New Pubsub daily 1000 list needs heart transplant ASAP |
Loading ...Speaking of readers leaving comments to inform me of something I might have missed/overlooked (see last post), Mark from Pubsub stopped by to leave a comment earlier today in my Feedster top 500 post (risky move, Mark) about PubSub LinkRanks news:
We just slipped out a daily version of the PubSub 1000. That is, we now calculate and publish a list of the top 1000 sites based on LinkRanks on a nightly basis. Please see http://www.pubsub.com/linkranks1000.php . btw, you can now grab the entire 1000 site list as an atom feed.In addition, we now allow the ability to order our Top100 LinkRank list based on the nightly link rank, or the rolling 15 or 30 day averages http://www.pubsub.com/linkranks.php .
Please check it out when you get a chance and let us know what you think.
Ok, I debated just answering this in the Feedster thread, but that seemed a bit cruel to steal the Feedster thread thunder (more like crickets chirping). BTW, thank you to Sheldon at Feedster who totally hooked me up on the issue discussed in that thread (see the update). I now have my ugly mug next to all Feedster results so I can scare everybody in their search engine.
Anyway, what do I think about PubSub’s new list? Oooo, you asked the magic question, Mark, but can you handle the truth? Here’s what you win: a free opinion to slice, dice or sell on eBay. It is worth exactly what you paid for it. Roll it up, use it for the morning constitutional, whatever.
First, the PubSub LinkRanks criteria: “The PubSub LinkRanks 1000 is a list of the most consistently influential sites that publish feeds, based on their average LinkRank scores over the past 30 days. To create this list, we’ve averaged the daily LinkRanks of over 16 million sources”
The current top ten are all mainstream news or tech sites (in order): nytimes, bbc, washington post, bbc (dupe), cnn, google, guardian, microsoft, apple and sfgate. Nary a blog is seen until #13 (boingboing). Blogthings.com at 15 and the dailykos at #17. I’m not sure how useful this list is and why I’d want to subscribe to this? Couldn’t I just look up the Alexa rankings? So this is a list of who the most people are linking to? Would be more useful if it filtered out major news/technology sites and allowed true blog filtering. If you are just going off who has an RSS feed, well, that isn’t terribly useful.
And please filter out the dupes. The BBC is the BBC is the BBC. Why do I need — or care — what mirror your spider couldn’t filter out?
Now onto the PubSub site stats. I’ll use MakeYouGoHmm for my commentary because I know the stats for that site and compare against how good PubSub performed. First of all, the stats shows zero posted blog entries for Tuesday? Actually according to the publish dates on the blog there were five posts yesterday: Opera goes free — banners and licensing begone!, Calacanis has Dear Abby aspirations, Google 20% project nets secure WiFi in San Francisco, Feds raise interest rate .25 to 3.25% and 4 million PayPass cards by year end, plans Mastercard.
Monday’s stats aren’t any more reliable as there were five posts on Monday and PubSub linkstats shows 7. Even if you add Sun, Mon, Tues together PubSub comes up with 9 posts for all three days when the actual amount is 12. So if it’s wrong with my stats, can/should I assume this number is bogus for other site’s linkstats?
Moving on, you show us with a linkrank on Tuesday of 3,899 which is up from 7,230 on Monday and 22,680 on Sunday. Ok, let me see if I can wrap my mind around this one. On Tuesday I have three sites linking in, so I double our linkrank over the day before when we had 2 sites link to us? The site dropped half the rank over one more link? That sounds wrong too. Let’s look at these InLinks registered on Tuesday. The 2 links shown from chris.lockergnome.net are actually from chris.pirillo.com and was made on September 14. So it took five days to reach your system and show up in the LinkStats? Go Speedracer, go! In your defense, the LinkJournal and Warner’s link (Wicked Stage) are from Sep 20th at 2:06pm and September 19 at 2:42pm respectively, so Pirillo’s blog must have been an oddity? Is that the deal?
As for outlinks? There is no point in going there because if the entries are wrong then so is the calculation for the outlinks, right? [sigh]
Being a programmer myself, I do realize there is the whole timezone thing to deal with but still … there’s just way too many issues here, Mark. Did Mr. Wyman sign off on this one? Didn’t you run my blog through the system and doublecheck before posting in the comments section here to get my feedback? I would have happily given you this feedback privately if you’d have asked privately.
Word of advice, Mark: next time at least check the LinkRank stats against the publically available data before posting your “check this out” message because I’m not going to get all giddy over something that’s so obviously broken. If I can tear this apart in ten minutes, you could have done the same thing and saved us both the exercise. And I sure as heck hope your message wasn’t a spam being run out to multiple blogs. I took an honest look and review here, Mark, and all hyperbole aside, was thoroughly disappointed in the results.
Back to the drawing board, PubSub. Go pitch your sloppy, inaccurate stats to somebody else that enjoys looking at bogus data. Reminds me of this time you were ravaged by spammers and didn’t fix it for months. Why didn’t you just take that garbage down?
Magic 8-ball says, Mark: “Looks Unlikely” that Calacanis will be going to his wallet for this one.
Related Posts- Pubsub linkranks returns
- PubSub LinkRanks ravaged and broken
- PubSub LinkRanks
- Unofficial: Feedster updates their top 500 blog list a second time
- [site news] Made the Feedster top 500 list — thank you!
- PubSub CEO snubs Hmm over “abuse and insulting” review
All have have to say is: lol. Mark is lucky that you even bothered to go through with all of detailed thoroughness. I would have stopped at the inaccurate spider and went…. you wanted me to LOOK AT THIS??? YOU WASTED MY TIME ON THIS PIECE OF…. I have to say that when I look at Talkdigger and see who’s linked to me, it definitely shows in some of the searches.
