“the first site ranking service that focuses exclusively on measuring the traffic and influence of individual blogs throughout the blogosphere.”

Well, isn’t that what the available web ranking systems offer today? Why do we need RealRank? What sets RealRank from other ranking system? Read on and find out.

RealRank is NOT about estimates. RealRank bashed on some of the currently available ranking systems such as Google PageRank, Alexa, and Comscore by saying that they plan to replace these “historically unreliable influence indicators.” A bold claim.
So how would they go about this grand plan of theirs? RealRank will be dealing with real statistics and data collected and not just any form of estimation. Neat, right? And since you are dealing with real data, then the ranking they will provide will be real as well. No estimations, no guess work, just plain raw data and pitting those with other blogs. To further understand the ranking system, IZEA released the scoring algorithm they use (something that isn’t done with other ranking systems).

• 70% - daily unique visitors
• 20% - daily active inbound links
• 10% - daily page views

Great! Or is it? Well, if you’ve been reading closely, it mentioned something about “statistical data collected from the source.” The source, of course, is your blog.

Now, how do they go about the collecting business? This is where it gets a bit murky. In order to get your ranking, you have to opt in and include a tracking script in your blog. The biggest flaw here is that, you are only ranked against other blogs who have opted in. In order to say that your ranking is indeed, real, then all blogs or even majority of the blogs should opt in RealRank, which I just don’t see happening.

Also, not all the popular blogs out there have “editable” templates where you can insert the tracking script. Some popular bloggers still host at Blogger or Wordpress. Also, if a blogging network owns your blog, you have to wait until they decide to add the tracking script themselves.

Another problem with RealRank is credibility in the eyes of the “big G”. Closely associated with RealRank is PayPerPost. Now, for those of you who are still bowing down to Google, this is a bad thing. Google just doesn’t like the idea of paid or sponsored blog posts and is currently at “war” with PayPerPost. By placing the tracking script of RealRank, you might look suspicious to Google. and let’s face it - Google can pretty much do whatever they want.

The verdict? The idea behind RealRank is great. It would be, indeed, the most factually accurate ranking system out there, as it utilizes real data. However, the idea of opting in just to be ranked against other included sites can be quite a turn-off. One can’t really take into account the whole blogosphere and it’s unlikely that a majority of bloggers will opt in.

But if I’m proven wrong and a RealRank script will be inserted on practically any blog - then it just might be the next big ranking info that the private advertisers and bloggers will obsess about.