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[updated8/18/08 @ 8pm to v1.16.1]

About

Why?

I started this out with an idea after seeing several other sites around the web coming up with these fancy widgets and scripts that told you what your blog was worth or how many links and how high your Google Pagerank was. Well, that’s good and all but it’s very scattered and the web is more than any ONE set of those datas.

Not only was the data scattered, but some only produce a ranking based on being part of a certain group.  Technorati’s API comes to mind.  It’s good, but how deep is it?  Only as deep as their bot can crawl when in reality a site encompasses much more than that. It’s not just about Technorati or Alexa rankings. Wrap them up in total and give me something tangible that can be put to any site. In comes MiB SiteStock.

How?

I’m not a programming professional by any means, so it may have a few bugs and glitches that I hope you guys can help me hammer out as you find them.

I’ve tested it about 1000 times on Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, and have had success with Internet Explorer, but I’ve seen a few glitches, let me know if I’ve got them all figured out - another reason I’m a big Firefox fan.

Where?

I get the metrics from several sites across the web including Google, Technorati, Alexa, Yahoo, and Altavista to name some of the magic ingredients.  They all have their own bots, and their own answers, but none are THE answer.  Combining them all and weighting them accordingly has produced exactly what I’ve been looking for - a baseline that doesn’t gauge you on ONE specific metric or bot, but everything, combined.

Updates

8/8/08 @ 8pm - Updated the value to reflect a closer amount near to what the site could likely sell for based on traffic as referred and based closely to SitePoint.com - (Thanks Pinyo).

FAQ

1. Q: Does it come in other sizes?
A: Yes, the code is just a template and I based it off most blogs have 120px columns, and I defaulted the widget to 115px. It is super easy to change the size on your site though, look in the text you highlighted in the box and just change the number that says “115px;” to the size you’d like it to be!

If you want it changed and don’t know how, contact me and I can whip it up for you!

2. Q: When I run the widget I sometimes get that my site is worth 9,000,000,000 more than it should be, but I run it immediately after and it is fine, what gives?
A: I’m fairly sure it’s happening because you’re loading the page directly instead of the homepage; don’t do that, it won’t work, use the SiteStock homepage. and it only happens in Internet Explorer 6, and 7 - so far - let me know if you see it in other browsers!

3. Q: Where do you get these stats?
A: It’s all part of the secret sauce, so I can’t give that away but I’ll tell you a few of the ingredients; they’re actually very similar to how I build the Magic Quadrant. Some of the secrets include: Google PageRank, Google backlinks, Yahoo and Altavista inlinks are crucial pieces though…

4. Q: Why is my price so low if I have so many outstanding shares?
A: The magic is gauged on similar to the stock market - your share price is based on how many people are digging on you at a given time. Who likes you right now? How active have you been recently? Your outstanding shares can be high if you’ve been around for a while and established yourself on the internet. The longer you’re around the more shares you’ll rack up!

5. Q: Is it real-time statistics?
A: As real as the sky is blue! Come back tomorrow and likely you’ve changed price up or down (much like the REAL stock market).

6.  Q:  I’ve got an idea to improve it Hank!  Can I help you dig deeper?
A:  Absolutely!  Contact me with your thoughts!

7.   Q:  You said it isn’t fully tested and has some bugs, why would you release something that isn’t 100% working?
A:  Well, I only have 2 eyes and nearly 1 entire brain so I can give it as much Quality Assurance as one man can give; that’s why it is “BETA” as described above and I’m hoping you guys find things that I could fix.  As they always say, “several thousand eyes are better than 2!”

8.  Q:  Who are these Advorank.com guys that helped you build it?
A:  Some of the greatest guys I know!  They had some good answers for some of my tougher questions along the way and ultimately brought the project together.  If you have any I.T. related questions or projects, I can assure you that they’ve got someone or something that will help get it done faster or better.  I can’t say enough good things about them!

9.  Q: Could my site really sell for that much?
A:  Oh, it’s up to you.  It may not be that far off to be honest, but there really is not a definite place that determines where and for how much - this might not be a bad start to determining if you want to buy a site though…

10.  Q: Were any animals harmed in the making of this widget?
A:  I’d assume so, but not by me; I take that back, I got up and stepped on my cats tail when I was going to get a soda the other day.  He seems ok now though.

11.  Q:  I just got an error that says: Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution- What’s that mean?
A:  One of the sites I’m referencing is having issues, not the code - click submit again and I bet it goes away, if not, contact me.

12.  Q: Is there a way to have this automatically keep updated on my site like the REAL stock market?
A:  Yea, it is in the works maybe as a ‘feature’ (as it costs me money once I start reaching bandwidth limits) but I also really like having you stop by and play with the widget; it makes me feel more loved. 

13. Q: It is taking forever to load Hank; what gives?
A: I imagine it will be a little slow to start (shouldn’t be more than 5 seconds though) because it’s a novelty now, and I haven’t been able to test hundreds of people running it at once, that is part of the QA testing you’ll help me with.  If it takes super long, contact me and let me know what site and what time you cooked it up.  I’ll investigate.

14. Q: My site seems unusually high (or low); I thought I’d be higher (or lower)?
A: Once again, I’ve tried 1000 plus sites, but I don’t know all the answers yet.  The code may still need some tweaking.  If, after you’ve check other sites in your niche, you still think you’re being rated wrong, contact me and I’ll see what’s up.

15. Q: Can I do .us? .net? .cc?  subdomains?  pages within blogs?
A: Yes.  Yes.  Yes. Yes and Yes.  You can do any site or subdomain, not just blogs.  Type in anything that is a valid site or sub, it’ll give you breakdowns of it as far as links, inlinks, backlinks, etc…

16. Q: How come I get different data when I put a “www” in front of my site as opposed to just the standard ‘name’.com?
A:  Well, it depends on the sites linking to you.  If they include the “www”in their link, that’s the site that will pull up.  Most sites don’t use it, but there are still some that do.  I’ll look into combining them in the next version.

17. Q: Is this based on the real Stock Market?
A: I guess it is similar - but not based on whether your site is “public” or not. It’s based on the FORMAT of the stock market, and it is the same formula the stock market uses to calculate total value and price. As far as value of a site, yes, one of the purposes is to try to give it a value based on the metrics most sites use to value a website, but in one convenient package…

Donate

If you really like the widget and just can’t stand to get things for free (then why would you be reading this blog, right? ), I’ll still happily take donations sent to hank[at]myinvestingblog[dot]com via any of the major pay sites.

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