A PageRank layman recently asked me how Google decides what site gets what ranking. Rather than bore him with technical tidbits from last decade's abstract, I thought I could better express the concept through a medium we can all appreciate: celebrities.
The metaphor is a simple one: PageRank is all about the quantity and quality of inbound links, right? Well, the value of a celebrity is often defined by the quantity and quality of people interested in that individual. As you read on, understand that when we talk about people "linking" to celebrities, we're talking about fans trampling other fans to get a candid photo, or people constantly asking them for money or trying to book them on their crappy talkshow... the more interest the celeb generates, the higher their PageRank equivalent. If you have a beef with the selections, or want to fill in the gaps, you know what to do.

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There's no argument here – The Pope is a PR10. He doesn't report the news, he makes it. He doesn't ask for favors, he pardons sinners. He doesn't express his linkage to any particular individual or company, and yet the most powerful people in the world would be happy to kneel in front of him at a moment's notice. Nearly every human being on this planet loves him, respects him, or has some sort of agenda against him. In some form, he's been around for centuries, and he's been the authority on one of the world's most prominent religions for that entire period. There is no one else like him... he's the friggin' Pope.

Jay-Z is a PR8 because of two words: persistence and transcendence. He's been in the public eye for nearly 20 years, and has been grinding his way to the top the entire time. Starting from nothing and slowly building natural public attention and linkage over two decades is pretty much Google gold, and anyone as persistent as Jay-Z is will see similar results. But it's not just hard work that gets him to a PR8… it's the fact that he has moved beyond the bounds of music, developing linkage in other arenas. Just think of all the subdomains Jay-Z has: there's Jay-Z/clothing, Jay-Z/record label, Jay-Z/vodka, Jay-Z/sports team owner, Jay-Z/Beyonce... the list goes on, and each subdomain carries with it another huge chunk of link juice (some of which, like the sports team owner aspect and Beyonce aspect, involve other high-profile people whose linkage to Jay-Z is highly respected by Google – after all, if millions of people are linking to Beyonce, and Beyonce is linked to Jay-Z, then surely some portion of Beyonce's linkers have an interest in Jay-Z as well).

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Anne Hathaway makes for a great PR5. She's got a lot of appeal and her name is very well-known nowadays, but most of her fan base consists of teeny bopper nobodies and disgusting old men like me. Both of those stereotypical "linkers" are the types to latch onto any passing fancy on the web that amuses them at the time, which means their linkage to Miss Hathaway doesn't impress Google all that much. A lot of people love her... just no one who matters. P.S.: Anne, if you're reading this, I didn't mean all those things. You'll always be a 10 in my book. Also, Anne, if you're reading this, please please please go out with me. Give me just one chance, and if it's not the most fun date you've ever been on, just let me know and I promise I'll untie you.

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I worked out a $20 discount with WordZe for SEOMoz readers. This is reduced from the normal price of $45. It only lasts two days, so take advantage of it quickly before the price goes up.drow last names
Just to refresh your memory, if you're wondering what WordZe is, it's a new keyword research tool. The benefits of this tool over others is:
1. It's less expensive.
2. Patented WordRank Technology to let you know how many links you need for your site to rank.
3. Dig down on keywords more deeply than any other tool out there.
4. Daily, weekly, and monthly top keywords.
5. Historical keyword counts. drow last names
Now, the last time I posted about this I got a lot of flack about their data sources. Yes, I do happen to know what data sources WordZe has. However, it's competitive information and Levi has asked me not to disclose it.
I have been actively using this system and in various forums I've been reading various reviews. So far everything has been positive, with people saying they are either making or saving money with this tool.
Your mileage of course might vary, but I think it's worth your time to check it out.
Incidentally, I did a Keyword Tool Roundup that you might find interesting.
G-Man
P.S. The link for wordze is just a discount code link. It's not an affiliate link, and other than being a user I have no benefit from providing the link

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I've spent this week putting the finishing touches on our keyword research guide (which will most likely be available--both to purchase and for Premium Members--on Monday). This afternoon I had the pleasure of speaking with Bill Tancer from Hitwise. Bill took me on a walkthrough of Hitwise's Competitive Intelligence tools, which he referred to as their "flagship tool" (we're featuring their Keyword Intelligence tool, which Bill said was more like their "entry level tool," in our keyword research guide).
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I don't know if it's because I've been living and breathing keyword research tools for the past month, but Bill's tour of Hitwise's features was the most interesting walkthrough I've been on for a product demo. (Okay Bill, I said it--where's my puppy?)

Anyway, Hitwise offers a lot of pretty compelling data. You can generate various reports on a website, an industry, or a search term. In this example, I entered www.amazon.com and then changed the drop-down menu to "search terms" to see which keywords/phrases have brought searches onto their site:

Amazon's search term referrers ending 2/24/07

Clicking on one of these terms (e.g. "books" then shows a detailed analysis of that term for the four weeks ending 2/24/07, including the top ten websites that received the most traffic from the search "books," the most popular search terms containing "books," the search engine share for that query, and the industry traffic share:

Hitwise search term analysis for the term "books"


You can also compare search terms, Google Trends-style, on a chart to see their relative popularity. Here, I compared "prom dresses" (which Bill confessed to having an unnatural obsession with [from a purely search-related perspective, of course...at least I hope so]) to "wedding dresses" over the past month and a half:

Eat taffeta, wedding dresses!

This is all Bill was able to show me, and I didn't get a chance to play around with Hitwise much more than that (stupid Rand and his stupid "tasks". There's a load of other stuff to check out, such as Search Term Suggestions, Search Term Analysis, and Search Term Gap Analysis, Find Websites by Keyword, Domain Name, or Demographic Composition, and there are plenty of charts to drool over. It would be extremely easy (and dangerous) to get addicted to playing with Hitwise for virtually any sort of competitive analysis comparison.
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Now for the cons...as Rand griped, Hitwise doesn't report any hard data--everything is available for a relative comparison. There is no "such and such term had X number of searches, compared to so and so term, which had Y number of searches." This frustrates my Yellow Shoe'd Employer because he knows Hitwise has the data available, so why no sharesies?

A second drawback to Hitwise is that (I'll channel my inner Dave Naylor here) it's fookin' expensive, yeah! Though there's no price listed on their site (they instead ask that you contact them to purchase a package), Rand told me that a year's membership costs around a hefty $20k. That's a lot of money to shell out for no hard data, right?

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