We are living in the age of ad technology where there are seemingly endless “solutions” for analyzing the content of the internet. Depending on the company and the goal, priorities vary and are measured in different ways.

Today we’re taking a look at some of the various ways of measuring website quality.

Google PageRank

Google PageRank Illustrated

Google PageRanks are based on the idea that good sites will link to other good sites, and those sites will link to more good sites. By posting a link to another site, a webmaster is casting a vote for the quality and relevance of that website.

PageRanks are not just a popularity contest though. Sites with high PageRanks count for more when they link to a site, while sites with a lot of links lose their credibility and count for less.

This method is particularly useful when determining relevant search results. It is the technology behind the most popular and effective search engine on the internet, after all.

Alexa Rank

Alexa Ranks focus more on the users than the webmasters. They define quality by visits and page views per visit. Alexa’s approach is based on the idea that if people are willing to spend time on a site, it must be worthwhile.

Alexa Ranks consider several traffic factors including the number of visitors to a site in proportion to worldwide page views and the number of pages on a site the average visitor views.

This method is a little more relevant for advertisers because it is based on where internet users – consumers – spend their time. Unfortunately the internet is not that simple, and this method still overlooks a lot of important information.

Trust Metrics Quality Rating

Our quality rating is a much more expansive look into what makes a good website. We look at link quality like PageRanks and traffic like Alexa, but that only tells a fraction of the story.

Our model views sites the way people do. We collect over 14,000 features to determine how a site would look and feel to a person. We look at the things that are important to advertisers, not to search engines.

Better still, we can customize our definition of quality to consider a specific brand’s needs.

Side-by-side comparisons that illustrate the differences:

Kentucky.com
PageRank:4/10 Alexa:35346 TM Rating:91/100

This newspaper’s website received a very high score from us as many news sources do. They typically have clean, well organized and therefore eye-pleasing layouts that make content and ads easy to view. The frequency of updates and professional writing also contribute to high scores on these types of sites. Based on the Alexa rank this site may not offer a lot of impressions, but that may be reflected in costs per impression, making this site a deal when trying to expand reach.

KNIXcountry.com
PageRank:3/10 Alexa:778510 TM Rating:64/100

Radio websites are typically a little crude and outdated in their implementation, but offer professional, clean content with a well-targeted audience. A lot of their traffic comes from offline sources and therefore won’t rank highly with Google, but our extensively researched media dictionary spots sites that belong to large, premium media conglomerates and scores accordingly. While this radio’s site does not warrant a high score in itself, its affiliation and listenership provides another hidden opportunity to access great ROI.

MetroLyrics.com
PageRank:7/10 Alexa:861 TM Rating:39/100

Lyrics sites vary widely in quality and professionalism. This is one of the better known and higher quality lyrics sites as shown by its high Google and Alexa ranks, but like its lower-quality counterparts has high amounts of profanity and other adult content not safe for all brands. The TM score reflects a need to do a little more research before buying space on a site like this, and ad blocking technology may need to be implemented. Sites like this are also flagged by our profanity model for further review.

yfrog.com
PageRank:7/10 Alexa:180 TM Rating:38/100

yfrog, an image hosting service for Twitter, is one of the hottest sites on the Internet thanks to Twitter’s popularity, giving it a very high Alexa rating. The problem TM ratings have with it is that it is simply an image hosting service. All of the content is user-generated images, and most of that content is shared via Twitter. Users can view everything on the yfrog domain without ever leaving the Twitter domain. This helps the Alexa rating, but from our standpoint, which we share with advertisers, this means ads served on yfrog.com may not be easily viewable.

Zamzar.com
PageRank:7/10 Alexa:7654 TM Rating:35/100

It is amazing what can be achieved through web-based tools these days. We run into online tools, calculators and translators all the time. This is one of better looking sites of this type, but does not make for the best ad environment. The high PageRank and Alexa ratings lead us to believe this site gets a good amount of traffic, but the content type makes it hard to target and attracts users that want to convert file types and move on. They are likely in the middle of a project, or looking to convert a file they are trying to open. This site reaches users when they are preoccupied with something other than ads.

WebSudoku.com
PageRank:6/10 Alexa:10420 TM Rating:13/100

Much like the last site, this sudoku site is very primitive in its site implementation. The popularity of sudoku gives this site high scores among the other rating systems, but TM’s deeper understanding reveals the reality. This is a simple, boring site with text ads. Similar to the last site, it does not reach customers during prime opportunities. Gaming sites, particularly poor ones like this, do not create good ad environments, no matter how much traffic they have.