Sootle.com Valuation
How Sootle.com Guesses at Value and What That’s Worth
You may notice a little script box on the sidebar of each page that claims to declare the value of this site. It’s a simple, curious, automated search script that considers very little, but it still makes for an interesting barometer. So let’s examine how it’s put together, what it means, and what it’s actually worth.
There aren’t too many ways to figure out the value of a web site, but there are a few. There are traffic ranking offered by Alexa, popularity measurements presented by Google’s PageRank metric, and value calculators like the one offered by Sootle.com. Each is different, and important in its own way.
What is Alexa.com?
It isn’t the ubiquitous authority it once was in measuring web popularity, but Alexa.com is still one important measurement. Alexa begs users to install a web browser tool bar to anonymously track traffic to see what’s being viewed and look for trends. It doesn’t help for smaller sites, since it only tracks the top 100,000 sites in the world, and there are now tens of millions. If your traffic shows up at all, you’re already a bit of a star. The higher your ranking, the more likely it is that it’s accurate. In terms of value, last time I checked, this site doesn’t appear in the Alexa top 100,000, so attempting to use it to measure value is about as effective as collecting a urine sample in a towel.
What’s Wrong with Alexa.com?
Alexa is a poor measurement because it only samples a very small, demographically unusual segment of web users. It only measures the highest traffic sites online, which accounts for a very small portion of all sites, and it does so with startling inconsistencies, if you know any of the real traffic stats for sites listed. Since the sampling is so small, it’s very easy to corrupt. By installing as few as 3-4 Alexa toolbars on different computers with unique IP addresses, you can get your site solidly in the top 100,000 within 1-3 months. If I wanted a site of mine to thusly appear, I would do it, but this measure of value is so limited that the hassle is just not worth it.
What is Google PageRank?
Google PageRank measures how many sites link to your web site, determines how “important” thos sites are, and then based on that, their computer model decides how important your site is. PageRank puts your site on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the best. Very few sites are 10s (even Wikipedia is only 9, and it’s in the top results for almost every search performed), and most are in the 0-4 range. Even fairly big, fairly popular sites are only ranked at 4.
Getting in the 2-3 range is pretty easy for a site with any readership and periodic updates, though I have sites that haven’t been updated since 2004 with ranks of 3-4. HeatherApts.com is ranked a 3, which is about what it should be. If you can get your rank up to 5 you’ll find any desire to sell ads remarkably easy.
What’s Wrong with Google PageRank?
Google PageRank is arguably the hardest value measurement to trick, and that’s a good thing. The only bad things about it are that it can’t find value for niche market sites, and that it has no way of knowing what your actual traffic and readership is.
If you own a site with a great, short name like AboutShanghai.com, you’ll see Google gives it a permanent lifetime rank of zero, even though it’s a very large, active, and content-rich site with an international staff of writers. Based on traffic, back links, and content, the site is more realistically worth $15,000 to $30,000, even though it has no PageRank.
Google’s PageRank gives no value to real traffic, but the more problematic shortcoming is that it can’t consider what the site may be worth to real buyers. You may have a PageRank of 4, but a site no one wants, or a PageRank of 0 while in the midst of a bidding war over control.
What is Sootle.com’s Value Calculator?
Sootle just looks at how many links you have in Yahoo’s index. I could explain it, but I’ll let them do it.
What’s Wrong with Sootle.com’s Value Calculator?
Sootle’s value measurement is imperfect because it speaks nothing to traffic, relevance or offline market value considerations. It also gives values to link-farming sites that have no real traffic or original content, just because they’ve succeeded at finding outside sites to point links to them. You can buy links like that, but it doesn’t actually make your site have real value unless you’ve got the content and web community support to back it up.
Analysis and Summary
The fact that Alexa shows no traffic is meaningless. If it showed traffic in the graph, it would be odd, since it’s a small, local site.
Google still hasn’t updated the system cache to reflect any value for HeatherwoodMillCreek.com, but it will upon its next major crawler update. When it does, it won’t be likely to exceed a PageRank of more than 2 or 3. If it hits 4, it will be pretty exciting, considering the site’s content is not designed to cater to a worldwide market, but to an extremely narrow niche in an already small suburb of a less-than-noteworthy market.
As for Sootle, the news is more interesting. The HeatherwoodMillCreek.com domain name was only registered on September 24th, 2008. As of writing this page on October 19th, 2008, just 25-days later, the Sootle.com value is already estimated at $4,111. That means it’s gaining in value at a rate of more than $160 per day, and I’m only finished with the first of four phases of the marketing campaign. Compare this with a site that has limited back links, like HeatherApts.com, and you’ll see the huge difference in perceivable value.
The point here is that I’m only a fraction of the way in to my marketing campaign, yet I’ve already created a value for the site equal to thousands of dollars, and that’s not even taking things like potential ad revenue, content, marketing opportunities or lead generation value into consideration. The content alone can best be assessed in value by looking at how much of it there is and how great of an impact it has on its intended audience.
This page last updated October 19th, 2008. Any updates will follow below.
UPDATE 10-20-2008: Aparrently the parameters guiding valuation for the Sootle.com model have changed since yesterday increasing the value of this site to $4,400, for a day-over-day value increase of more than $169 for every day since the domain was first registered… and we’re still in the first quartile of phased marketing plans.