Chaim Goodman-Strauss
mathfactor.uark.edu

This is not correct.

The pageviews (represented by the eyes on a PostRank score of a post) are the number of times your post has been viewed. If you add a PostRank widget to your blog PostRank is able to monitor the number of views of your posts similar to how Google Analytics monitors visits to your posts. But if you don’t have a PostRank widget on your blog it can’t monitor this statistic.

Difference between Google Analytics and PostRank is Google Analytics is only ranking your posts on visits to your site whereas PostRank includes lots of statistics to determine how it ranks your post.

If you want to read more about the discussion of how PostRank is ranking posts and comparing blogs based on topics I suggests you check out the comments on my post here. Thanks to both Melanie and Jim for taking the time to explain so that we all get a better understanding of their metrics.

I also should add the following. Take for example my post on The Edublogger “Check Out This Two Page Blog Guide For Parents!”

This post has a current score of rank of 2.2 and most of the engagement making up that is 16 Delicious counts. But if you looks at Google Analytics the post has 726 pageviews for the month and ranks 7 in Analytics for the month.

Technically speaking, having the view stats in the ranking, is probably giving the post a more balanced metric.

So where am I at with adding PostRank widgets to my sidebar? Maybe — thinking about it.

If I can be given enough really good reasons of the benefits, of how PostRank widgets on student and class blogs will help them, then yes I will add them. Educators would love your thoughts on this — how might students be using this?

You have an amazing application that could be helping both bloggers and their readers. Yet because of the pageviews statistics it isn’t achieving its true potential.

As I said before (in my email) I like the concept of my readers having a quick mechanism that allows them to work out what of my posts are the “most popular”. But there is absolutely no way I will add your PostRank widget to my blogs when I know that the pageviews are flawing the metrics to the extent they are.

However PostRank remove this metric as part of their ranking system and I will proudly display your widgets on my blogs.

Now I know that making that statement you are probably thinking this is one blogger and it doesn’t really matter whether she does or doesn’t add it to her blog.

Normally I wouldn’t point this out, but sometimes it is important to make people aware since you probably aren’t. The Edublogger, is a blog that I author for Edublogs. Edublogs hosts over 300,000 blogs just on Edublogs plus lots of blogs on Edublogs Campus sites (we host a large number of Campus sites). This blog feed automatically feeds into every dashboard on our site. It has high readership, and site visits, by our users, educators and bloggers.

My role with Edublogs is to support educators in the use of technology especially with using blogs with their students. I strongly support and explain to our readers any technology that is beneficial for them or their students or helps them be better bloggers.

FYI – For those reading wondering what the pageviews are that we are discussing.

Pageviews are the metric that is displayed as an eye in your statistics on PostRank. They are calculated by the number of times a reader clicks on the title of a post in the PostRank widget.

Ilya (our founder and CTO) and I were discussing this, too, and we do understand where you’re coming from. Really, it’s a matter of managing/balancing edge cases as best we can.

We don’t want to make PostRank useless for the demographic that only has pageviews as a metric. And, as you’ve pointed out, that demographic includes both blogs that’re part of a community as well as completely obscure ones.

Yes, installing our widget will create a slight bias. It’s an extra metric to drive engagement analysis that not everyone chooses to have. However, again, most publishers can choose to install it if they want. In reality, though, pretty much any system will have demographics for whom their analysis is more favorable. We try to balance it as best we can, as does everyone else, but nothing’s perfect.

Ilya also let me know that we’ve recently updated and re-balanced our metrics and weighting, and views importance has actually been decreased. So while it’s not removing it as a metric entirely, it is a step in the direction you wanted.

Sure they give an indication of how many readers are following those links, and that is nice, but why include when it impacts the metric to this extent?

As a side note, there’s a system issue at the moment that we’re working on fixing, which is why Larry’s blog (and others) are behind in showing new posts and some metrics. I see there are some comments and whatnot there, which will have an effect on his scores when they’re processed.

And certainly, if what you’re reporting is that you, Larry, or any other bloggers do have other metrics that aren’t showing up — bookmarks, diggs, tweets, etc. — please let me know which blogs so we can investigate and get that fixed. That I can do something about; differences of opinion re. what “best” is I can’t.

