Issues With Technorati: Could Be Hurting Your Blog’s Perceived Authority and Visibility

By ryancaldwellAdvertising

So I’m just like the rest of you. I treat PageRank updates like a sporting event. I also monitor things like the Dirt 100 which uses an algorithm to rank the top 100 Celebrity blogs (aside from a few major anamolies, it does a good job).

The one thing that kept sticking out to me is how PopCrunch was sitting below other sites with far less traffic. Perhaps the most glaring issue was the low Technorati score that PopCrunch was assigned.

So I went over to the EatonWeb Celebrity category rankings to see if PopCrunch was getting a bad score there as well. Indeed it was.

At EatonWeb, I have database access, so I logged into see what was depressing the score. Turns out that the Technorati API was returning a big fat 0 for both total links and total blogs. Ouch. I knew that this was wrong.

Then I went over to Technorati and saw that the PopCrunch Authority score was something ridiculously low like 88. Crazy. Didn’t make sense.

So then I started contacting Technorati support. The same guy probably got all five of my requests;-)

I never got a response. But within 24 hours, PopCrunch was showing a more appropriate Authority score of 617 and had found its way into the Top 5K. Further, the total links and total blogs number started returning some accurate figures.

I have no idea what was wrong. But the take home lesson is this: BlogJuice, EatonWeb, SEOMoz Page Strength and a whole slew of ranking tools (probably even GOOG itself) use Technorati data to evaluate the strength and authority of websites. And the temptation is to assume that a massive company like Technorati gets everything right.

Well that’s wrong. Today I found out that Technorati wasn’t tracking or storing data properly for at least one blog. I wonder how many others are out there with the same problem. You’ll only know if you look;-)

4 thoughts on “Issues With Technorati: Could Be Hurting Your Blog’s Perceived Authority and Visibility”

  1. No, but I’d keep any eye out. If you’ve put a lot of work into a site and it doesn’t seem to be improving in Rank and Authority, send them a note.

  2. any idea on how it got fixed and how we can replicate that – short of emailing technorati support?

  3. The fact is that many bloggers have been complaining about delayed Technorati tagging. I like technorati, conceptually speaking, but they’ve been having problems for so long now. They need a cash infusion and an overhaul on their processes. The amount you earn from some ad networks is partially dependent on Technorati ranking, so something needs to be done.

  4. The sad truth of the matter is that we really can’t trust anything to go smoothly. Need to always be looking for something that’s gone wrong. Have to watch out for our selves and constantly monitor whether the others in this crazy game are keeping up with their end of the bargain.

    Hell, I’m thankful for all that Technorati gets right. Who am I to complain.

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