Technorati dreams - Column 2

April 26, 2006
Technorati dreams

I'll never be in Technorati's top 100 (or anywhere near it), but I passed a milestone recently by breaking the top 100,000 with this blog. Not bad, considering that Technorati tracks over 35 million sites. If you're not familiar with Technorati, it allows you to claim your blog then see how popular it is based on the number of links from other sites to your blog. The big problem that I have with Technorati becomes visible when you look at my Technorati profile:

Is anyone else seeing triple on this screen? The first entry (with a rank of 225,034) uses the address www.column2.com, which is redirected to the actual address, www.ebizq.net/blogs/column2. The second entry (with a rank of 62,569) uses the actual address of this blog. The third entry is the old location of this blog, column2, where it lived until January of this year when I moved it over to ebizQ.

Okay, I understand why the third can't be combined with the others: it's actually a different site. However, why can't they consolidate the link count of a redirected URL (www.column2.com, which I use because it's easier for people to remember) with the site to which it's redirected? Obviously, the split lowers my ranking, since the links are split between the two "Column 2 - ebizQ" addresses which Technorati sees as different (even though they're the same).

Technorati support, in reply to my inquiry, just stated that they couldn't do it:

I'm afraid that we are unable combine links from different URLs at this time. Links are URL based and are unique citations to that blog at that time. However since you've updated your web server configuration to send a permanent redirect response (HTTP Status 301) to anyone requesting one URL to the other blog URL, then it will help consolidate your online blog presence for all web aggregators and help have your links reestablished eventually.

Their last point, about "having my links reestabished eventually" totally misses the point: I actually want people to use the www.column2.com address if it's easier for them to remember, and that's what's on my business card and in my email signature. In other words, www.column2.com is part of my online identity, whereas ebizq.net is just where my blog happens to live.

Posted by Sandy Kemsley at 11:22 AM in Blogging • Rant | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us

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Comments

Sandy

Would'nt it be nice if these services could rate Blogs in separate categories? I think we all wonder about the industry traction of our practices.

For instance, Gartner says business rules should grow by %10/year, yet business rules licence sales have leveled off. Attendance at the business rules conferences are up, yet it is difficult to predict adoption rates for areas like BPM and Rules.

Perhaps someday someone will 'Federate' these rating services.

Posted by: Tom at April 28, 2006 09:14 AM

Tom, not sure how it would work to categorize blogs, since so many defy standard categorization. Is my blog about business or technology? About BPM, business rules, business intelligence or web 2.0?

I think of Technorati as more of a "popular vote" by the masses rather than any sort of scientific rating.

Posted by: Sandy Kemsley at April 28, 2006 10:31 AM