Can we replace PR with OSE Page Authority?

The question is…why is PR the only metric used by so many webmasters to value a page on the web? There are so many other valuable metrics; traffic, backlink count and actual rankings to name a few. The obvious answer is that we are lazy and PR is the quick and easy way to determine some semblance of value, no matter how flawed (or antiquated) PR really is.

So, last week Open Site Explorer was launched by SEOMoz, and along with this new SEO tool are some interesting metrics called Page Authority and Domain Authority. While these aren’t perfect metrics, they seem to provide more depth to them than simple PR, especially since OSE also shows you the links and domains linking into a website.

Here’s how they explain it:

Domain and Page Authority scores are both calculated using SEOmoz’s Ranking Models work. In essence, we take a lot of rankings data from the search engines (by running queries) and then try to build a predictive scoring system using our own on-page analyses and Linkscape link data to construct an algorithm that will effectively reproduce the search engines’ results. Our current accuracy hovers in the 70% range, but over time, we expect to improve.

Now that this metric is out there, will you be looking at Page Authority when exchanging/buying/selling a link?