The ParentPower index uses a ranking system based on freely available sources of data, none of which is a perfect on its own, but when taken together do a fairly good job of showing trends. None of our measures are subjective, which we believe is important to ensure a fair ranking process.

Ranking System

Technorati Rank
A number that shows where a blog falls relative to all other blogs based on the number of sources that point to a particular site.

Technorati Inbound Blog Links
The total number of unique blogs that link to a site.

Bloglines Subscriptions
Used a measure of the overall trend of subscriptions for a particular blog. Bloglines is the only online feedreader with an open API

Alexa Rank
Shows the trend of traffic for Websites based on sampling from its Internet panel - people who have installed its toolbar.

Google Pagerank
A number between 1 and 10 that determines the importance of a Website based on inbound links, content and other factors in Google’s proprietary.

Yahoo Inbound Links
The total number of links into a blog from all sources (Art Note: Add the graphics that denote each measure, as in index)

Percentile Positioning
We also chose to use a percentile system vs. an arbitrary tiered system. Each blog was compared for each ranking score, based on a percentile scale. The index shows where each blog falls.

Example of how a blog’s rank is calculated:
Blog #1 Technorati = 98, Google = 50, Bloglines = 75
Blog #2 Technorati = 48, Google = 20, Bloglines = 80

The score for Blog #1 would be the average of the percentiles: 74, for Blog #2 it would be 49 and so on.

Some blogs may have the same percentile rank and are shown in the Index with the same numerical rank. This means they share the same ranking in the Index. We do not use subjective criteria to break ties or elevate one blog over another.

We would like to credit Todd Andrlik for developing what is now the AdAge Power 150 of marketing bloggers, the index upon which this ours is inspired.

If you have any questions about the Index, please email us at: myvoice@parentpowerindex.com.