martingale - 7:55 pm on Mar 16, 2007 (gmt 0)

The key is this is a measure of BRAND, not QUALITY.

So of USNews' top 25 business schools I would eliminate Ohio State, UNC, Emory, and Dartmouth for having a PR8. The rest of the top 25 are PR9, except MIT which is PR10. I don't have the grades or the finances to go to one of USNewss top 10 schools, none of which are PR8 anyway, but further down the list, in the territory where I do have the grades and the finances to attend, there's a mix of PR8's and PR9's. All of the schools I'd consider are on the top 50 list, all I'm proposing to do is whittle down the list by knocking out all the PR8's, and knocking out schools that score terribly in Alexa. For example, Rochester is fairly high on USNews list, and PR9, but has a relatively poor Alexa rank, so I'd knock it out.

Why do you think PageRank is not a good measure of name recognition or brand quality?

I would agree, by the way, that Sony has a stronger and better known brand than Nintendo does. PageRank is not a measure of _quality_ but of _brand_ so I would think it's correct in that case. If you wanted the best known BRAND of game station buy a Sony Playstation. It may not be the best quality, it may not even be the most popular, but it's a better known brand among people who AREN'T game players.

Similarly I'd argue that while perhaps Emory is a great business school in terms of quality, it isn't well known to the general public, hence its bad showing in Google and Alexa.