Wednesday 13 January 2010

Why Claim Technorati?

Technorati, effectively a directory of blogs, is never something I've bothered much about (after all, there is google). This is underscored by the fact that whenever I've looked for our site on it, little or nothing shows up.

However, the other day I noticed Creative Tourist's second top 25 arts blogs list. Initially I thought we'd dropped off the bottom. Then it turned out that we'd jumped from 23rd to 9th. Great, but why? Traffic didn't seem to be massively up.

It turns out that in November the Technorati data were unavailable and it was more based on google (I've always felt that having a blog hosted by google, as ours is, can only help in their search listings, in terms of ensuring we're promptly indexed). Doubtless, though, this was only temporary.

Now, since I'm not without ego, I headed over to Technorati to see if I could do anything to boost our score. Now, I like to think I'm pretty tech-savvy, but it isn't very clear. Apparently you have to 'claim' your blog in order for them to actually look at it (it's pretty well a one click operation to get google to index my blog, but hey ho). They helpfully provide an FAQ on blog claiming (though one that doesn't actually tell you how to claim your blog).

Well, it's a simple process: you just have to create an account (handing over your name and e-mail address), then access your account, scroll down a bit to a section called 'my claimed blogs' and enter your url. Then all you have to do is enter lots of details. Except we're still not done (if you're only interested in having your blog indexed by google you're already away with your feet up enjoying a nice cup of tea).

They then give you an authorisation code which you have to stick onto your blog. You can't just stick it into the page's header or footer, since it won't pick that up. It has to be a brand new post (hence this - AHSE2EGQK4S3 ). Actually, that's not strictly speaking true, but since the blogger feed doesn't seem to update when you revise a post, that's what I've had to do (it may be different on other services).

Even then you're not done. Oh no. Now your blog goes into a queue, waiting for a human being to check it isn't spam, never mind you've already had to type one of those silly code words and expend all this effort. Mindbogglingly efficient. I can see why the number of blogs listed is so minute in comparison to the number out there. Why would you use this when google just works (except if you're trying to boost your score in a ranking that uses them)?

So, a nice procedure then. All to try and ensure my ranking on a top 25 list. It's a little pathetic really....

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