BuzzRank Is Here
BuzzRank is taking shape. While it is true that the factors that I’m scoring on are determined arbitrarily by me, I intend to apply these factors as fairly as I can. With that in mind, here are the things that I’m going to score on:
Readability - Factors include font, font size, text color vs background color, hover color, visited link colors. If it’s hard to read, that’s a deal breaker.. very few people will bother trying to read it or even do anything like highlight the text to read it that way. Like most people I’m a lazy reader, If I can’t read it without doing anything extra, I probably won’t bother.
Layout - Factors here are things like how easy it is to find navigation links, how easy it is (or not) to find the main article content among whatever advertisements are on page and the number of and overall use of graphics and background images as well as the ratio of advertising to content.
Loading time - if a page takes too long to load a lot of people are going to close the tab and go somewhere else. I know this because I’ve done it many times myself.
“Scrollability” - simply put, how easily or smoothly the page scrolls. I’ve seen plenty of blogs (even some of mine in the past) that have slow, jerky response to any attempt to scroll the page. This is something that will discourage people from returning and a lot of folks will consider it a deal breaker.
Writing - regardless of what you’re writing about or what your opinion on the subject is, being able to write in such a manner that allows readers to easily understand you is important. Being hard to understand is one of the fastest ways to prevent people from subscribing to your RSS feed or returning to your blog.
Each of these things will be scored on a scale from 1 to 10, the totals will be added up and a percentage calculated based on the actual score vs the maximum possible score. That percentage will be the BuzzRank Rating.
Yes, this system is very subjective because it is based on my opinions but I still expect that readers will agree that blogs with higher scores are generally better in terms of how easy they are to read, understand and navigate.
I may also refine this system as I go and if I do the changes to the system will be posted. Changes to the ranking system will not be retroactive for blogs reviewed previously, they will retain ratings based on standards in effect at the time of their review.
