Technorati Quits Ranking Us

Posted by Martin R on May 23, 2007
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Popular blog indexing service Technorati has revamped its graphic design and appears to have quit ranking blogs. Now how will I know if I have any personal worth?

Technorati keeps track of how many different sites have linked to yours over the past six months. This figure is called your blog’s “authority”. Engadget, Boingboing and Gizmodo are currently the top three, with authority assessments of over 19,000. The most popular ScienceBlog, Pharyngula, has authority 2,629. Aard currently has authority 266.

Until yesterday, Technorati provided a ranking figure along with your authority assessment. Aard was ranked about 14,000, which meant that there were about 14,000 other blogs with the same or greater authority. From now on, I will have to do without that information. But I can still look at the list of blogs tagged “archaeology”, for instance, where Aard is currently ranked #2 worldwide.

I wonder if they got rid of the ranking figures because of processing-power constraints or simply because they found out they had been miscalculating them all along.

Update 29 May: The ranking figures are back. Phew. Heading for 13,000!

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Comments

  1. #1 Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD
    May 23, 2007

    ABBA museum to open in Stockholm

  2. #2 James W.
    May 23, 2007

    Well, this is one of the better sources of info on the recent Technorati change: TechCrunch. I found some more earlier but can’t find the links now.

  3. #3 mary.evelyn.starr
    May 23, 2007

    Well, Martin, somehow I think they didn’t hurt your feelings too bad, nor your livelihood. I followed your link and looked at technorati. The list has you twice, and other duplicates, it also has commercial sites that aren’t really blogs and lots of blogs that aren’t much about archaeology. And they don’t have my yahoo360 archaeo blog either, and I ain’t too hurt. In my book, yer still one of the best archaeo blogs I’ve found. Thanks!

  4. #4 Martin R
    May 24, 2007

    Aaaw, Mary Evelyn, you sweetie!

  5. #5 Denis Vlasov
    May 24, 2007

    “one of the world’s top-3 archaeology blogs” sounds more weighty than “ranked 14.000 worldwide”, in my opinion.

  6. #6 Martin R
    May 24, 2007

    Thanks, Denis! Maybe I can consider coming out from under the kids’ bunk bed now. I have been hiding here in the foetal position since I learned of Technorati’s changes.

  7. #7 Dave Munger
    May 24, 2007

    Hmmm…

    Rankings are back up on Technorati. Actually sort of depressing — I still haven’t broken the top 2,000.

  8. #8 Martin R
    May 24, 2007

    Really? I can’t see them. Could you give us a link?

  9. #9 Dave Munger
    May 24, 2007

    Now it’s back to the old (new) style again. Maybe that was just a momentary glitch.

  10. #10 Dave Munger
    May 24, 2007

    Okay, the rankings are back again… Let’s hope they stay for a while this time.

  11. #11 Michael Burton
    May 29, 2007

    Their ranking system seems a little simple-minded.

    My blog is linked to by 13 other blogs. Toss out one outlier, and the 12 remaining blogs probably average less than “authority 10.” But it appears I would have exactly the same rank if the 13 sites linking to me were the 13 most popular blogs in the world.

    A more sophisticated system would probably factor the popularity of the linking sites into the ranking.

  12. #12 Martin R
    May 30, 2007

    Mike, you’re right. Google’s PageRank appears to implement your suggestions. They’ve been driving loads and loads of porn surfers here since Aard got ranked.