Technorati’s authority value ISN’T worthless
Bloggintips.com has written off Technorai’s authority rating and ReviewMe in one foul swoop. That’s fine, I agree with his arguments to an extent, but these things have to start somewhere. You can’t expect the perfect authority ranking system from their first try at it; at least they are doing something.
Technorati’s authority ranking is pretty simple and it is easily gamed, it’s just based on back links from other blogs, the more you have the higher your rating. Yeah you can buy links and what not to build it up, but at the end of the day there’s only so much you can spend on doing that, real blogs with real back links will grow faster and longer than anyone who buys links. Having people cheat the system is a good thing, that’s how these systems evolve, Technorati will learn how these people are cheating it and change their algorithm, just the same as search engines do, people cheat the rankings and the search engines change how they rank, it’s the cycle of internet life.
I think Technorati have bigger issues, their search is average to say the least. I’d like to see someone use the Google search API and integrate that with Technorati’s authority ranking and Alexa data to provide a more accurate view of what blogs are authorities. Mostly because Google is the king of search and Technorati have at least made a start on some kind of authority ranking for blogs.
Bloggingtips.com also criticised how ReviewMe sets their pricing, saying that since Alexa ranks and Technorati authority can be easily inflated it’s not a good indication of what the price of a review should be.
I agree, it’s not perfect but I think the buyer should always use some due diligence and go investigate the blog themselves. ReviewMe are using the biggest sources around to base their pricing on and that’s the same sources most people look at when buying a link or a post direct from a blog themselves anyway.
Everything out there can be faked, page rank, RSS subscribers, how old your blog is, how old your domain is, posts, everything, Technorati’s ranking does show the big boys as big boys, shoemoney.com has a 4.5k authority ranking and that’s more than most people could buy if they tried. I think the authority rank will get better, it needs to but at least it’s a start, for now if you’re buying any advertising from blogs, check as much as you can before you buy.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:35 am
ahhh technorati needs lots of improvements
July 19th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Hi Todd,
Thanks for writing about this subject. As you know, it’s something which conerns me.
With regards to Technorati, I disagree that there is only so much you can do. As I write this post I have an authority of about 262 which means the blog has 262 links from other blogs. I have never taken part in any link train so these links are for the most part all genuine links to the 250 or so posts I have written in the last4 months.
If you check a few blogs who have taken part in the viral tag train, you know the one where people just place hundreds of * on their sites (and the *’s are links) you will know that most of these have authority’s in excess of 500.
This may sound like sour grapes but it’s not, all it does is highlight how poor the authority system is. I can see the relevance on technorati’s site but when the price of a review is based on this its a different story. The fact that someone with a week old blog with 5 posts can leap frog over blogs with hundreds of posts simply by taking part in a link train shows why it should not be used. I agree that people have to research the blog they are advertising on and I have posted about this in the past. However it doesnt change the fact ReviewMe are using a very inaccurate system for pricing reviews.
With regards to Alexa, have at my alexa post from a few months ago. Text link ads admitted that Alexa is a terrible way to analyse a site.
To put things in perspective. Blogging Tips has a rank about 50,000 or so on Alexa. My discussion forums gets 2 to 3 times the traffic Blogging Tips gets and has a rank of 425,000+. What does that tell you about Alexa?
The title of your post is ‘Technorati’s authority value ISN’T worthless’ but I dont think that you have said anything to back this up. Yes I agree with you, Technorati’s ranking system is more correct for the big boys, eg shoemoney etc. However, the high traffic blogs do not rely on the prices set by reviewme as much as the little guys eg. the blogs with just a few hundred subscribers
I hate link trains and spammish promotion methods but I know I could get my authority to over 1000 in the next month if i wanted to. I never would do this though as thats not the way I like to promote a site.
For the record, iI dont know of any way to lie about how old your blog is or how old your domain is - archive.org will show you older versions of any site on the web and a simple whois search will display when a domain name is registed.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Yeah I agree with you, and I hate the people, who scam and spam their way to fake rankings, and Alexa is way out of whack, they promoted their toolbar years ago heavily and I haven’t seen it promoted in years so I really doubt their traffic estimates any anywhere near accurate.
