Category Archives: technorati

Technorati as Blog Search and Conversation Tracker DOA

technorati

Today I deleted well over 100 custom searches I have been doing on Technorati for a very long time. Simple reason is this, the site is useless. I have given them every chance to scale and fix their issues.

After today their site is in my personal dead pool. It’s a sad state of affairs that they never could master indexing blog conversations. They did a great job for a while, so good in fact that I would have paid a monthly subscription to find information that was not available anyplace yet.

Search results have degraded to the point that about 90% of the stuff I look at is coming back with spam post. Articles referencing information I am tracking is  usually never indexed at all. So sad really they really had a chance to be the #1 source of tracking search specific conversations.

Technorati is beyond not reliable!

Media, technorati,

Technorati What is the deal with Technorati? It seems every time I go to that site and enter a search term their search is broken. I am finding more cross linked post via Google than Technorati. Has the blogsphere gotten so big that they cannot handle the task of indexing blogs.

I am disappointed in Technorati’s performance and am really tired of getting screen that say this feature is not implemented yet. When you get that error it’s because their servers are to busy.

Bloggers are becoming aware of Attention

feedster, google, Media, technorati, weblog

I have seen a variety of post over the last couple of days that have resulted in some discussions about Bloggers having their content stolen and re-posted on other sites with that discussion morphing into how various sites and services are getting rich on the aggregated content that they are pulling from bloggers sites and essentially re-packaging.

But if you look at it from the perspective that these services would not exist in their current format without bloggers and bloggers would not reach as of audiences without them. For some their is a love hate relationship that is starting to develop.

These relationships can improve but those that are running those services are going to need to start giving some love back in the form of statistics. Some would call this a data exchange, I personally call it a Attention Exchange. Now if those running these services really want to win the minds and hearts of those that they are profiting from the could start throwing some love in the form of cash. Some will ask why should they do that. Well the answer is simple some of these companies sole income is from aggregated data, those that are need to think about giving a percentage of profits back to those that bring the most eyes to their sites.

Attention is important who are you giving it to and how are they using it today. [Om Malik]

Blog Search Engine Traffic

feedster, icerocket, RSS, scoble, technorati, , , ,

I keep a pretty good watch on the traffic coming into the website, and I must say that Scobles post that talks about minimal traffic coming from Blog Search Engines had me busy for a couple of hours tonight. Causing the room temperature to go up from hard-drives hammering away running the past 12 months of logs thru a log processor with some new variables, that I am still analyzing but I did see a couple of things that even surprised me.

First Google is driving 74.9% of the traffic to this website that number was not the surprise. The surprise for me was that Technorati, Feedster, and IceRocket combined drove less than 2% of overall traffic here. That tells me that all of the tagging we are doing is likely not helping much. The rest of the traffic is a variety of search engines and happily bloggers that are linking here.

I use those three services heavily but within RSS queries in my aggreator so I am trying to see if that is skewing the results. The RSS feed on the other hand is just flat out getting hammered by a variety of services and users that are updating nearly every hour. Nice to see that other people are seeing similar trends.

Google Blog Search the First 12 Hours!

Commerce, feedster, google, icerocket, pubsub, technorati, , , , ,

I am sure this morning as Technorati, Pubsub and Feedster staff came to work their was a sense of, oh man why did this billion pound cement block just get dropped on my shoulders. If they did not realize it before they better now, their is competition out their and they better focus on their base services and make sure they don’t miss anything.

In the past 2 hours I have created the same 100 search terms that I have setup for Pubsub, Technorati, Feedster and IceRocket. In the dozen or so I setup last night I can tell you for a fact that I have 4-5 new net friends who have been posting links to Geek News Central for a long time that none of these other services caught.

Google is not catching everything but If I were an engineer at Google with their kind of resources I don’t think it will be long before the power of their indexing engine is going to start kicking some major butt.

That’s what happens when you have resources to make things happen.

Update: One additional comment, I have been quite vocal over the past year or so talking about levels of service amongst all of the sites that do blog search. I will hold Google to that same standard.

I do like David Sifry’s attitude but on the inside that have to be in a bit or crisis mode all I can say is stay focused and work faster than they do if you can. [David Sifry]

Has Technorati lost that loving feeling!

Technical, technorati,

I find an amazing amount of information each week from all of the search terms I have setup that look for keywords via Pubsub and Technorati and like some others I am about feed up with Technorati. Their quality has really been falling off I hate to say it but some of the traditional search engines that allow keyword searches to be converted into RSS feeds are doing better albeit a few days slower.

I agree with some other blogger posts that PubSub is kicking dirt in Technorati’s face at the moment, and the divide is getting wider every day.

Case in point, I submitted a Press Release to the wire services nearly 4 months ago it was picked up by both Technorati and Pubsub at the time when I originally released it but here is the kicker. Today I see it in my RSS feed for Technorati again with todays date as the publish date.

I am not sure what is going on over their but my feeddemon news aggregator has all of my Pubsub terms at the top of the column and technorati at the bottom. I used to inter mingle them but I find it a general waste of time to do that now. [Jason Kottke]

The Top 100 and why some people are paying attention to it!

Commerce, feedster, pubsub, technorati, , ,

Jason Calacanis has been speaking very vocally about the Top 100 over at technorati, and he is indicating that Technorati is about to get their “bell rung” by their competition. He is more or less saying to Technorati that their Top 100 list is not fair nor is it accurate.

Now the question I always start asking when someone starts talking about Top 100 list is why are they raising a stink. It’s usually because either, their not in the list and think they should be, or because their is a financial motivation to see some people removed or knocked down a peg or two.

That being said this weblog has about as much a chance of making the Top 100 as winning the lotto. Considering Hawaii does not have a lotto the odds are pretty high.

If you look at Weblogs, Inc they have become quite the media powerhouse, and with Jason bragging that they could make a million dollars this year with adsense ads, I start to question why a company would make those types of claims or even say that in the first place.

It is one thing for people to realize you are making money hand over foot, but it is quite another to wave it in front of the entire nets face. What that does is piss people off. My daddy told me a long time ago, don’t let them see what you have in your wallet son keep them guessing. Was Jason’s bragging they may hit a million in adsense ads an attempt to try and lure in some investors by making overt financial earning statements without formally producing them. Their are some interesting SEC rules I have read recently that makes me understand why you have to be careful what you say about money in relation to investors.

My whole point is this, my position is that Weblogs, Inc is shopping for a suitor and the only way they can get eyeballs pointed their way is to make sure they dominate the Top 100 list and make overt financial statements. Call me a conspiracy theorist but you just wait and see.

On a side note, I love some of the products that Weblogs, Inc produces and wish them the best of luck but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. [Jason Calacanis]