How Do Your Posts Rank?

Posted by Sharon Hurley Hall on June 21st, 2009

This post has been submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write Online.com.

Post Rank is another tool for filtering internet content. Specifically, it uses RSS feeds to rank posts on the blogs you read to determine which ones are the best. The site explains how it works:

PostRank scoring is based on analysis of the “5 Cs” of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting, and clicking. By collecting interaction metrics in these categories the overall engagement score is calculated and the PostRank value is determined.

In addition to that PostRank looks at views, clicks, comments and trackbacks as well as mentions on Friendfeed, Digg, Twitter, Delicious and other social sites.

Getting Started

Signup is quick, especially since you can use your Google, Yahoo or other OpenID credentials. Set up your profile, import your existing subscribptions by using OPML or add them manually. Organise them into topics and let PostRank work its magic.

And it IS magic. I tried it out with my list of blogs about blogging. Clicking on the category gave me a ranked list of the blogs, and then clicking on more details showed my PostRank’s view of the best posts of the week. The rank number appears in orange next to the post title, with 10 being hot and 1 being … not. On one of the blogs I read regularly, the site’s view of the best posts included some of the ones I rated highly; on other sites there were posts I had missed.

Other Features

I found that this provided an easy way to filter my RSS subscriptions, which are constantly getting out of hand. When you look at a category, PostRank also provides links to related categories so you can check out feeds that might be of interest. I learned a good lesson here: categorizing my own feed as ‘freelance’ rather than ‘freelancing’ meant that it wasn’t included among the freelance writing blogs I follow. As with web pages, choosing the right keywords is essential.

One of the things that PostRank suggests is that you paste a feed URL into the PostRank window, filter it with the keywords you want and subscribe to the customized feed. This is yet another way of ensuring that you only see the content you need to see. PostRank actually has a bewildering array of features and one of my niggles is that it’s sometimes difficult to find the section you want. When I wanted to change the topic for my feed, it took a couple of minutes to figure out where to go.

The Verdict

I’ve been using PostRank for a while and I like it. Though it will take me a while to get to grips with all the possibilities, I think it’s worth sticking with. I’m also intrigued by the Feed Analytics service they plan to roll out soon. With Feedburner being flaky, that could be a real winner.

Sharon Hurley Hall
Get Paid To Write Online.com

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2 Responses to “How Do Your Posts Rank?”

Melanie Baker Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hi Sharon,

Thanks for the overview!

You’ll be happy to know we’re actually working on a site update now, which should help address some of the navigation issues and organize the features in a clearer fashion.

And, of course, you’re welcome to give me a holler any time with questions.
Sharon Hurley Hall Says:
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:58 am
That’s good to know, Melanie. I’ve been using this for a while, even in its AideRSS configuration, and I’m impressed by the way you have constantly improved it. I’ll be looking out for those updates.