I don’t think it’s all that worthless just yet, like I wouldn’t jump ship straight away, I think Technorati needs to keep working the algorithm for their authority rank, implementing it to start with I think was a good move, bloggers need something to separate their blogs out from all the ‘made for AdSense’ blogs, all it needs is some tweaking and all the ranks would change.
The better the mouse trap the smarter the mouse, even with new a new algorithm it’ll only be a matter of time before they find another way to cheat it. But that’s how it is with the internet, Google’s forever changing their algorithms because people are always trying to cheat the results, as long as Technorati keep developing I don’t see it as worthless just yet… If they never do anything with it, then yeah, there’s no fking point to it.
My site and my domain, well it’s a bit out of whack, I bought the domain ages about because i was going to build a site around Microsoft CRM dynamics, that’s one of my backgrounds, but I’m taking a break from CRM consulting to do this more
so the domain is older than the site actually is. 
Think my site’s only 2 and a half weeks old now! It’s a baby!
July 19th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I think its a bit of a stretch to say Technorati uses an algorythm to work out its authority. Its just the number of backlinks a site has, thats it. Theres no fancy formula or whatever, its just the number of incoming links and as I mentioned, this can be gamed very very easily
Good luck with your blog, although it’s new, you’ve been posting a lot so best of luck to you
July 19th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Yeah, there’s not much to it, but it counts so it’s an algorythm, and it needs lots of work.
Thanks!
July 19th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
maybe your definition of algorythm differs from mine haha
authority = x
where x = number of backlinks
maybe it’s because im from a mathematics background but it can hardly be called an algorythm
July 19th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
BAH!
July 19th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
yeah yeah it sucks but I’m an optimist, hopefully they’ll do more with it soon, actually turn it into an algorithm then a simple count.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
I’m a realist! haha
Seriously Todd, this isn’t a new feature of reviewme or TLA. They have been using Alexa to base ad prices for more than 2 years. Would you still be optimistic of change after more than 2 years of complaints about it?
July 19th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Yeah I know, but there’s not many other resources as large as Alexa to base pricing on, there are others but not many, I like compete.com’s data but I don’t think it’s big enough either. Personally I think blogs and what not should just be setting their own pricing 100% TLA should have no say in the value of a link on their site, TLA’s only going to up the price based on a shitty algorithm they have which is based on average data from 3rd parties like Alexa and Technorati who don’t have a snapshot of the whole internet, only a small slice with people cheating all of them.
I think the pricing at TLA is over inflated anyway, probably because their 50% commission is so large for anyone to make money they have to double the cost of links sold from there.
Even if Alexa and Technorati provide better data I still think TLA and review me would be overpriced, owners should be setting their own pricing and the services should be charging less commissions.
If they wanted accurate blog traffic stats then their plugging would also provide tracking to give buyers a real insight into how much traffic the blog receives so they can make a better educated decision, not based on the stats of other services.
I just don’t think the Technorati authority rank should be written off just yet, it is just a back link count, the higher the number the more of an authority the blog possibly is, once you start getting into the thousands the real authority sites start to show, anything under that is defiantly all over the place, and I’m no fan of TLA or ReviewMe, I think they both have a long way to go.
Forgetting how TLA and ReviewMe set their pricing for a minute, what do you think would be the best way to measure a sites ‘authority’ status?
I’ve always thought of some kind of authority rank is the way ranking of blogs will turn since there is so many spam ones popping up now days, and they all do work on getting back links so the current Technorati system isn’t perfect, what would be the best way to rank the real ones from the spam ones?
July 19th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
The vast majority of blogs do not have an authority in the thousands, thats my point. So this affects the majority of sites on reviewme
The authority figure is fine for technorati as its just a quick way of seeing how popular a site is. However, when advertising sites use it as a basis for ad prices it gives people a reason to game it. I dont think ad prices should be based on anything like the authority rank
They should make you put a stats counter on your site and use page rank and rss subscribers too in their calculations
I dont think that alexa and technorati should be used just because there is no other sites like them
July 20th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Yeah I agree, these ad systems shouldn’t be using them as a pricing method.