Technorati Sucks, but Friends Rule!
How long have you fiddled with Technorati on your blog? You claim your blog, get the spiffy widget running, build up a fan base, tag all your posts, etc. What do you get in return?
NOTHING
Yes, I’m exaggerating a little. But let me make my point. Technorati just isn’t worth the trouble.
Aside from initial setup, Technorati has other problems. For months now, Technorati has had problems with blogs being “flagged for review.” Just look at the threads in their support forums where blogs aren’t being updated properly.
And submitting a support ticket gets no response. Technorati doesn’t seem to care about their users. It really is a sad excuse for a user-oriented service.
Stats speak
I think Legal Andrew is a decent example of a mid-tier blog. So my stats can illustrate what we’re getting back from Technorati.
This is a graph of referrals to Legal Andrew from August 1, 2006 to June 3, 2007. As you can see from the last line (red arrow), Technorati refers less than 1% of my traffic!
Honestly, I can’t see why us bloggers care about Technorati at all. Maybe you guys see more value in it, but I really don’t.
Friends are great!
To end on a positive note, I want to point out the great importance of making real connections in the blogosphere: friends.
As you can see from this chart, my top 14 referrers include several friends, which amount to 4.5% of total referrals. After going through my top 50 referrers, I found that 7% of my traffic comes from friends.
Should I spend time screwing around with Technorati, or should I try to make another friend?
[tags]technorati, friends, google analytics, statistics[/tags]
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Comments
16 Responses to “Technorati Sucks, but Friends Rule!”
June 4th, 2007
Pretty much the only thing I use Technorati for is indirectly in wordpress. I believe the dashboard page shows you who links to your blog based on information it pulls from Technorati, but I might be wrong.
Other than that, I spend about an hour each year just checking it out to see if anything has changed that might be useful to me.
June 4th, 2007
Intresting perspective. It seems when you boil away all the hype that relationships are the bottom line for linking and good writing for search engines.
June 4th, 2007
Hi Mark,
Thanks for pointing out something important – inbound links. That is one valuable thing we’re getting from Technorati. Learning about inbound links definitely helps foster and build relationships.
Thanks for the comment!
Andrew
June 4th, 2007
Peter,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Success = relationships + SEO. Maybe that’s boiling it down a bit too much, but it illustrates the point.
Take care,
Andrew
June 4th, 2007
Andrew, what do you use for your stats? I like the graphs.
I can’t tell where my referrals come from because the majority of the hits type my URL directly in their browser, so they must already know about my site and don’t do searches to get to it.
June 4th, 2007
Yeah, Technorati does suck. I was thinking about this yesterday as I was trying to figure out how to get it to like my blog, but then I realized it probably wasn’t worth it because I really don’t get referrals from them. Too bad so many people emphasize your Technorati authority.
June 5th, 2007
Hi ProSe,
The graphs above are from Google Analytics. It’s free, very detailed, and the new interface is really slick. For day-to-day stats, I rely on FeedBurner Standard Stats.
Direct traffic is good. That means people are looking for you!
Andrew
June 5th, 2007
Brett,
You’re about Technorati Authority. Sadly, it’s one of the key metrics we use to evaluate each other. That is pretty pathetic, really.
But I wonder if Authority matters that much once you have a decent amount. If nobody links to a blog (zero Authority), I’m skeptical there’s anything good there. But what real difference is 100 vs. 300 or even 900? Somebody likes it, right?
Andrew
June 6th, 2007
As a relatively new writer to the blogosphere it is interesting to see if you are making any progress. Technorati does that to some extent. Now that people are using their rating to estimate value it becomes more valuable. as far as receiving links – I rarely use the technorati links. More often than not I have subscribed to the blogs that interest me and I have read my Google reader updates already.
I find new blogs more often by links in posts from people I trust. Sometimes I scroll the blogroll but that’s a rarity. This is why allowing links in posts can be useful. I understand it invites spam but the cost seems minimal.
June 6th, 2007
Hi Roger,
You’re right that Technorati can help see if you’re making progress. For us statsaholics, it’s one more fun number to watch. 😉
Thanks for the great comment,
Andrew
June 10th, 2007
Thank you for this interesting insight into Technoraty.
I am also fairly new to the blogosphere and as such I have relied on widely used metrics. I slowly am learning to discriminate the good from the bad and the useful from the useless.
When my mood is down because of poor stats, I remember that I write for my own passion and for the passion of those that read me regardless of their numbers!
As such I agree with you. Forget numbers and remember why you write and whom you write for. If your intention is right, there are no reasons for you to fail.
Sucess is a journey, not a destination!
June 11th, 2007
Frederic,
I love your last line. That’s very insightful!
Andrew
September 18th, 2007
Technorati Sucks…
I know that I am not the only one that thinks that Technorati sucks as of late. I have to say that since they changed the look of their site it seems to have all gone down hill.
……
August 2nd, 2008
My traffic comes mostly from non-bloggers. My ranking and traffic is higher than many blogs on Technorati that have 300 + authority yet within 10 months I have 1. Maybe my blog sucks, I don’t know but from what my readers have told me, they like it. I think the problem with all of these “Technorati” type of sites is that as a bloggers we spend half of our time, if not more, using them, signing up to them, and all that jazz hoping to get more links. I even tried to just create the widget I want for Technorati and it keeps giving me the default so I gave up. Most bloggers are obsessed with authority on there, so much so they forget to write their blogs! It is one large MySpace, which is a souless popularity contest and that is it. I tried to delete my Technorati account and I can’t, or I would.
I have moved on to a much better social networking site for bloggers – Zimbio – much much better, and the site itself is far more user friendly.
I don’t measure my traffic by Technorati or any of these sites, I don’t care about them. My traffic is up by 6,000,000 rank in 3 months and dropping very quickly. I have done no promotion or even a site redesign. So when i do launch that next month, this will increase. I don’t spend my life trying to find great blogs on Technorati – I spend my time writing and educating myself for my blog. People are reading my site because the content changes and I have a perspective. I could care less about my rank on Technorati. There are still billions of people out there still discovering blogs, and even just coming online that DON’T blog and don’t want to. That is the audience I want, I don’t care about Technorati.
http://www.freeryantoday.com
August 18th, 2008
I hardly get any traffic at all from Technorati. In fact, I claimed my blog on a whim a couple of years ago, and mostly forgot about it. Logged in once in a while when I came across a post about Technorati, but mostly did nothing about it….
Honestly, it makes ZERO difference whether they flag me for review or not. My irritation is at a legitimate blog being flagged for no apparent reason. I’d be happy to delete my account, but I dislike my blog being flagged.
September 27th, 2008