Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The Blogosphere - Is there life without Technorati?
Yes, definitely. It is not the only game in town.
As a blogger (for two years) I had come to depend on Technorati, the blog search engine. It helped to build up readership. Its reciprocal arrangement with Washington Post was an attractive feature. The vagaries -- the periodic, inexplicable failure (for a day or two) for blog posts to appear on Technorati after "pinging" -- were furstrating but I felt that I could live with them. Except acknowleding e-mail messages Technorati does not respond to reports of service problems. Too busy or too few people. Cannot complain, it provides free service as do the other search engines.
Have no clue whether my experience is an uncommon one. For me, things got much worse when, beginning October 24th the posts stopped appearing on Technorati. One day everything was normal and then pings became ineffective. Pings were acknowledged but nothing happened. No explanation. Although I "pinged" every day after the 24th, this is what I saw on October 31st:
Ping UsWelcome back, musafir! When you update your blog let us know with a ping.
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This morning it read "Updated 21 hours ago" !
In the first few days the number of visitors dropped noticeably. That is the bad news. The good news is that after I started notifying Google, Yahoo, Del.icio.us, and Digg my hits are averaging the level I reached with Technorati. So, based on my experience I'd say that bloggers can survive without Technorati. I'm talking about the vast majority of us, not the stars of the blogosphere. No doubt they receive special attention from Technorati and they deserve it. But bloggers have other choices, rewarding choices, to announce new posts. Listing in Technorati will undoubtedly increase the hits, but I'm content.
Have noticed that the Washington Post no longer shows a link to bloggers alongside all major news items in the web edition.