I hope PubSub reviews and takes your criticism to heart since so far… Feedster seems to be closest. Now if only they would have it dynamically update. heh.
Comment by darkmoon — September 22, 2005 @ 12:00 am PST
I wouldn’t have wasted the extra time if it wasn’t so messed up atop a “check it out” comment in a post about one of their competitors. More than a bit on the tacky side, IMO. We usually delete that type stuff in the moderation queue as spam before it ever goes public (and sometimes we’ll even email the individual who does it and ask them please to not ever do that again). Sometimes I just want to post to make a point so they will know it’s not kosher to do that around here.
Sure hope in Mark’s / Pubsub case, he wasn’t spamming. If it was then that’s a sign of desperation and could be an indicator that PubSub has much, much more serious issues than some bugs in their sitestats and linkstats program.
Then again, they never responded to the last post I made — to my knowledge anyway — about their stats being left up defaced by spammers. I would have thought they’d take that down ASAP but they didn’t.
Comment by TDavid — September 22, 2005 @ 7:06 am PST
Long, rambling manifesto full of angst and anger. Over what?? You need to get some sunlight. Quit sitting around in your underwear in the dark eating pizza and go outside. You’ll feel better.
Comment by Paul — September 22, 2005 @ 11:22 am PST
So, Paul, you are saying you like spam, I take it? I gave specific, detailed issues that were wrong, maybe you find could find value in there if you looked. But honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever posted in my underwear! LOL
Comment by TDavid — September 22, 2005 @ 11:37 am PST
Don’t lie now, T. Every blogger at some point has posted in their underwear. It’s fate.
Comment by darkmoon — September 22, 2005 @ 11:42 am PST
hehe, maybe Paul hasn’t seen my picture. I’m probably one of the few bloggers that still wears a suit and tie to the office.
Comment by TDavid — September 22, 2005 @ 12:02 pm PST
You’re a geek like the rest of us. We all know that you Photoshop’d that suit on.
Comment by darkmoon — September 22, 2005 @ 12:09 pm PST
[…] Earlier in the comments section of Scoble’s blog (which he affectionately calls the “mudpit”), Pubsub CEO Bob Wyman, informed me that he didn’t respond to the numerous issues with their PubSub features outlined here because he found it to be: “abuse” and “insulting.” […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » PubSub CEO snubs Hmm over “abuse and insulting” review — September 26, 2005 @ 10:30 pm PST
[…] - a comment that only contains a link, unless the link is to a blog entry that expands specifically on the thread and the article/blog entry links back to Hmm. This is probably best done with a trackback. - comments that say: hey check this out, or some variation, and include a link. Yes, there are exceptions where these posts can be approved as noted above. When they are from somebody who represents a competing company, such as the case that happened here, and then received the response here. - one way trackbacks. Trackbacks that come from third party sites which write about the topic generally but do not link back to Hmm. In very rare instances when we feel the content is outstanding we will approve these trackbacks, but otherwise these are deleted. - comments containing known spam keywords. There are a half-dozen or so keywords which are blacklisted from the comments area. They are keywords very common to comment spam and extremely uncommon to legitimate comments. Yes, we do realize some false positives may result here. If you left a legitimate comment and it didn’t show up as being approved, then please email that comment to tdavid at gmail dot com and we’ll add it for you manually. We aren’t trying to stop legitimate, relevant comments. Yes, even those that strongly oppose or disagree with something published at Hmm. - comments which bring nothing of value to the discussion. Yeah, this is very subjective. If you want to ANONymously tell me how much of an asshat you think I am or how stupid this blog is then use your own blog and then trackback in. We’ll be much more likely to let that type of commentary passthru then a snappy ANON one liner. Still, there are exceptions and we do let some of these type comments through. Particularly if they made us laugh. We’re suckers for good humor and biting satire. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Debating what is/isn’t spam in comments sections — September 28, 2005 @ 2:35 pm PST
[…] Spammers and sploggers eating up their index? Momentary glitch? Thing is I’ve seen this happen several times before. I wrote about how abysmal Pubsub’s stats were here. Don’t get me wrong I think Technorati is atop the pile for what they do but this is simply more evidence that you can’t put too much stock in the numbers they — or any other third party tracking service — provide. And I certainly wouldn’t base any strong opinions or doom prophecies based upon them. They do provide a somewhat useful service and can be helpful sometimes, but their accuracy is seriously in question. I feel for them trying to police against the sploggers and spammers and it’s that a main reason nobody has bought their company yet. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Technorati recent links not always recent — April 6, 2006 @ 1:10 pm PST
[…] For whatever bizarre reason, blog and RSS search has proven to be difficult for traditional and even third party search companies to do well. IceRocket showed promise, but hasn’t really caught on, Feedster and Yahoo are merely ok, Pubsub has accuracy problems, Technorati when working is the best but can be spam/splog-ridden and Google Blog search which one would expect to be the best has been lackluster. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » So blog vain, you probably think this new Ask search is about you — June 1, 2006 @ 2:04 pm PST
[…] I have some history with PubSub, namely due to an ill-advised comment placed by one of their employees and reviewing their linkstats service and finding it broken and unreliable. PubSub CEO, Bob Wyman thought my commentary was “abusive” and refused to respond, and then tried to raise the discussion as to what types of criticism companies should respond. Common sense suggests that a response to all bugs in a system should be addressed, regardless of the source. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » “Massive layoffs at PubSub … shutdown is imminent” says TechCrunch — June 7, 2006 @ 4:07 pm PST