IndexRank vying to oust Google's little green bar

For years, enterprising webmasters have attempted to build a reliable third-party gauge for measuring the strength of a specific web page. The rationale is simple. Currently, toolbar PR serves as the default gauge for the value of an inbound link from a specific web page. Sophisticated webmasters have devised more effective methods, but for the most part, the valuation of an inbound links (reciprocal, paid, or otherwise) has been PageRank.

Clearly, there should be a more effective tool for evaluating the value or “weight” of a specific web page, and coming up with that tool would render Google’s PR useless, once and for all.

Unfortunately, building an alternative to Google’s little green bar has proven to be an elusive undertaking. Currently, the best alternative that I’ve come across is the Page Strength offered up by seomoz.org. Sadly, I feel that this tool falls short of

Rand’s original vision, which he shared with me years ago, and I haven’t seen any better alternatives out there.

Until now!

As many of you already know, Michael Jensen from soloseo.com recently released his IndexRank tool, which analyzes the frequency with which Google indexes a site’s new content. While far from perfect, the tool does provide a fairly systematic way of analyzing the aforementioned “weight” of a specific web page by utilizing one of the most definitive pieces of Google data available. Furthermore, Jensen’s tool relies solely on Google index data and avoids some of the potentially useless information that the seomoz.org “Page Strength” tool relies upon (example: “Page Strength” takes factors such as Alexa ranking into account).

Again, I do see some fairly significant shortcomings that plague Jensen’s “IndexRank.” For example, it does not seem to have any reporting/exporting features, which would allow a webmaster to easily transfer the data to a separate document for further analysis.

 

Also, the tool is limited to domain queries, so you cannot gain insight into the weight of specific pages outside of the homepage.

Perhaps the most glaring shortcoming stems from the IndexRank algorithm itself. Jensen’s algorithm being used seems to favor sites that have a high ratio of newly indexed content compared to total indexed content. In laymen’s terms, established sites with an extremely high number of total indexed pages will get a lower score then sites with less total indexed pages even if they get more content indexed on a regular basis.

Here’s an example I pulled directly from the tool:

                                                                               

				Pages   Indexed
Domain	2 Weeks		1 Month	3 Months	6 Months	1 Year	Total	IndexRank
www.nfl.com	859		1430	9780	9790	9750	50500	6
www.realfootball365.com	130		246	417	581	1390	18500	9

The fact that the second site, an independent football portal that has is getting much less content indexed on a regular basis, is benefiting from the fact that it has way fewer total pages indexed.

Those were the first two shortcomings that popped into my mind, but I figured that it might be a good idea to ask the guy that turned me on to this tool – Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com - if he spotted any other potential bugs.

Here are Aaron’s thoughts on the matter. “I can see Google going out of their way to obfuscate this data, especially for site: searches...such that they make it hard to get any value out of such a specific tool.

There are lots of ways to bolt on data and add features, but the key is figuring out how to do so without straining your server beyond its limit or getting so well known that Google ends up blocking the site or obfuscating the data.”

Aaron definitely had some interesting insights on potential pitfalls, but it wouldn’t be fair to point out IndexRank’s faults without giving the creator a chance to respond. Here is an excerpt of my conversation with Michael Jenson:

Q: Do you plan on adding any reporting and/or exporting features?

A: We plan on integrating IndexRank with our other tools in SoloSEO.com, such as in our SEO statistics tracking for client domains and their competitors. We are still working on improving the algorithm, and depending on the interest from the community we would take it to the next step with exporting, widgets, etc.

Q: It seems as if IndexRank favors sites that have a small number of total indexed pages relative to the amount of pages being indexed within the last two weeks, one month, etc. Are there any plans to further refine the algorithm, so that more established sites with an extremely large number of indexed pages don’t suffer?

A: IndexRank doesn't favor sites with a low amount of indexed pages, but rather favors sites with an increasing amount of content relative to the amount indexed in previous time periods. We realize this penalizes other sites without the same momentum or growth trend as they may have had in the past (such as larger sites), but the metric is intended to show growth not size. We realize IndexRank isn't perfect, and we are working on refining and optimizing for improved accuracy. From the larger sample sets we have looked at, IndexRank appears to be an accurate indicator of site growth.

Q: Aaron Wall mentioned that Google could obfuscate the data you are currently using to power the IndexRank tool. Are you concerned about that possibility?

A: Google is known to obfuscate other data, such as their backlink reporting through the link: operator, so it wouldn't surprise us if they did. However, with this type of data being a part of their overall search features, versus the link: operator being used primarily by search marketers, it doesn't seem like it would be in Google's interest to obfuscate their indexing data. Even if they do, our advantage is that IndexRank doesn't depend on reporting exact numbers from Google, rather it uses the relative rate of content being indexed.

P.S. Thank you to both Michael and Aaron for making themselves available on such short notice to help me pull together this piece!

 

Comments

[Michael Jensen]

Hugo, thanks for the interview and write-up. A few thoughts... I never intended IndexRank to replace PageRank, so comparing it to PageRank or PageStrength doesn't make sense. It's about indexing rank, neither of which PR or PS take into account. They are different measurements and IndexRank was never meant to cover one page, but rather the entire site.

Sure its not perfect, but its a ton better than staring at your screen and not having some way to compare yourself to other sites/competitors. :)

[Hugo]

Thanks for the feedback, Michael! Although you did not intend for this tool to specifically replace Google's PageRank bar, but it does so indirectly.

Google's rate of index is a key indicator of the real "PageRank" of a domain. Therefore, your tool provides tremendous insight into the value of a link from a given domain. Obviously, this doesn't lend us direct insight into interior pages within the domain, but those values can be implied.

As a matter of fact, I've already used it to gauge the value of a link from various sites. I used to perform this manually, by simply using Google's advanced search and pulling time-related index queries, but you've automated the process!

So hats off to you. You may not have intended it, but you've given webmasters a fairly legitimate alternative to PR.

[Kay]

I tried this tool, but it was very inaccurate...it indicated 4 sites as not being indexed within the past month, when they all have been. In fact, one site has been indexed quite frequently and yet it didn't show anything for the past 3 months.

[Hugo]

Thanks for the feedback, Kay! The tool does have some bugs, but just to clarify, it doesn't check to see if a site is indexed again and again. Instead, it checks to see how much new content from a site is indexed. From your comment, it seemed like you were expecting the tool to tell you if the same content was being indexed again and again, as opposed to new content.

[boris]

I tried it and found it inaccurate as well. This is the second try... Not of much use for me.