So what else can we do? I think that comparing apples with pears is the really fruitless (sorry) exercise. At least within a well-defined sphere of influence – PR, copywriting, classic car maintenance, knitting – I think it’s interesting to get an idea of the state of the blogosphere given the metrics available to us. Even if it’s a very rough indication, without such information I wouldn’t know whether to approach Micropersuasion or Spudgun for an influential voice. At least subject-specific indexes help with that.

My take on it is by analogy to share prices. There are many, many dynamics underlying a price and a good trader would take them into account (which is why I’ve previously touted the idea of sentimenting systems working alongside purely number-crunching systems to augment trading performance). However, it’s commonly accepted that ‘the price’ of a share represents all those dynamics wrapped into one figure, and meaningful inferences can be made and strategies based upon that single figure. Whether a share is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends on what you want to do with it.

Likewise, whereas the PowerPR index might indicate that Micropersuasion is a big player, it also shows that there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit out there which might be more suitable for a PR person to approach for a campaign.

It could be that in a year’s time there will be something better available. Meanwhile, indexes have to use what is available. That’s why I’m trying to use as many metrics as I can so that differences between them can be accounted for. If one blog does well with Google Blog hits but not so well with Yahoo Links then at least I’ve included both. As for changing the index to ‘get it right’, well then I lose the value in comparing from month to month.

I also think the sum total of these metrics could make for interesting analysis. The recent analysis of whether PR blogging is declining is a case in point: if over a period of time it looks like the total number of hits is reducing or increasing, then at least that tells us something about the PR blogosphere.

And if it doesn’t then at least it provides an interesting debate about why not.

Unfortunately, given current models it looks like we’ll never see something in the Marketing / Advertising / PR realm that can really serve as any kind of “authority” list. Creating these things has become popular these days more because they act as linkbait for the creator’s own sites (not saying it’s your own intention, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s had that effect for you). Frankly, people are naive, and they’ll believe these things just because they don’t know any better. So it’s not like they’ll go away.

What I’d personally prefer to see is a comprehensive industry survey if we’re going to talk about things like honest reach and influence (weeding out spammed links, useless manipulated traffic, etc.). Then again, until the bulk of PR practitioners actually understand online PR, we really won’t see that in this industry.

Good luck with your own tool, and keep on tweaking it. Just keep in mind that Technorati and other tools are becoming useless in rankings due to mass manipulation of buying, selling, and trading favorites and similar tactics to artificially pump up stats and ratings. If you’re able to stay on top of those types of issues, you’ll be able to continually improve your index, and with any luck be the first to end up “getting it right.”