MozPoint Distribution: A Case Study (Sort Of)

Recently while I was reading a post on SEOmoz, I started to think about the SEOmoz users and the whole points system.  I read one of Lindsay’s Twitter posts saying that the MozPoint distribution system on SEOmoz is a case study in itself.  I thought it might be a cool thing for all the users and SEOmoz staff to look at.

I created a crawler/scraper that went through the rankings and collected all the necessary information I needed to get some statistics.  Below are some statistics that I found interesting and noteworthy.

DISCLAIMER:

I’m not trying to slam “Non-Pro Members” and I understand there could be a large number of spam users that have only posted once, get thumbs down, and are throwing the stats off.  So take these statistics with a grain of salt.

• “Pro Members” have an average of 44 points

• “Non-Pro Members” only have an average of 10 points. 

• 18.6% of registered SEOmoz users are “Pro Members.”

• Only 9.5% of “Pro Members” have reached the 100 point mark to remove the nofollow on their profile link. 

• Only 3.36% of all SEOmoz users have reached the 100 point mark to remove the nofollow on their profile link. 

• Only 12.3% of all SEOmoz users have posted 10 or more comments.

• 43% of all SEOmoz users have more than 1 point.

• Only 4.8% of all SEOmoz users have had a YOUmoz posts published.

• Of the 846 total YOUmoz posts written, they were written by only 336 users. 

• To be in the top 95% of all SEOmoz users you only need to have 52 points.

• Rand has earned 8.8% of the total points 153,262 points in the SEOmoz world.

• SEOmoz Staff/Associates have earned over 25% of the 153,262 points in the SEOmoz world.

• The top 1.5% of SEOmoz user has earned over 62% of the total SEOmoz points.

So what can we the user and SEOmoz learn and take away from these statistics?  Below are my questions that I formed from looking at the statistics:

1. What can SEOmoz do to increase user participation in the blog?
2. Does SEOmoz want to increase the participation in the blogs or stick to increasing “Pro Members” and coming up with new tools?
3. What are some of the ramifications of an increase in comments and submissions to the YOUmoz and the main blog, besides Rebecca having a meltdown?
4. What’s holding back users from commenting and contributing to the community?

I’m going to end this post here so everyone can post their comments and questions they have about my statistics.  If anyone is interested in having the complete data, please feel free to PM me and I will send the Excel file your way.