04 January 2009

Stuff that doesn't work

It seems that I'm not the only one finding problems with (see Notes from underground: Ping Technorati, Ping Technorati).

Anali's First Amendment: Ping Me Please!:
I've been trying to get Technorati to ping my blog for 18 days now and it still won't do it.

Apparently this has been a problem for many people, since PING is a huge topic in their support section. Hopefully they'll fix this soon.

For this blog, the Technorati site shows:

Notes from underground Last Pinged 25 days ago

and another blog (updated yesterday)

Khanya Last Pinged 11 days ago

And for some of my other blogs it's been even longer.

And if the problem is as widespread as it seems to be, then it means that other sites that use Technorati rankings and "authority", like Amatomu, are relying on incomplete and inaccurate data when they rank South African blogs according to their Technorati rank.

1Adii Freelancer & Business Strategist
| by adii ranked 1288 on Technorati
2Marco's Blog
| by marcog ranked 5831 on Technorati
3Ninja Monkeys!
| by Vaughn ranked 14926 on Technorati
4Online Reputation Management
| by ViperChill ranked 19454 on Technorati
5AfriGadget
| by hash ranked 20878 on Technorati
6Cape Town Daily Photo
| by kerryanne ranked 25556 on Technorati
7SA Rocks
| by nicharry ranked 28099 on Technorati
8Vinny Lingham's Blog
| by Vinny Lingham ranked 28411 on Technorati
9Cherryflava
| by Cherryflava ranked 30835 on Technorati
10Web AddiCT(s);
| by rafiq ranked 35747 on Technorati
11The Vegan Diet
| by Vegan ranked 37082 on Technorati
12So Close
| by Tertia ranked 38755 on Technorati
13Skinny laMinx
| by Heather Moore ranked 40190 on Technorati
14Nic Haralambous Writes
| by nicharry ranked 41404 on Technorati
15iMod - Anything & Everything Web
| by Chris M ranked 43057 on Technorati
16Affiliate Lounge
| by dreampunchboy ranked 44457 on Technorati
17Mike Stopforth
| by mikestopforth ranked 47546 on Technorati
18Architectradure
| by cati ranked 47970 on Technorati
19Eric Edelstein
| by Eric ranked 51581 on Technorati
20iScatterlings
| by iScatterlings ranked 56528 on Technorati
21Khanya
| by SteveH ranked 56528 on Technorati
22Wozafriday
| by Ddavef ranked 60261 on Technorati
23Hunter of Genius
| by MaxKaizen ranked 61585 on Technorati
24SprayGlue
| by SprayGlue ranked 61585 on Technorati
25bloute
| by sparrows ranked 64717 on Technorati

The Technorati people are forever fiddling with their pages "look and feel", which makes stuff more difficult to find. If only they put as much effort into fixing the basic functionality, to make things work.

I don't know about other people, but I usually look at Technorati to see what's going on in the blogosphere right now.

Yesterday, for example, I wanted to see who was blogging about Helen Suzman, who died on New Year's day. No one, according to Amatomu (Search for "+helen +suzman " returned 0 results). No point in looking at Technorati, because posts about a January death will only appear there 3-4 weeks later to judge by the ping rate. So in the absence of any posts on the topic, I wrote one on In Memoriam: Helen Suzman.

But of course I should have looked here. That would have told me who was blogging about Helen Suzman now instead of having to wait a month or two for Technorati to catch up.

It's no use for Technorati to play with the bells and whistles. If the piston isn't connected to the wheels because the connecting rod is missing, that engine ain't going anywhere.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

From the moment they changed their algorithm, Technorati went down. Pity but people can't leave well enough alone, as Sitemeter discovered.

Lisa Johnson said...

Thanks for the mention Steve. Even though my blog is pinged for the moment, I have great doubts about next time. If bloggers in mass all flooded their engineers on twitter with complaints that might do something.

Although, I guess in the greater scheme of life, maybe our joint efforts might be put to better use for something else. Hmmm. Like eliminating comment spam from joshua/deborah? I hate when that happens. ; )

bigbluemeanie said...

I find Technorati very inconsistent (and I am suspicious of any "ranking" system anyway). Something I stumbled across a while back is British Blogs. It doesn't use any other aggregator and it checks your blog for updates based on the frequency of one's posting.

It sounds like you need a South African version of the above.

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