman I got more than one call from an irate customer who accused my of selling them some dodgy equipment. Rather than going off the deep end I paid them a personal visit and found that the fault was because they didn’t install it properly. Rather than berate them I showed them where the problem lay and assured them it was a common mistake, even though it wasn’t, and left behind a satisfied customer. You know, most of them turned out to be repeat customers who always asked for me and being as how commissions was a big part of my salary, that was a good thing.

Another thing I’ve learned about business is that a very important factor is PR and I’m not talking about Page Rank, I’m talking about Public Relations, and while Brian may know a lot about Page Rank, his actions in that post shows he knows stuff all about Public Relations.

I would like to make one last point and that is one about public perception. I discussed this in my post Perception Is Important To Your Blogging Career! As a person who has previously had no knowledge of Brian, my judgment of his character can only be made from the way he carried himself while commenting on Lis’s post. My perception of his character may be entirely wrong but that’s all I have to go on because that’s the only side he’s shown me. I can tell you one thing and that is because of this, possibly flawed, perception of his character, I would never purchase anything from this bloke.

I would really like to see what your feelings are in regards to the way he handled himself. Am I looking at this all wrong? Am I merely taking the honorable knights actions by defending a damsel in distress?

On the other hand, if you agree with me perhaps you’d like to spread the word by tweeting the post or by using one of the other social websites below. Either way I would really like to know what your thoughts are? Read the rest of this entry

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It’s now 2010 in Aussieland and I’ve awaken to the new year to discover that the almighty Google has waved his magic wand once again and in all it’s misplaced wisdom he’s decided to downgrade some of my blogs, including this one.

WassupBlog is no longer a PR4! Nope it’s now a PR3 which makes no sense because since the last update Wassup’s popularity has increased by a sizable margin, so even though I wasn’t expecting to go up, nor did I expect to go down.

But, you know what? I don’t give a rat’s arse what PR Google decides to place on any of my blogs, because as far as I’m concerned PR is pretty well useless other than a measuring stick that is used to wave in front of advertisers to command a higher price.

Which reminds me, I’m gonna have to change my Advertise Here page. Hey guys, where are you all running off to? PR3 is still pretty good. Oh come on.

There is also another reason why I stopped caring about PR long ago, and that’s because I found it always placed pressure on me to improve my rankings. Once I worked out that pressure was cramping my blogging style I stopped worrying about PR and I’ve never looked back since. I started enjoying blogging again, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s what counts.

So, how did you guys all fare…..up, down or stayed as you were?

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I’ve been a blogger for quite some time now and I’ve read a lot of posts from other bloggers in regards to why your blog should keep the nofollow attribute in the comments section. The main one being that if you were to change your blog to a dofollow blog it would harm your Page Rank (PR).

The main reason given for this is that Google, the great instigator of PR, would only approve of relevant links and therefore all irrelevant links should have the nofollow attribute attached to it so as not to waste Google’s minions, the SpiderBots, time by following useless links.

The myth is that in order to stop people using links in comments Google would leach PR from the hosting site. This naturally scared the pants off some bloggers who immediately ran around in a mindless panic making their blogs nofollow and checking individual links in their posts to see whether or not they should also be made nofollow.

I am happy to say that I am not one of those bloggers who panicked, and my blog has remained, and will always remain, a dofollow blog. Why? Because I want to reward those who take the time to leave constructive comments on my blog.

What’s that? What of Google and my PR? Well, honestly I have always stated that PR was never really important to me, although I will try to make good use of it while I have it.

As to the myth that dofollow leaches your PR, all I can say is that I went from a PR3 to a PR4 and that either means that the myth is false or I’m such a fantastic blogger that even with all the PR juice that is leaked from this blog through my highly valued comments, I still managed to raise my Page Ranking.

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Yep, Halloween is just around the corner, and Google has chosen this hallowed time to play around with everybody’s PR. Some would have gone up, some down, and those that Google considers unsavory have probably had it stripped from them.

Personally, this blog has done fairly well as it went from PR3 to PR4. Not bad considering that I haven’t really been trying to improve on my ranking at all.

Being the last days of Halloween and all, and seeing how this post’s been mainly about Google, I put a little poem together to commemorate the occasion.

Googlebots, the terror of the Net
Striking fear into Webmasters and yet
Webmasters and bloggers, all of like mind
In using keywords for Googlebot to find

Keywords, the spider food these poor sods use
Hoping the Spiderbots will follow and not abuse
With luck they hope to obtain position number one
For anything else would certainly be no fun

They will try anything to obtain a Page Rank
From spamming bloggers and going to the bank
To pay for links on high ranking sites
But if Google found out, it would simply bite

For the venom of the Google Bomb is well known
Because if you piss Google off your PR is blown
So, how does Google know if you’ve been bad or good?
It’s those bloody Googlebots spidering the web for food

Those damn Googlebots, they have no heart or soul
They don’t give a shit if your blog falls down a hole
Do what you can to better your position
Especially if improving your PR is your ambition

Personally I don’t give a crap
I’m not falling for that trap
I’m more for enjoying my blogging
And that’s best without a Google flogging

So, I hope you enjoyed that, and perhaps you could leave a comment as to how Google has ranked your blog with this last update.

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