Continued from Pinoy Blog Ranking

1. Unique Visitors/Page Views: 15%

Blog Juice measures traffic through visitors using Amazon owned measuring tool, Alexa. Without the software, the blog's visitor don't get measured. Now, how many people uses Alexa?

However, this limit is also present at almost all blog traffic measuring softwares, such as Google Analytics, Sitemeter, and Statcounter - install first before measuring. An example of this is The Truth Laid Bear Ranking which uses Sitemeter. Still, it's better than nothing.

Sometimes though, a page view is not a good indicator of a site's juice. Niche blogs with low traffic, yet high percentage of returning and targeted visitors have in my opinion, a high juice in their own specific categories. 'Tis better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a big fish in a very big ocean.

2. Blog Link Count: 45%

Link counting system such as Technocrati Cosmos, Google's Backlink, Neilsen's Buzzmetrics is not a good indicator on some blog genre, such as adults sites. The traffic from referrals are almost always low due to the secretive nature of viewing these blogs.

Then there is the issue of link fraud. Groups of people can agree at a consensus to form a network with the sole intent of ranking high on link count.

Furthermore there are blogs with a highly bookmarked and referenced single post. A factor which cannot be measured by link count. A factor which can only measured by social bookmarking web applications such as del.icio.us.

3. Subscribers: 40%

Blog juice uses the number of Bloglines subscriber to form a general opinion on the blog's returning visitors.

This is a bullet-holed metric in my opinion. What if the blog has no web feeds? What if the subscribers do not use Bloglines? Furthermore the Blog Juice Calculator, only measures one feed per blog. Many Blogs have many flavors of web feeds, such as Atom, RSS, and Feedburner, not to mention different versions such as 0.3, 1.0, 2.0, each with their corresponding number of subscribers.

What I love about the Blog Juice Calculator

As imperfect as the Blog Juice Calculator is, it at least rely on the age-old investment strategy: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Blog Juice Calculator diversify their measurements so as to minimize the risk of commiting a ranking error.

I also noticed that Blog Juice [BJ] and the Average Google Page Rank [APR] on the increments almost always goes down on each level, which goes to say that the Blog Juice is on some parts a credible general measurement tool.

Another observation of my mine, is that just like in real-life economics, wherein putting a goods into world market will almost always guarantee a bigger pool of customers than relying on domestic market alone can bring, so can a steady stream of international traffic bring a higher Blog Juice ranking.

However, Blog Juice also inherited the investment portfolio problem of where to put the emphasis in measuring. Should it lower the percentage on subscribers, emphasizing links count instead? There is no pat answer, any changes on the system will make others giddy, and will frustate others.

But such is the nature of mashups: we make the best of what's available, and we hope to goodness that a few will love it enough to improve it.