Is Technorati worth anyone’s attention any more? I ask because I no longer have much faith in the accuracy of their data where Technorati’s information about your own site is different depending on where you see it.
Here’s what I mean. This is what Technorati says about this blog in terms of authority and rank:
The figure on the right shows an authority level of 602. The number on the left shows 1495 which, Technorati says, is the blog’s rank compared to the Technorati top 100 list.
Yet the little widget I’ve had in my blog sidebar for the past four years – which pulls in data from Technorati itself – says only 160, a figure unchanged as far as I can tell for most of this year. That’s a big difference.
I asked about this a month ago in Technorati’s support forum, as a comment to a larger thread. Technorati’s response three weeks ago was this:
The widgets are still pulling data from the old site infrastructure — they’ll be replaced soon.
Since then, silence. ‘Soon’ surely should mean quicker than a month – and it’s still not fixed.
It used to be the case that if I wanted to find out anything going on in the blogosphere, Technorati was the first place I turned to as it was the trusted source. Now, it’s the last place I think about: the first place I go to on the public web is Google Blog Search.
Others are wondering whether Technorati is worth anything these days including my podcasting partner Shel Holtz, who raises the important point of trusting the numbers when you’re considering the authority and ranking of another blogger rather than looking at your own figures.
A huge #technoratifail.
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[Blog] Little trust in Technorati [link to post] #fb #in #technoratifail
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Amen, Neville. Amen, indeed.
I’ve found the same problem and it seems to take be taking an inordinately long time to sort it out. My authority actually dropped in the widget even though it was going up quite remarkably at technorati.com. How much of a difference, you ask: try seven on the widget versus 483 at one point.
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I pulled the Technorati plugin and search from my blogs several months ago. Realised I never use it, wonder why anyone does? Sorry Technorati but I don’t see a need.
Does somebody can say something about Technorati and OpenId ? it seems that OpenId doesn’t work anymore with technorati ?!?
Completely agree. I think Technorati has lost its Mojo.
Neville, you mention Google Blog Search. What about tools for providing the ‘numbers’ that you and Shel mention. Technorati used to be a good starting point combined with lots of other subjective methods of determining blog reach, connections, authority etc. Would be interested in your thoughts about better alternatives. Icerocket? Blogpulse?
One of Technorati’s most useful features, ‘watchlists’ has also bitten the dust as has Ranking (for blogs below the top 100 cut). It was a half decent guideline metric.