LinkRank FAQ
We’ve put together this FAQ on LinkRanks based on some of the feedback recieved over the past month.
Q: I publish to my blog everyday. Your calculations of the number of entries and outlinks for my blog is incorrect. What’s going on?
A: Every day, PubSub attempts to access the feed for your blog in order to count outlinks, inlinks and new entries. There are times when we can’t get to your feed due to our service “timing-out” on your server. If we can’t access your feed during a certain amount of time, a “time-out” occurs and we move on to the next feed. The next time we are able to fetch your feed, we will gather the data since the last time we read it. This is where the very large number for entries and outlinks comes in. Also, note that if a site has multiple feeds (i.e. RSS + Atom + RDF) we sometimes double count articles. We’re working on methods to reduce such overlap.
Q: Does this affect my LinkRank?
A: No. Linkrank is not based on the content that you post, but the number and quality of the inlinks that you get.
Q: So-and-so linked to me, but it didn’t show up on my LinkRank. Why?
A: The most likely reason for us not picking up an inlink is that the linking blog doesn’t have a feed or that the feed contains “summarized” entries. PubSub only reads the feed of the site.
Q: Why does it take so long for my new blog to get a LinkRank?
A: This is best addressed in conjunction with the FAQ on the submission page. It may take a few days for your blog to get a LinkRank. Using the same criteria as when your site is “live”, you will get a LinkRank the first time your blog gets linked to. This, of course, could take a few days once your content gets into the blogosphere and people locate and link to your blog.
Q: How is my LinkRank calculated?
A: If we told you, we’d have to kill you. Actually, we don’t provide the algorithm for LinkRanks for obvious reasons. If we disclose the details of our algorithm, spammers and sploggers would game the system. In order to provide you with the best possible “game-free” rankings, we don’t fully document the calculations. We regret very much that this is necessary.
Q: Why does my LinkRank fluctuate so much?
A: Your daily LinkRank fluctuates widely as it is inevitable, unless you have a very popular blog, that the number and quality of inlinks to your blog fluctuates on a daily basis. To get a more “stable” view of your LinkRank, take a look at the 15, 30, and 60 day average LinkRanks that we provide. Since these LinkRanks are calculated over a longer period of time, they fluctuate much less than the daily numbers.
Q: What does LinkRanks have to do with Community Lists?
A: We provide the LinkRank for every blog (if it has one) in our Community Lists, however, it is important to understand that blogs are put on the list as the result of a decision by the list editor that the blog is particularly worthy of attention. While the position of a blog on a particular Community List is determined by LinkRank, the decision of whether or not the blog is listed is determined by human editors, not by machines.