Back in May of 2005, I interviewed I interviewed Rand as part of an SEO Chat featured articled titled The Need for a New Gauge: Moving Beyond Visual or “Toolbar” PR Rankings. The gist of our question-answer session revolved around the need for a third-party tool that is not affiliated with Google or any of the other engines, which could be used to measure the overall rank value of a given web document.
Sort of like an alternative to toolbar PageRank values.
At the time, Rand and some of his colleagues were attempting to build just that. Exactly what factors would be factored in was still up in the air, but the idea was on the table and progress was being made.
Sadly, I’ve lost touch with Rand over the past few years, thought I have witnessed his meteoric rise to Rock Star SEO status. But ironically enough, while doing research for a separate post that I’m working on, I came across this old idea and wondered if maybe it was time to shine some light on it again.
At the time, the main purpose of such a tool was to gauge the value of a potential link exchange or paid link, but Google’s efforts to limit link exchanges and extinguish the paid link industry would force a shift in paradigm.
Still, it appears to me that such a tool is feasible and would prove to be extremely valuable to enterprising webmasters.
So Rand (or anyone else for that matter) has that project been abandoned or is it still in the works? Or is there already something out there and I’m just not aware of it?
I’m looking forward to hearing back…
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