"Exactly," Leo said. "But you can’t buy or fake PageRank. Google’s Judge is blind to your wishes. It only sees the mathematical web of trust." Leo moved to the second box. "This is Alexa Rank . It was never Google. It was a separate company (later bought by Amazon). Think of it as a pollster standing outside a mall, asking people where they shop."
"PageRank gives your site a score (roughly 0 to 10)," Leo said. "Every link from another site is a 'vote.' But not all votes are equal. A link from the BBC’s homepage (a high-PageRank site) is worth a million votes from your cousin’s Geocities page (a low-PageRank site)." «google pagerank» «alexa rank» «domain age»
A year later, Maya’s blog was the go-to resource for vintage Omega collectors. She had never bought a single link. She had simply respected the Judge (PageRank), understood the Pollster’s limits (Alexa), and leveraged the Elder (Domain Age) without relying on it. "Exactly," Leo said
Maya nodded. "So the Elder gives you a head start, but not a free pass." Maya bought an expired domain that was 8 years old— ticktocktreasures.com . It had a clean history. That was her Domain Age advantage. It only sees the mathematical web of trust
She also checked out of curiosity. It showed her traffic rising slowly—but she knew that was only measuring toolbar users. Her real audience (older collectors who don’t install browser extensions) was much larger. She ignored Alexa and focused on Google.