These ranking tools are popularly used by most web practitioners to determine the popularity, relevance and value of blogs and even other websites on the internet. Ignorance of these has denied many a good blog/blogger of their rightful place of honor in the blogosphere.
The Google Page Rank (PR) is the most valued among these web tools. It is rated from 0 to 10. Zero being the least ranked. All new websites are zero ranked by Google, but as other bloggers and website begin to link to your blog or comment about what is happening on your blog with a link pointing their visitors to your blog, Google begins to rank you higher.
Technorati is like the ‘University of Fame’ for bloggers. Many used Technorati ranks to determine the popularity of any blog in the blogosphere. For example, the most popular blog – Engadget has 31,298 blogs linked to it, while the 100th most popular blog Yanko Design has 3,196 blogs linked to it. What this means is that, to be reckoned with, among the top 100 blogs in the world, you must have at least, over 3,196 blogs linked to your blog as at this moment December 2007.
Alexa is one of the most important metric tools used by many to estimate traffic popularity of a blog. Alexa has a toolbar, which is compulsory for every serious blogger who desires to make money online to download- this is the download link: ALEXA TOOLBAR DOWNLOAD.
Alexa measures the trend of visitors who also have the toolbar installed. The people who did not know about Alexa tool bar may be disadvantaged because when they visit a site or blog, their visits do not add up to the ones who visit with the Alexa tool bar.
Alexa ranks a website/blog from 1 to 15,000,000+. 1 being the most trafficked site in the world and that belongs to Yahoo! and 2, being the second most trafficked website in the world and that goes to Google, etc. etc. 10,000,000+ being the least trafficked website by Alexa yardstick.
FeedBurner is another popular tool used to determine the number of subscribers to a blog or website. The more subscribers you have the better your chances of flaunting them to make money with your blog.
All these tools would come handy and would be further discussed at application or practical levels in chapter 4.