Saturday, May 05, 2007

Technorati Authority and some cosmetic improvements

Some good feedback on our new Blog page and People pages. It's great to read good things and we have a lot more in store for May. Stay tuned. Also some comments about Technorati Authority.

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

It is important to note that we measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if I link to your blog many times, I still only count as +1 toward your authority. Of course, new links mean my +1 will last another 180 days.

Technorati Rank is calculated based on how far you are from the top as
expressed by the number of blogs linking to you. Since at the lower
end of the scale many blogs will have the same Technorati Authority, they will share the same Technorati Rank.

As of this writing, my blog has 16 inbound blogs, thus my Technorati Authority is 16. I'm sure there are many other blogs with 16 inbound blogs and we all have the same Technorati Rank.


Dorion
Authority: 16 · Rank: 305,316

so, I'm 305,316 steps from the top of the charts, based on 16 blogs pointing to me.



Technorati Displays New Authority Ranking by Ben Yoskovitz.

Technorati switches number of links for authority by FranticIndustries.

Technorati Establishes an ‘Authority’ Ranking System and Gets a New Look by doshdosh.

doshdosh also points out the Technorati WTF you can vote for, it you like.


Technorati Gains Authority Especially with the MyBlogLog Faithful
by parislemon.

Technorati Tags:


Update:

I've posted the definitions to the Technorati Weblog under Technorati Authority and Rank.

4 comments:

Rich Tatum said...

I wish there was a better formula for defining "authority." Ranking as a measurement of the number of inbound links is easy to understand and fine for it's purpose, but I view a blogs "authority" as more a measure of how others view that blog.

I wish there were some way to measure, say, the conversation index as an authority factor. Blogs with greater interaction by its community have more authority than blogs with no interaction and, possibly, no community. So, it would be cool if the number of comments for a blog over the last 180 days could be a factor.

Traffic to posts (other than the homepage) would seem to be an authoritative factor, as well.

And the number of subscribers to a given feed would also seem to be a good measure of authority.

Unfortunately, these measurements are hard to get at and I don't see an easy way for Technorati to measure it.

I just wish that there was some other way than simple links to measure this ranking because inbound links are somewhat susceptible to gaming.

I've seen bloggers with very small subscriber bases and minimal traffic rank higher than blogs with 3-5 times the traffic and subscribers simply because they got onto some blogring or blogroll somewhere.

Oh well, this will mature over time, I suppose.

Rich
BlogRodent

dorion said...

Rich, thanks for the comment. I agree that there are better metrics for authority to be developed. Your suggestions are solid and worth considering. Thanks, again.

Roger Jennings (--rj) said...

IMO, Technorati needs to weigh the Authority of inbound links in their calculation of Authority.

See http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/suggestion-for-technorati-blog.html

dorion said...

Roger, this could be an improvement, but then it could also spiral out of control where gamed links provide more authority to the sites they link to. Worth think about, thanks for the suggestions.