As a follow-up to my earlier ‘Futurecasting Social Search’ presentation at the 2008 Search Insider Summit; in Summer 2009 I wrote an article for the Organic blog ‘ThreeMinds’ titled ‘Docs are Old School, Why We Need PageRank for People’.

The central idea was that Google’s PageRank algorithm was becoming obsolete by continuing to assign reputation to web documents/URLs at a time when the web is moving to syndication and distributed content.  The article also outlined a novel solution to the problem by assigning reputation to content authors via a system integrating Social Graph data, OpenID, and existing search ranking strategies.

Following publication I launched a campaign promoting the article through a variety of social media channels – the following case study documents results and learnings from this campaign.

The Results
The promotion campaign for the ‘PageRank for People’ article was a success. Shortly after publication on ThreeMinds the article went viral on Twitter, spreading rapidly through the search and technology communities. The article was commented and retweeted by several tech luminaries including:

• Dave Winer – Creator of RSS

• Tim O’Reilly – Founder of O’Reilly Media & originator of term “Web 2.0”

• John Battelle – Author of the book “The Search”

• Leo Laporte – Founder of TWiT.tv Network & popular tech commentator

Analysis of traffic patterns showed a clear pattern of trickle-down content distribution/syndication originating from each of these Twitter Influencers.

ThreeMinds  is one of the most highly visited blogs in the advertising agency world. Despite an already large volume of baseline traffic, the ‘PageRank for People’ article generated a huge boost in traffic to the ThreeMinds site, increasing total site traffic by more than 60% during one two-week period. The graph below shows total traffic to ThreeMinds for the last year with the two spikes on the right illustrating PRP traffic. Additional reports show the article was the #1 viewed article for the last year and one of the most popular posts ever published on ThreeMinds.

Traffic sources for the article were unusual as nearly all of the traffic for the post came direct from Social Media (85%+). ThreeMinds posts typically get a fairly even distribution between Direct, Referral, Search, & Social Media sources.

Learnings
In preparation for promoting the article, I talked with several top Twitter and Social Media experts to learn how to best increase the chances of having my post picked up.

I’m going to let you in on the Search industry’s dirty secret.
Google is slipping.

Google’s big innovation was in realizing that a link to content is the same as a vote. By tracking all the links pointing to a page of content Google assesses how influential that page is – its reputation. Google calls this ‘PageRank’ and it’s old tech.

PageRank assigns a reputation score to the URL where content is published. This makes it a great fit for content that stays put in one location. However, evolving content distribution via blogs, RSS, guest columns, and syndication are a challenge for PageRank. Micropublishing, Tweets, Retweets, ratings, and comments – even bigger problems. The solution lies in associating reputation with the identity of the author – a PageRank for People.

Reputation is Personal

At issue is how Google attributes reputation.

If marketing guru Seth Godin publishes an article on NYT.com, marketing wonks want to read it. If he publishes it instead at PodunkMarketingBlog.net, they still want to read it, because hey – it’s Seth Godin. Google would rank the article at NYT highly, but Seth’s work would be next to invisible when published at Podunk.

We assign reputation to people; experts, advisors, consultants, coaches, gurus, friends, etc. Search engines to date have relied on some proxy for this real-world reputation.

Content Lives Everywhere

In the physical world, your reputation follows you. If you’re the world’s foremost expert on AJAX, your opinion on the topic will be respected wherever you go. Imagine if the same held true online. Publish an article on an obscure web dev blog, it ranks highly, because hey – you’re an expert. Pen a guest column on “AJAX and You” for Women’s Day magazine and it ranks great, because you’re the best in your field. Post a comment on the blog of an up-and-coming developer and that post gets a boost, because one of the luminaries in the industry judged it worth weighing in on. These are just a few of the possibilities, I’m sure there are plenty more.

Mapping reputation to people instead of URLs makes PageRank portable. It’s PageRank for people.

PageRank for People

What we’re talking about here is a fundamental shift in how we track and evaluate content online. One that mirrors how we assess information in the physical world: “Who’s this guy talking? What’s he done before? Do I like him? Do people I like, like him?”

Some of the criteria the PageRank for People algorithm would look at:
• Topics of expertise
• Number of links to your posts and the reputation of those doing the linking
• Number of comments and the commenters’ reputations
• Who’s in your community (those linking, commenting, reposting your content frequently)
• Ratings, weighted by the reputation of each rater
• Where you’ve been published
• How long you’ve been online
• Maybe even semantic analysis of your content (are you a troll?)

What About Privacy?

“Ok – so we’ve got a new search engine that knows who you are and on the topics you’re an expert on. What about privacy?” The key thing here is that the search engine doesn’t need to actually know who you are, only that you’re the same identity it has been tracking across the web. The New York Times recently published an article “A Service to Prove You Are Really You” describing a new Equifax I-Card identity verification service that could provide verifiable, anonymous ID on the web. Imagine the ability to use one or more aliases online, all of which track back to an I-card capable of verifying these aliases while keeping your real identity anonymous. OpenID with modifications might also provide the necessary anonymity + verification needed to make the system work.

The Future is Social

In the physical world we’ve got couple millennia worthy of debugging invested in how we evaluate information and people in real life. Moving these same systems online will deliver huge gains in the accuracy and trustworthiness of information and will help align Search with the increasingly social aspects of the Web. As associated technologies improve, I’m sure we’ll see some of the ideas discussed here implemented in one form or another.