So on the media database I use, I have started to see MOZ scores mentioned when the circulation figures are unavailable, so what's happening?
First of all, some publications might not be comfortable giving out the circulation figures – they might have various reasons to do so - one of them might be that the numbers have been going down lately and they don’t want people to know that.
Also, small publications usually don’t give them out and it’s the same for the ones that don’t accept any advertising (for these there’s actually no reason for them to do so). It might also be an internal policy, so a publisher might decide they’ll keep those figures confidential or only give them out to specific advertisers.
Now a Moz score can help when you can't get hold of a circulation
A Moz score is a Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. They calculate this metric by combining all of their other link metrics—linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc—into a single score.
To determine Domain Authority, they employ machine learning against Google's algorithm to best model how search engine results are generated. Over 40 signals are included in this calculation. This means the website's Domain Authority score will often fluctuate. This new metric may help PRs understand credibility of a website.
Also, Moz Rank is coming soon – this is a measure of links similar to Page Rank. A definition on this can be found here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/mozrank .
Our database has added this so that they can give PRs an idea about the website credibility that might prove useful especially for those that don’t give out their unique monthly visitors.
What happened to Google Page Rank?
Page Rank is a Google proprietary metric that is not reliably accessible anymore. There is an article on the withdrawal of Page Rank: http://searchengineland.com/rip-google-pagerank-retrospective-244286 .
Can you trust circulations given out by publications?
There is no way to double check the figures given by a publication. If our database notices a huge increase in the circulation of a publication, they will try to get more info on why that has happened. Also, wherever there are audited figures available, it's probably wiser to go with those rather that what the publisher provides.
ABC is a popular auditing approach inthe UK, but it costs money, and they also have strict guidelines for reporting. The audit is run by ABC auditors and is mandatory for Business publications, Exhibitions, ABC Bulk Distribution, International publications (outside the UK or the Republic of Ireland) and Digital media. Consumer magazines and newspapers may choose to use either their auditors or other ABC approved third party auditors. As you can imagine some small publications are not happy to pay just to be ABC audited.
What about Alexa?
Alexa.com has a paid service and they offer an estimated unique visitors number – but this is an estimated figure and is provided by them. This might be a way to double check the figures given by a publication. There might be similar services, but they all offer estimates.
Wow, so if a publication website doesn't give our its circulation, you can be certain that there are plenty of ways to find out if you should be targeting it, including Moz.
