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AdAge Power 150 fails

Could it be that as much as 1 in 5 sites listed in AdAge Power 150 should not be there?

It’s fairly accepted in the industry that AdAge’s Power 150 listing of marketing blogs is more than broken, as its failed to deliver any value to those using it to evaluate a blog.  I’m not saying that a number of the sites listed are not quality but it seems that it’s another platform that sells its transparency on scoring the marketing blogs listed is falling fast.  I’ve admit that I’ve applied several times to have this blog admitted to the Power 150 listing which list 1,120 blogs/sites but not this blog so there is no ramifications of writing this article such as being removed from their list. While this blog continues to grow the score has actually dropped from a 19/150 in June 2009 to 7/150 in November 2009, so that would seem to point out that their measurements used to gauge what blogs should be included is screwed, you are punished for having more readers and a bigger audience?

Is AdAge Power 150 a paid inclusion directory?

The reminder to write this post came from a Tweet from David Naylor who today asked “is Adage Power 150 a paid inclusion thing?”

This reminded me to explore the 1,120 Power 150 blog listings to see if there was some validity to his tweet, the part required me to check what was the quality of listings, as I’ve found a number of listings that are not of any quality or relevance to marketing blogs but are still listed.  A number of the sites listed do not appear to have any relevance to marketing and seem more of a place to secure quality back links, it’s not clear if any of them are paid at this stage, anyone care to own up?

AdAge updates daily?

Adage advise that every morning their server goes out and grabs fresh scores from all their ranking sources, so you would assume that would mean all listed sites still exist? Based on the checks 3.4% of the blogs listed by AdAge are made up of canceled, dead sites or 404 errors, that doesn’t really help build much trust in the fresh nature of their listings. This does not include where the site had moved away from its wordpress/typepad to a hosted domain or where the AdAge link had part of the URL incorrect, if these were included the figures would be 3-4 times higher, not showing great quality control in their listings.

AdAge Power 150 Dead Links

A common occurrence I found was than a number of sites had multiple listings or used domain redirects to low quality content scrapping sites filled with advertising, Google Adsense and affiliate links, this would point again to something is wrong with their listing procedure if they are keeping these sites listed. I can understand if there is money to be made by keeping the broken links, affiliate and Google Adsense domains listed in the AdAge Power 150 but until they fix that I don’t have any trust in their listing metrics. You need to challenge platforms like AdAge Power 150 that look more like a way to build back links than actually be a valid and reputable blog ranking metric, just because they have a number of metrics doesn’t mean they don’t override them to get certain sites listed.
What is the quality of AdAge Power 150
Starting at the bottom of the list I manually reviewed 28.5% of the AdAge Power 150 blogs as these would be the ones more likely to be problematic, and if you wanted to work with a limited statistical view you could assume a multiplication factor of 1-2 if I was to check every blog listed. So the actual figures are likely to be much higher than shown below which could up to 1 in 5 sites listed should not be included if AdAge was serious about quality.
  • Outdated Listings 6.16%
  • Not Blog/Article Site 1.70%
  • Adsense Domain 0.71%
  • Malware 0.18%

What is an outdated listing? A few had a single post or two earlier in 2010, but a large number of these had no posts since 2009,2008,2007…. how can they still be relevant if no posts in over 3 years?

What is not a Blog/Article site? These sites have no blog or article part to them and are just for sales pitches, lead generation or

What is a Adsense domain? These are sites like seo projects where they serve no purpose or contain any content but ads, these surely can’t be a valid marketing source

What is malware? Not something that AdAge Power 150 should be linking to….

This blog post is not targeting poor quality of some of the many sites listed in its 1,120 blogs it is focusing on the very low quality sites listed that prevent other relevant sites from ever being listed, so feel free to have a look through the AdAge Power 150 list and see what interesting sites you can discover…

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4 Replies to “AdAge Power 150 fails”

  • Hey David,

    I don’t participate in the AdAge Power 150, but it’s not paid. From what I understand, some of the bad sites might be related to three things: 1. The site was originally open (meaning anyone could get on). 2. The site isn’t vetted enough (once you are on, you are on even if your blog lapses). 3. A change in the criteria, which required new entries to meet a measure that the original blogs do not have to adhere too.

    Good piece though. It shows how AdAge has let what used to be a decent list become something less than (not discounting some of the quality sites that are listed).

    Best,
    Rich

    • Hello Rich,

      Thanks for the comment and yes I wish I had more time to run through all the sites listed but 1 in 3 still is a good amount and yes there are amazing sites but it almost needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

      David

  • David,

    I hope not. I was hoping to compare its listings vs. the experiment we’ve been running that considers the quality of the content as opposed to the popularity of the person. I need at least six more months.

    Best,
    Rich

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