In a post from last week, I made reference to the need for a momentum metric to buffer the standard strength metric that we get in PageRank. If a PR 8 site hasn’t been updated in 9 months, and is completely blank, that should be reflected in some publicly accessible data.
My question for this post is how would a momentum metric be best accomplished, taking into account the variety of sites that exist. In the comments section of that post, Phillip gave us a start:
Maybe it could be a rating that combines the separate metrics of today, i.e. this number of percentage points is given to Alexa traffic rank, this for PR, this for the number of Technorati mentions, and so on. The question of who gets the biggest weight in the rating would surely be cause of debate.
So why don’t we hack this out in the comment section of this post. Here are the questions to consider:
1. Momentum is a measurement of relative strength over time, and as such requires that we take “snapshots” – what is an ideal frequency of snapshots? One day? One week? One month?
2. To answer question 1, it would help to know the data that we’ll be considering in measuring a site’s momentum. Afterall, why take a daily snapshot if our data is only updated once a week or once every 3 months for that matter. So what data is relevant? Backlinks? Alexa? Technorati? PageRank?
3. How much weight should each of these data points be given?
If you have some ideas on how this topic, feel free to comment, but for answering these 3 specific questions, I propose the following format:
Once a week
Alexa – 25%
Technorati – 25%
PageRank – 15%
Backlinks – 30%
Delicious Votes – 5%