Re. Naturally people visiting Larry’s blog are going to click on a post on the list — which then pushes it up the ranking because they are now assuming that it is a top post. When in reality it is only a top post based on people clicking on the link in your widget.

This isn’t quite correct. Posts appear in the widget because they already have the highest engagement. There’s an explanation of how top posts in the widget get there here: http://blog.postrank.com/2009/01/07/postranks-website-vs-widget/

So it’s a bit of a “success breeds success” situation — a post resonated with readers, so they engaged with it, which gave it a high PostRank score, which means it ends up showcased in the widget, which makes people more likely to click on it, read it, and further engage with it. For those who already follow a blog, there’s potentially less value there, since they’re already going to be quite familiar with that blogger’s content. For new readers, however, it is a good first glance overview of the blogger’s content, style, and quality.

I must say I love it that the edublogging folks are such an engaged, active, and analytical community.

First of all, I would like to thank Larry for his post. I found it very thought provoking, and I think that Larry’s aim is praiseworthy. Secondly, I would like to thank Sue Waters for bringing this post to my attention.

Now for the cynical bit …

My primary interest (as an educator) is to provide my students who are interested in Web 2.0 with the resources that they will find most useful to them. Larry’s post is invaluable to me in this matter: I can use it to help my students select the resources that they wish to use.

Broadening this point slightly, there is a wide range of Web 2.0 technologies already in existence, and this range is growing rapidly as each organisation attempts to out-compete everybody else. (This idea is also known as having the “killer application”, one that is so far ahead of the competition that the competition withers and “dies”. Google as a search engine is an example of this.) Without digging into the methods used to derive the statistics used in establishing “the top 5″ (and that applies just as much to blogs as it does to the popularity of certain types of cars), I would presume that the statistics are both unbiased and reasonable. (An unreasonable statistic would be “This airline has never had an accident” without you being informed that it has never flown.) Furthermore, given the rapidly changing scene in Web 2.0, a perfectly valid “top 5″ at the start of a semester could be hopelessly out of date by the end of the semester. I cite the meteoric rise of Twitter as a case in point.

In summary, statistics about popularity may be of interest to many, but I need to work with a wider remit if I am to provide my students with the best possible learning experience.

1. Comments
2. Bookmarked (Delicious, diigo etc)
3. Twittered
4. Linked to

While the numbers it provides isn’t totally correct it is adequate to work out which posts have achieved your desired outcome.

But I disagree with “Having a lot of “eyes” will not automatically get you a 10 ranking” If you go to Larry’s top posts on PostRank and hover each of his rankings on posts almost all of his 10 ranking posts only have the eyes on them (and that is the same for most of the Edubloggers who are using your widget).

Now the eyes represent the clicking of titles of posts in your PostRank widget on a blog side bar. Naturally people visiting Larry’s blog are going to click on a post on the list — which then pushes it up the ranking because they are now assuming that it is a top post. When in reality it is only a top post based on people clicking on the link in your widget.

I’m sure most bloggers definition would totally disagree that a post that is all clicks on links on your widget is a top post and worthy of a 10. Trouble is they don’t realise that is what is happening because they are just looking at 10 and saying WOW my post is doing well.

I think most edublogger would be outraged (maybe I’m wrong) if they analysed their high ranking posts and realised almost 100 % of their top 10 posts are made up of those lovely eyes.

What they need to be doing it saying great my post is a 10, that 10 is only ranked against posts on my own blog and now lets look at what 10 is made of. How much of that 10 is bookmarking, how many is comments, how many are links and to a lesser extent how many are tweets. Then consider how those value compare to what outcome you wanted.

Then if they want to compare their post with another blogger they need to go that persons ranking and hover over their numbers to see counts.

Metrics like bookmarks, links and comments are all good measures of reader engagement. They tell a blogger they are or aren’t achieving their desired outcome. If those are high then sure you are doing well with reader engagement.

But eye clicks on a PostRank widget show nothing in terms of reader engagement except that your readers are going deeper into blog posts. That metric is good for PostRank and helpful for bloggers who want to ensure their blog is high on your PostRanking system.