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I find this extremely interesting and a bit confusing as a user. Technorati is out, Google is in

Previous version of Wordpress have made us of Technorati to track incoming links to your blog in the admin panel. Now it seems that with a new version of WP comes a change to Google.

I am quite relieved about this move as I feel that Technorati has recently lost some weight in the market and is not being taken very seriously in the online market. While I cannot say that Google is any better but their extended reputation does hold them in good stead in my eyes.

I just need to work out how Google Blogsearch relates to my links and what it all means. But it is nice to see a change and to know that the WP guys are listening to their users and interacting with us with every upgrade.

This simple tip comes courtesay of a Technorati Top 500 blog: GET NOTICED BY A TECHNORATI TOP 500 BLOG…

This recently happened to me in a very strange way. I would live to say that I wrote the most incredible post of my life. I would love to say that a very pronounced blogger picked up my genius and subsequently blogged about it. I would love to say this. Alas, it would not be the truth.

My linklove came from my del.icio.us daily posts from my bookmarks. A sheer stroke of luck. The blogosphere ranking gods smiled on my personal blog and gave me some love. FINALLY.

So, the Duct Tape Marketing Blog picked up on my del.icio.us posts that are automatically posted to this blog at a certain time. To be perfectly honest I was considering dropping the posts because lately that is all that one sees on my blog, my delicious bookmarks.

It looks likes they are staying and it looks like I am on the rise again (however slow that rise might be).

I must be honest here, I was not much of a ranking person but recently I have been blogging about the topic alot. Technorati is only one of the many targets I have on my hitlist. Technorati was a tool that I had only heard about it in the major geek circles up until recently.

One of two things has happened; 1.I have joined these geek circles (happily) and 2.Technorati went mainstream to a degree.

I am banking somewhat on option 2 here. Now that Technorati is more mainstream than it used to be there are more blogs on the site, a lot of blogs. That means that you can try your damndest to work your way up the rankings on their site but to no avail. I think that there is some sort of common misconception from bloggers like myself: The higher you rank the more hits you get. That might be true to some extent but it just isn’t true in all situations.

Looking at Amatomu’s ranking of blogs in the News and Politics section and focusing on the top 12 one can see that Technorati ranking is not directly proportional to reads in any way shape or form:

Lets go with the left table above and work our way down:
By Reads in News and Politics (Amatomu):

#1 - East Coast Radio Blog: Does not feature in top 20 by Technorati Ranking
#2 - My Africa: #15 by Technorati Ranking
#3 - Wired Gecko: #4 by Technorati Ranking
#4 - Black Looks: #1 by Technorati Ranking
#5 - It’s almost supernatural: #7 by Technorati Ranking
#6 - commentary: #8 by Technorati Ranking
#7 - the SA Navy etc…: Not in top 30 by Technorati Ranking
#8 - SA Rocks: #2 by Technorati Ranking
#9 - SomeAmongUs: #9 by Technorati Ranking
#10 - The Antidote: #16 by Technorati Ranking
#11 - Urban Sprout: #18 by Technorati Ranking
#12 - Constitutionally speaking: #13 by Technorati Ranking

The East Coast Radio and My Africa blogs are two perfect examples of what I am talking about. They are at numbers 1 and 2 respectively but do not feature predominantly in the Technorati rankings of Amatomu.

Can someone explain this to me? Why do people place so much emphasis on rankings on blog sites like Technorati if they have no real impact? Am I missing something? Am I meant to be waiting to break the threshold somewhere that will all of a sudden open the floodgates to millions of pageviews? Is that threshold 20 000 on Technorati? Is it 10 000 or maybe the top 1000? I just don’t know.

Now it seems as though Technorati has completely removed the ranking system on their site and have listed blogs according to “Authority”. This blogs authority is 65, SA Rocks is 122… how are you looking? Someone please tell me where my authority of 65 puts me? Top 50 000, 60 000?? I am so lost without the ranking!

Then there is always the thought that when you get to number 1000 on the Technorati ranking system that you are not the only blog at number 1000, there are a gagillion other blogs who have

Can you get a better title for a post than that???

Have a look:

In this image we have the Chumps Technorati ranking reflecting Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island Number, 46664. Wowza that is cool. I think that the South African gods are telling the chumps something, when you know what it is, let me know!!

It seems as though Technorati have been working to change the naming of certain features on their site. I popped on today to see how SA Rocks is doing and it seems as though SA Rocks has an “Authority of 98″. I am assuming that this means that there are 98 links to SA Rocks in the previous version of Technorati.

Have a look:

I think that I like the Authority use over the Links in Technorati. Not sure that it’s the first thing on the site that I would’ve fixed or changed. Maybe the developers should have considered an Amatomu approach to ranking and rating blogs in certain areas? Just a thought.

I think that this change it terms is some sort of an attempt to add weight to the rating and ranking that Technorati does. In my little mind I think that it does make a difference. The word Authority does carry a certain… authority to it. I am not sure that this is the way they should be heading to improve their services. If anyone else can tell me a bit more about this change in terms of technicality then please do educate me!!