I’ve had an increasing number of emails from readers over the past few months telling me about problems that they have with Technorati.
Now I’m not wanting this to turn into a bitch session – I personally have a lot of time for the Technorati team who have developed a very useful tool in a relatively short period of time – however I’ve had my own frustrations with them in the past months also and am not having any luck in getting any attention from them.
Now on one hand I’m not too worried because in the scheme of things it doesn’t matter – but on the other hand when there is a tool that has a lot of potential like Technorati I’d be stupid not to want to get the most out of it.
Here’s four of the issues that I’ve been having:
Pings Not Working – No Indexing
When I look at the blogs I’ve claimed at Technorati on my Ping form it shows me that ProBlogger hasn’t been updated in 198 days. In fact this is the case for all of my blogs (only one seems to be up to date). As I look at the last 10 or so posts on this blog I notice that none have been indexed despite me pinging Technorati every time I post via ecto and despite me having tried to manually ping them via the web based ping service.
I’d really love to get indexed by technorati – but it’s been months from what I can tell since I have been on any (at least the one’s I’ve checked) of my 20 blogs (with the exception of 1). As a result when I’ve used Technorati Tags (something I’d love to be able to utilize better) they’ve failed to be indexed also.
Top 100 List Not Up to Date
This one’s probably got more to do with my own ego than anything else – but the past few months have seen ProBlogger gradually climb in it’s Technorati ranking. In the past couple of weeks it’s gone above the magical 100 mark for the first time. This should mean it’s featured in the Top 100 blogs – one would think so wouldn’t they?
Today ProBlogger is ranked 85th but the top 100 list doesn’t have any sign of it in that or any other position and hasn’t done so since the blog went past the 100 mark. It’s not a biggie – but it makes me wonder how many other blogs are missing in action from the ‘top list’.
API problems
Perhaps linked to the last point – other services that draw on Technorati through it’s API are having trouble with ProBlogger also. For example the Blog Network List that does a ranking of blogs in networks and networks doesn’t pick up ProBlogger in it’s Technorati lists. I’m told that this is something that is happening for a number of blogs that should be featured on the list and is something they’ve approached Technorati about to no avail. Matt from the list tells me that the API is just not reporting the data. I presume this is the same process that isn’t working with the Top 100 list. Once again it doesn’t both me that much except that it leaves holes and inaccuracies in the work of others.
Customer Support Silence
I cannot imagine the masses of incoming email and requests that the Technorati customer service department get so it doesn’t surprise me that apart from a number of automated thank you emails acknowledging my enquiries I’ve not heard anything from Technorati when I’ve asked questions on a number of occasions about the above issues.
While I have these frustrations I continue to use Technorati’s services every day on a number of levels but unfortunately the way I use it is for finding content on others blogs which is only half the purpose of it – I’d love for others to find my content via it also.
Hopefully 2006 will be a year of ironing out some of these difficulties for the team at Technorati.
Update: I’ve posted an update of my Technorati Problems here
