I have surveyed the PageRanks of the main prediction exchanges.
- InTrade: 7 / 10
- BetFair: 6 / 10 — It was 7 / 10, at one time, in the past.
- Iowa Electronic Markets: 6 / 10
- HubDub: 6 / 10
- NewsFutures (US): 6 / 10
- Hollywood Stock Exchange: 6 / 10
- Betting @ BetFair (a group blog): 5 / 10
- BetFair Predicts (a sub-website): 4 / 10
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Clearly, the PageRanks of the BetFair website and sub-websites are not in line with its business weight. Two factors:
- BetFair is situated within the British Web, which is smaller than the American Web, and there are less bloggers, and hence, less opportunities to get linked to.
- BetFair is pursuing an aggressive SEO strategy. They e-mail bloggers like me to request a link to Betting @ BetFair, and it seems that they pay people to insert a link to BetFair Predicts in blog comments. They might be using other SEO tricks of this kind. These SEO tricks are not the right way to build an Internet presence. (The right way is to build high-quality content, and to engage in a fruitful conversation with the bloggers.)
