Technorati = FAIL

Technorati problemsRecently I added a few new features to my site. One addition was a Technorati widget that should show my blogs authority, sites that link to me, Technorati tags and more. Alas this widget had several problem. At first it fails to load regularly and even when it loads my authority stays zero, although it says four on the Technorati site. I then found a much simpler widget that should only show a nice graphic of the current blog authority. This also doesn’t work and only shows a simple HTML link to my profile page. *sigh*

When I check out my Technorati profile page I notice that although the information about sites that linked to my blog is fairly up to date, the most recent entry in the “Latest posts” category is 109 days old!!! From my current standpoint Technorati seems to be severely broken. I have tried to “ping” manually but this hasn’t helped much.

So, what’s wrong with Technorati? Have other bloggers noticed the same faulty behaviour or is it just me? Any help or advice would be appreciated! And while you are at it, check out blog.beetlebum.de. It’s a german cartoon blog created by the artist who created the cool artwork above.

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

5 comments

comments user
Zachary

I've had a lot of issues with technorati. It's had me stuck on an Authority of 5, never updates, never updates even when I ping–I've been round and round with it. Tired of it.

<abbr><abbr>Zacharys last blog post..Whitehall ParaIndustries</abbr></abbr>

comments user
bonemaster

I'll have to check my stuff, I have the Technorati code on my site, but I really don't look at it at all.

<abbr><abbr>bonemasters last blog post..Review : Introduction to Irrin</abbr></abbr>

comments user
jonathan

As someone who actually really likes Technorati – I find that there are sometimes when the widget fails to load – but when i hit Technorati's site the feed is correct. I think they are simply maxing out their bandwidth from all the blogs who use them, and the graphic doesn't always load right away (or not at all if it times out). For one, about the pings, you need to make sure your RSS feed (not your http address) is set up to automatically ping Technorati whenever you make a new blog post. I've noticed that some wordpress blogs don't do this (maybe because their host doesn't auto ping Technorati for them?); but I've never really had a problem with it on The Core Mechanic (which is a blogspot hosted blog). Its just a guess, but maybe this is the problem?

I have noticed that by placing the Technorati widget at the bottom of my page it helped with page loading times. Something about the script makes the browser wait while it loads up your current rating.

<abbr><abbr>jonathans last blog post..RPG Blog Anthology Weekly Update</abbr></abbr>

comments user
Micah

I've battled with Technorati in the past. I can't help with the authority scores, but I do know a little about pinging.

See here: http://blog.aisleten.com/2007/10/08/battling-ping

comments user
Stargazer

Thanks for all the advice. I think I will look into this on the weekend or so. And if it doesn't work out as planned, I will just have to live without a Technorati widget. By the way, are there any similar sites?