Categories: Articles

All Links Are Not Created Equal

I must be some kind of glutton for punishment. If you publish a Blog, you may well be hopping over to Technorati to see your global ranking or to check your Authority. If you don’t, you may well be less vain than me… that’s fine, but I do gauge the success of this Six Pixels of Separation Blog on how well it ranks, how many new readers I get, and how much action takes place in the comments section beneath the post. I’m a glutton for punishment because I constantly allow myself to get frustrated by strange jumps in my Technorati ranking and the overall weirdness that is the Technorati search algorithm.

Just this morning, I noticed that David Armano from the Logic+Emotion Blog linked to me in his Blog posting about The Age of Conversation book titled, Who Killed The Marketing Funnel? Accidental Marketers, that we’re both contributing to (you can learn more about that here: The Age Of Conversation). I noticed that his link did not do anything dramatic to either my ranking in Technorati overall or my Authority. I know I’m not the first to say it, but all links are not created equal. Armano has, without question, one of the top Marketing Blogs in the world and, with all due respect to anyone else, his link love should have some kind of multiplier effect over most other links.

Shouldn’t it?

If we’re counting every link as the same equal value, where is the real value? Isn’t the whole concept of Google‘s PageRank based on weighing each link differently? I know, the science is not perfect, but there is (and must be) value in this type of analytic. If you’re reading this Blog, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to know the quality (and authority) of the people connecting here as well? Sure, the sheer volume of people linking is one indicator, but if you layer on top of that the concept of adding more weight and value to those Bloggers who have built significant reputation, I think it might open the space up and introduce more un-indoctrinated people to Blogs.

It’s a fairly simplistic thought, but something that’s been rattling around in me since the wee hours this morning.

It would be nice if "authority" had something a little bit more to it than just the sheer volume of links on any given Sunday.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.