New blog popularity tracker "LinkRank" launches

PubSub is launching a new tool called LinkRank that tracks the popularity of blogs based on the strength, persistence, and vitality of links appearing in those blogs. Steve Rubel from PubSub says:

Here's how this works. Here's the chart for BoingBoing (link), which right now is the leading blog among all of the sites that PubSub tracks. You can view the Top 100 list here (link). If you look at the BoingBoing chart, you will notice that over the last 30 days you ranged from as low as the 21st most linked to site to 17th most link to site. The lower the number the better since the actual figure is a site's ranking. Two examples of comparison searches you could run with the tool might be Gizmodo vs. Engadget, or Apple vs. Microsoft. This tool will be particularly valuable for people to size up which blogs are consistently influential and which are just flashes in the pan.

Link to a more comprehensive explanation of PubSub LinkRanks works (includes intimidating mathematical equations that look like they came out of the geometry class I failed in high school).