Last week I reviewed the entire blog. All 250 archived posts and 23 sliced indexes have been checked, the titles have been changed (left out the ‘blog.coolz0r.com/posted/’) to make them more relevant when they get indexed and I’ve added AdSense to all pages, customized for either the short or the longer posts. Hah. Six hours of work that’ll hopefully pay off in the near future. While updating all these pages I removed all the links to technorati for a cosmos search for either this blog or my nickname. Things just aren’t working out as they should, and I feel Technorati one way or the other is a little overhyped. I’ll explain to you what I’ve encountered during my stay in the technorati empire.
1. URL Search – Please wait while timing out.
Searching for my blog’s url, it takes ages for a returnpage to appear. Very often the search doesn’t even load and the ‘loading’ bar in the explorer just disappears without a new page opening up. Maybe it’s a signal to tell me not to perform ego-searches, but I think : if I don’t get results, neither do other users. I’ve tested with a few friends which lead to the same results. Timing out with a cute technorati anigif has become familiar.
So maybe too many users are using Technorati, and my query doesn’t come trough? Ok. But time after time? I’ve tried it at almost every hour of the day, because I often post at night I could also test it then. No results. Sometimes, yes. I must admit it, so do the other two guys I’ve asked to perform some test searches. I does load sometimes, say 1 out of 15.
2. Ping accepted. Ignoring Ping.
My blog’s handcoded, so I use the java embed code Technorati provided me. The fact that I have to go ping manually is bearable. I have no objection to that. Besides, now that I’ve found pingoat, I can ping Technorati as well, so I can bypass the manual ping from within my account. Nevertheless, I still ping about five times just to be sure. Man, I even log out and in again to check if my session didn’t expire or something (I know it can’t expire, … but I still tested it, just to make sure it wasn’t that). The manual ping from within my Technorati account always returns the ‘thank you for letting us know url has been updated’. I take that as a confirmation, because must of the time when people thank you, it’s because you’ve given something. In this case, the url. Why doesn’t it appear in the search then?
3. Blog last updated 15 days ago.
Then some time ago Technorati stopped including me. I don’t know why. My posts never got listed and more than 15 recent ones are missing. My ‘archive’ isn’t complete, and by the looks of it, it never will be completed. The entire point of claiming this blog (for me) is that others, including myself, can see the history of what I’ve posted in back-order of appearance. The point is that they can see who links me up, where I’ve posted and so that readers know what my blog is about. Since the tool on itself isn’t accurate for me (anymore) , I’m backing out.
If I run back through my archive, and synchronize with Technorati, I get this :
Technorati : Last post indexed is on 15th of August. Meaning my last six posts aren’t there.
Then, August 12th got skipped, and ‘The Mobile Market’ and ‘Flag My Map’ got listed. Posted on the 11th and 10th, so normally indexed.
Then ‘Pic2Vid’ got skipped but ‘Nathan’s Screwed’ was not. Both were from August 9th.
Why index just one then? It’s so unlogical. I can’t make sense of it.
Then 10 posts were skipped, leading us to ‘MSN PPC becomes MSN Keywords’ on Aug. 4th.
There’s more, but that wouldn’t add to the point I’m trying to make.
4. Ranking : minus 50.000 spots, minus 20 links, minus 15 sites.
I’m not an A-blogger. I haven’t got a large audience. I have no ‘weight’ in this game (yet). My old blog is totally gone (because it was also in html but even crappier than this version), so I restarted this version in april, after six months of silence. I’ve only been blogging for a little more than a year, so I don’t expect hundreds of links to my blog. But I know for sure 24 linking sites is way to little, and 26 links that’s just ridiculous. Since these numbers have no relevancy whatsoever, I think for me, in my situation, Technorati is useless.
So here’s my theory :
Technorati has grown way to fast, and now has problems keeping up. I can understand, but the time it takes to ‘get back on track’ is too long for me. You can’t expect me to put up links to a profile that says the site they just came from hasn’t been updated for 15 days. My pages get indexed faster by Google, and for all I know, they’re not specialized in blogs yet.
This isn’t a kick in the dark towards Technorati. I’ve filled in their form thrice nicely (the two first attempts resulted in an error, so to be sure I tried until I thought it went well). So either they got it three times, or just one time. I’ve sent them a message six days ago stating about the same things I have said here above. I haven’t gotten any answer yet, but I’m not going to send the request and ‘whining’ note again. I love the service, I’ve advised it to tons of people who most of the time enjoy it a lot. (Sometime’s it’s just ‘rush hour’ anybody understands that).
But I can’t explain them why this great service I want them to use so badly to keep ‘in touch with the blogospere’ and to ‘know what’s being said right now’ doesn’t list my own blogposts or links like it should. That’s why I’m silently dropping out. Since these posts don’t appear at Technorati… I’d doubt it anyone would ever know unless they read it here.
For the record :
I’m totally NOT pissed off. This is not a post to bring Technorati down in any way. I’m just explaining why I removed my links, and why I feel this service isn’t working out for me. I know tons of people who are very satisfied with the results they get, and they’re absolutely thrilled about the service. I’m just saying I’m not that thrilled, because I don’t get the same service. I’m looking at it from the practical side. Technorati isn’t driving that much traffic to my site anyway (not over 30 hits a month) so I see no more reasons to put any more time in pinging the service manually or having a link to an outdated profile. No hard feelings.