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A beginner's guide to Technorati
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Technorati is a site that ranks your blog or website based on how many other sites are linking to it. Each site that links to yours will add 1 to your "Authority". Right now, my site has an Authority of 116, which means 116 different sites are linking to mine.Multiple links from the same site do not give you additional points. I think that a site only gives you points if it already has points itself, perhaps someone could clarify that for me?
Your authority score is calculated from the links to your site that have been accumulated in the last six months. This helps to keep the ratings fresh, although it does make it harder to get to the top and stay there.
Signing up and claiming your blog
Go to the Technorati home page and click on the Join link at the top. Fill in the form to create your account, then sign in. (This is pretty much standard fare; hopefully you should be used to this from doing it on other sites.)Once you've signed in, click on Blogs in the navigation bar at the top.
Scroll to the bottom and look for the "Claim your blog" box.
Enter the address of your home page - in my case it would be http://www.benbarden.com - and click Begin Claim.
Now click on the "Use Post Claim" link. On the next screen, you'll be given some instructions:
Follow these instructions to the letter, then click "Release the Spiders!". With any luck this should allow you to claim your blog, if not you may wish to ask the provider of your blogging software for help. Enter some information about your blog and save the changes.
Finding out who's linking to your site
Go back to the Technorati home page. Now that you've signed in and have claimed your blog, you will see the home page has changed. On the right-hand side you'll see your blog name and its authority score.Clicking on the Authority link will take you to a list of the sites that recently linked to yours.
The bold text indicates the link to your site. For instance, in the above screenshot, there is a post called "Frankentrecard" with the link text being "interview with Graham Langdon". You can also see the authority score for the sites that are linking to you, and in turn find out who's linking to them if you're interested.
Technorati favourites
Just before the authority link for each site that's linking to you, a link to the site's Technorati profile is shown. Here's the profile for The Entrecarder:Notice the "Favorite It" link. If you like a site, use this link to add it to your favourites. Posts from your favourite sites will be displayed on the Technorati home page, so this might be of use to you.
How I use Technorati
Firstly, I click on the authority links for my sites every couple of days. I will usually check out a site if it links to me. If you're thinking that you want people to link to you and why should link to anyone else, bear in mind that the reverse is true - basically, if you link to a site, the owner might come and check out yours. I usually reserve outgoing links for posts I enjoy though, rather than just linking to anyone and everyone.Secondly, I add sites I like to my favourites. I do not get into "favourite exchanges", i.e. "you add me, I'll add you", because I'd rather keep a list of sites I like than I list I built up simply by exchanging links with people. The same goes for my favourite sites page.
Over to you...
Was this guide useful?How do you use Technorati?
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Comments on A beginner's guide to Technorati
Actually, I'm not sure about the claiming your blog thing. Are there any specific benefits to signing up and claiming your own blog?
I didn't sign up, and my site still get indexed. There wasn't any prominent uses so I left it as it is. Once in a while, I'll check on the incoming links (like you), but that's about it.
I have claimed my blogs but I haven't really 'used' it yet. That's probably why my ranking isn't very good! ;-)
Sarah
Same here.. haven't used it that much. Eagerily awaiting the rest of this series(?)... :D
ceblogger - thanks for clarifying that. Not sure why your account is stuck, you could try contacting Technorati support about that.
Vincent - claiming your blog allows you to edit your site description and tags. That, and it is shown on the Technorati home page (on the right) when you're logged in. I don't see any other benefits but the site does seem to be pretty simple, so I guess that's par for the course.
Sarah - I don't think there's a lot more you can do with it. This guide didn't take long!
fragileheart - I have no plans for a part 2 unless I find something else about Technorati that's worth sharing. There's not much else but I think it helps to be aware of what it does offer. :)
Thanks for the comments!
ceblogger - try clicking on the "ping" in Technorati. I've found that will sometimes get things moving if they've stalled (assuming there are links not showing up).
Vincent - I was of the understanding that links from blogs not yet claimed in Technorati don't show up unless you specifically ping them. Meaning if you're not set up in Technorati, other blogs may not realise when you link to them.
Ben - I'm with you on the whole links and technorati fav's exchanges. My biggest problem is forgetting who I have and haven't added as a favourite - but Technorati usually lets me know when I double up. LOL.
Lightening - I haven't claimed my blog. And my link to Ben's post comes up. See his screenshot above (below Frankentrecard and Pixelated Thoughts). So I'm quite confused...
I think when Technorati was created, the creators were doubtful(?) of crawling every single blog without help. Hence the asking of users to claim their blog. Then Technorati "knows" such a blog exists, and indexes/crawls that blog's content.
Oh yeah, I set my posts to ping any sites from outgoing links... Maybe that helped.
Edited: May 14, 2008 01:00
Hey, it's good to see I'm not the only one replying to people. It gives the site a real "community feel". :)
The way I understand it, you don't need to claim your blog to have authority. Claiming is really only useful to attach a blog to a username, and to add a description / tags for your site. Not massive benefits, but they probably help in getting your site indexed properly.
That's interesting because I have a number of very small blogs that have me on their blogroll and they've never shown up in Technorati.
Perhaps they haven't been indexed yet. If you link to them, they might show up.
there's a 180 days expiry to a link. the authority will eventually go down without newer links.
Until now, Technorati has not captured and updated the screenshot of my blog, and I'm stuck at 31/32 since three weeks ago.