What’s Wrong With Using Technorati to Rank Blogs?
Friday
Apr 27, 2007
Abe recently posted about ratified.org, the latest project that ranks Philippine blogs. Abe says ratified uses mostly Technorati rankings, but also factors in Feedburner reader count. Now I’ve been a fan of technorati because of how easily you can have your blog indexed (as opposed to Google, which may take a few days or weeks even). However, I just realized Technorati ranking may not be the best way to determine your blog’s popularity and even worth.
Here’s why.
Technorati ranks sites according to the following metrics: (1) number of inbound links from other blogs; and (2) number of blogs linking.
For instance, ratified.org ranks me at number 27, even higher than Manolo Quezon’s quezon.ph and even Connie Veneracion’s pinoycook.net, and even Bianca Gonzales’ superbianca.blogspot.com (now that got me wondering!).
So let’s say you have ten blogs linking to your site, and each of those blogs have two links to your site each (for instance, one link from the sidebar, and one specific link in one post). Your site gets 20 inbound links, and 10 linking blogs.
Technorati uses the linking blogs metric to rank blogs. So a blog with 11 blogs linking toward it will rank higher than one with 10 linking blogs.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, in terms of legitimate links and blogs. It’s a good metric after all–determining popularity and credibility based on how many people link to (and therefore like) your site.
But imagine this. What if I created a thousand flogs (fake blogs) on a free blogging service like WordPress.com or blogspot.com and what if each of those blogs had a link to my original site? And let’s add in a couple of posts from each of those blogs linking toward my original site.
I could easily get 1,000 inbound blogs and 2,000 to 3,000 inbound links from those blogs.
I’m not sure what kind of algorithm Technorati uses to determine quality. With Google, at least you know blogs have their own “link juice,” meaning a more popular, trustworthy blog linking to your site will give you better chances of ranking high in relevant searches than having a thousand newly created sites/blogs linking to you.
Okay, granted I do have more Feedburner readers than Manolo–maybe this is because I use a Feedburner redirect plugin that redirects all my RSS readers to the Feedburner feed. Or maybe I have more feed readers because my readers are more likely to come from the RSS reading crowd (the techies?). I guess it’s really not that easy to rank sites based on a few simple metrics.
Just wondering out loud.
Comments
mlq3
April 27th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
where does one get that feeddoohickie rss thinggummy whatchamacallit? and how does one get it up and running?
nightfox
April 27th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Yup, well said. Google has a better algorithm of detecting quality over quantity. I remember the “Behind the Screen” documentary on Google where ACM Turing awardee Vinton Cerf mentioned about its cool “confidential” algorithm on caching and producing relevant searches/data. Perhaps, they might be some cases where there is misuse and abuse of the ranking services.
J. Angelo Racoma
April 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
@Manolo, here’s a link to the plugin page: http://orderedlist.com/wordpress-plugins/feedburner-plugin . Just pop it into your plugins folder, activate via WordPress control panel, and key in your Feedburner feed address (assuming you have one already).
@nightfox, Google’s algorithm is not exactly free from abuse, though–at least from the point of view of those who think Google is becoming too powerful. Have you heard about the latest from Matt Cutts? They’re devaluing the link juice of paid text links!
j4s0n
April 27th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Not biased, but i still prefer the old pinoytopblogs.com,
Andrew
April 28th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Hi Angelo, thanks for your comments. Ratified.org is another way of looking at the Philippine blogosphere by ranking blogs with Technorati data. To be honest, it’s not a perfect system and we will never be able to properly rank blogs no matter how much data we have. Regarding your concern about flogs, to be honest, it’s possible, but then again, what sort of crazy person would do such a thing? If you’ve heard of the 2000 blogger project you’d know that a lot of participating blogs have been banned by Technorati. So, if I were to create a thousand blogs today, it would be utterly of no use because:
1. I’d be wasting a lot of time
2. These new blogs have no link juice whatsoever, because they are new, basically empty and pointless
3. Technorati would just ban me
4. Google, just like Technorati, will ban me
5. Yahoo! and MSN will also ban me
6. WordPress and Blogspot will eventually figure me out and delete my blogs.
7. In the end, I’ll look like a fool
8. In SEO terms, it’s “black hat”
I have to point out that all the Pinoy blogs that I’ve “ratified” are legit. They all have real content and backlinks. But just like you, I’m surprised to see a few blogs ranking lower than they should. Yes, Technorati has its own quirks, but what I like about it is it doesn’t exclude anyone (who isn’t banned). It doesn’t require registration or javascript code. All I have to do is add a blog and connect to Technorati to pick up its stats. Once the stats are recorded, the blog is ranked immediately. Ratified.org is meant to unite, inspire and promote Filipino bloggers. That is the main reason why I created it.
paolomendoza
April 28th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
i should try that flogs thing…
aMgiNe
April 28th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
hi there, nice meeting you n ur family last night. just linked you up po. will frequent your blog moving forward. God bless. =)
Shari
April 30th, 2007 at 3:54 am
Exactly what I’ve been telling some people! I’ve been trying to write something similar to this. I’m just about 60% done, but I’ll delete the draft and instead post a link to this blog entry because you covered the issue well — better than what I could have done.
Two examples Yuga gave that could affect the results drastically are the 2K Bloggers project and theme authors. I do have some things to add — Monday Madness, Thursday Thirteen, Friday’s Feast, etc posts with the automatic link building script thingamajig at the bottom of the posts. Instant change of rank in Technorati, don’t you think? Not all blogs participating in 2K Bloggers have been banned.
One frustration I have is that some people take something like this as absolute. Rankings do not measure genuine readership and quality of the blogs ranked, IMHO. They’re two things that are the most important, methinks. But it’s still a different story altogether. And heck, imagine my surprise when I’m also above MLQ3 in both Ratified and Yuga’s list. Ahh, shocking. Haha.
@Andrew, I’ve heard of your project when you posted about it in a mailing list. I was wondering how the feed reader stats affect the ranking, or maybe it’s just…there? ^_^
Sidney
April 30th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I wonder why people always want to be on top, the first, the best, the whatever…
I really enjoy blogging not because I am number X among the millions and millions of other blogs. I am blogging because I am getting nice visitors and comments. I enjoy what I am doing (photography) and blogging give me a way to share my world with others. Simple pleasures lang….
I will not have an orgasm if technorati or google will give me a better ranking than Manolo Quezon’s blog.