I have a lot of stuff to say about, or more specifically against, blog ranking systems, generally because they have been very brutal to me. PageRank, Technorati, and the notorious Alexa ranking. Even the Digg and del.icio.us bookmark counts are dismal in number. Sure, the big boys enjoy drowning in the pit of endless high rankings, but what about the bloggers whose corner of the blogosphere is seldom visited?

The blogging giants love these ranking systems, probably because love is a two-way street. On the other hand, I hate these stupid ranking systems because hate is also a two-way street. As you can guess, my PageRank is a grisly zero (I have a sneaking suspicion that my PR is a negative number, but Google’s being kind), I have no Technorati authority and Alexa doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me (rank: 11,097,997), so I have a bone or twelve to pick with these guys.

These rankings, especially the infamous Google PageRank, undermine bloggers everywhere. As you know, Google doesn’t hire enough people to personally review each and every website in its database (although they probably could) so they use scripts to “read” websites and blogs. According to what those slimy spider scripts, Google’s geeky algorithms rank your blog/site on a scale of zero to 10 (yes, there’s a zero)
, depending on how useful they—I’m sorry, the bots—think your blog is. Now, there’s only one word that can aptly describe this whole idea: stupid. Bots don’t read websites like humans do. Bots scan pages according to different parameters, but surely they read it in a different way than humans. And I can tell you for sure that upwards of 90% of bloggers out there write for humans (primarily). Bots are number two on the agenda. In addition, people all across the blogosphere are convinced that PR is overrated, that it doesn’t mean a whole lot. This guy backs up that claim.

I can’t say so much bad stuff for Technorati, Digg and del.icio.us, although Technorati, being a blog search engine, is also a jerk. I mean, come on! Technorati rank? Technorati authority? Technorati fans? Bloggers feel insecure if they’re not on your top, say, 1,000 even if they have quality and original content.

Digg, del.icio.us, and other social bookmarking websites are useful. They help us get the information we want, as suggested by other people. But from a blogger’s standpoint, it really hurts when you’ve crafted a beautiful, original and humorous blog post and no one diggs it. Talk about rubbing salt into the freaking wound.

In the end, these kinds of systems segregate blogs, and I’m not quick to praise any sort of segregation. Furthermore, computers, not humans, classify websites. Until Larry Page and gang figure out a smarter, more human-like algorithm for their searches (or until I receive PR5), I’ll stop caring about the damned numbers Technorati and Google slap in my face. Although I wouldn’t mind if you click one of those buttons below this and share it with your friends.

Stumble it! ~ This post is del.icio.us! ~ Digg this post