DateRank: PageRank for singles

DateRank: noun. An authoritative gauge of the guy/girl sitting in front of you that’s far more accurate than your hopes or pre-conceptions.

In the uncertain world of dating in the city, where you often know very little of your date’s background, people find it reassuring to meet friends of the person they’re dating. First of all, phew, your date has friends! Second, it’s truly affirming if your date’s friends are people you could imagine being friends with as well. It’s like hoping that they have quality inbound links.

Last week as Vanessa and I made our way home from the Beauty Bar, she coined this concept as DateRank™. While perhaps dehumanizing and unromantic, the parallels between DateRank and PageRank remain numerous.

 

DateRank PageRank
“He has really cool friends.” Quality inbound links
“His friends… let’s just say they’re questionable.” Links to bad neighborhood
“Eh, we’re friends, but I don’t know her that well.” rel=”nofollow”

 

Other dating signals Other ranking signals
Name-dropping Keyword stuffing
Repetitive/monotonous Duplicate content
Looking for a meal ticket Made for Adsense

10 Replies to “DateRank: PageRank for singles”

  1. Hahaha … nice one.

    I do not think that Date rank increases when “He has really cool friends.” .

    [Reply]

    Maile Ohye Reply:

    Au contraire mon frere! On the shuttle to work I was chatting with my friend about why “having cool friends” likely increases DR (daterank), especially in the case of a guy having a high DR inbound link. He raised a few good points:

    1. It gives social approval. No one wants to date somebody who no one else likes.
    2. Girls seem to like guys who already have a girlfriend, or at least a guy who has girls around him.

    Lol, so perhaps guys aren’t that picky about dating a girl who has cool friends, but women desire DateRanks’s trust and authority? 🙂

    [Reply]

  2. I think my collegue and I went way too far with this but..

    “Has a great looking brother” – 301 redirect
    “Has an identical twin” – non-www/www
    “Looks great but never leaves the house” – Flash site
    “He’s stood me up” – 404 Page Not Found
    “He has 2 noses” – “Do you want to chat” Pop up

    Have a safe journey home.

    @SEOMalc

    [Reply]

    Maile Ohye Reply:

    Malcolm! Great ideas. It was fun meeting you at SES.

    Do you mind if I use some of your analogies in my Ignite talk next week?
    http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/2010/ignite

    [Reply]

    malcolm slade Reply:

    I am more than happy for you to use my analogies. I hope they go down well.

    Best regards

    Malc.
    @seomalc

    [Reply]

  3. Now that is funny, but oh so true.

    malcolm, brought in some others that make you just laugh.

    Now, it would be interesting to see just how far you can take this comparison of Daterank – pagerank.

    [Reply]

  4. Hah! Interesting post …

    … can we extend this further to other ranking factors?

    domain age – age of your date
    – strangely, it feels like it’s easier to find a date now, in my 30s!

    page loading speed – time it takes him to get to first base 😉

    User-agent: Slurp – doesn’t date blondes
    Disallow: /

    I’d imagine many Googlers are still single if they need to evaluate over 200 ranking factors before making a date :))

    [Reply]

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