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Technorati Problems – Update

Posted By Darren Rowse 30th of January 2006 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about My Technorati Problems and had quite a large response from it. Unfortunately the response came only from readers of this blog and not from Technorati themselves. Of course as they don’t seem to be indexing this blog I can understand this as my post will not have come up in their own watch lists for their name.

A number of readers have asked for an update on my Technorati issues outlined in the previous post so here is a quick one:

  1. I still have not heard from Technorati’s customer service department despite emailing them a number of times over the past few months.
  2. ProBlogger is listed by them as not having updated for 222 days. They are only indexing one of my blogs (LivingRoom) which is ironically the blog I update the least.
  3. ProBlogger continues to have a ranking in the top 100 (97 today) yet continues to be left out of the Top 100 list. Some have suggested that this list isn’t updated often and ProBlogger will appear next time it updates. I’ve watched the list and have noticed others coming and going from it but am yet to see this blog appear in it.
  4. The ‘top 100’ yellow button that used to appear next to ProBlogger’s name isn’t appearing any more. Previously despite not being in the actual list this yellow button did appear besides my blog’s name.
  5. There continue to be problems with other site’s trying to access ProBlogger’s details through Technorati’s API.
  6. I have heard through unofficial contacts with people at Technorati that ProBlogger is having problems for a number of reasons ranging from that they believe it to be a splog (go figure) through to there being some issue with things at my end. Of course there is continued silence so what the real reason is is something of a mystery and any attempt to fix things from my end is like a stab in the dark.

Interestingly enough I have heard from Technorati over the past couple of weeks.

My email to them asking for more information on advertising with them was responded to within 24 hours. It looks as though at least one Technorati department is staffed adequately enough to respond to emails. Looks like the only way I’ll get featured on the Top 100 Blogs page is if I pay for it. Maybe I should take out an Ad that says that ;-)

I’ll say once again that I love the service that Technorati is developing. What they say they can do (and what they do do) is fantastic and I admire them greatly – but I hear of and experience increasing problems that I don’t see any progress being made on.

New features appear on Technorati every week or so which make it better – but I can’t help but wonder whether it might be time to work on some of the basics a little more instead of producing new features that it seems many of us don’t feature in because the basics of indexing blogs is just not happening.

Hopefully they find the great Web 2.0 developer that David Sifry posted that they are looking for a few weeks back to get things back in order.

update: since writing this post I have had some limited resolution to some of my problems with Technorati. ProBlogger is now being indexed (most days) and I have been included in the Top 100 again. Some of my other blogs seem to be randomly indexed while others are dead in the water as far as Technorati seem concerned. I’ve officially given up trying to get them included and will put my energies into more productive things than begging them for inclusion.

I’ve found their customer service to be good when I’ve had their attention – but getting it was difficult and a very long process.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. they’re not updating my blog too.. since few weeks ago. and not lists in the tag category i customize for my blog.

  2. I’ve been unable to claim my blogs with Technorati for some time now. E-mailing their customer service has gotten NO response at all.

    Clearly there’s something going on behind the scenes. Even MySpace’s people aren’t this unresponsive to problems.

  3. […] Darren writes over at Problogger about the problems he’s having at Technorati. Like Darren I get a fair few emails on this topic as well, but I guess because I can remember when Technorati was totally broken last year I look at Technorati the way its working now and see a glass half full as opposed to half empty. Sure, its still not perfect but they are doing a much better job now than they were, Dave Sifry listened to the criticism and responded. I’ve even gone back to using Technorati nearly daily after having sworn off the service previously. […]

  4. Yup, you should feel lucky…my site is “unclaimable” and no response when asking for help or an explanation of what the heck that means.

  5. Not too long ago I had trouble claiming my blog. I tried and tried for a few days, but couldn’t get the claim processed. Eventually I decided it wasn’t me so I e-mailed the support folks. I was lucky because they fixed whatever the problem was in a day or so and my claim went through. I guess that’s another one for the lucky guys.

  6. OK…now I get it…I have been having the same problems with my blog as well and quite didn’t understand what was happening then..now I get it..thanks for the update.

    regards,
    jane

  7. I’ve got support tickets back to August of last year. I’ve swapped emails with David Sifry, he’s promised to take care of things. I agree, Darren, the bells and whistles are pulling down the basic business. It’s starting to look like a very fancy package with less and less inside–well now the ads are making the fancy a bit less as well. hmmmm Maybe resources are an issue in more areas than just time.

  8. Yup, cynically I say they respond to communications that will make them money (ads) but not the stuff that involves bug-fixing (I am assuming it’s a bug) their system.

    D’oh.

  9. Same problem with my Site-9 Blog. The claiming worked, but suddenly Technorati stopped indexing it. Instead it says “Last updated 40 days ago” !?

    Last week, I wrote a posting that was quoted in a lot of other German blogs, which all linked back to me. All those quotes were indexed, my original article wasn’t…

    I stick with Google blogsearch for now. Doesn’t look as fancy, but seems to work… kind of…

  10. Damm Technorati, I’m suffering from this problem as well. well, I’ve pinged Pingomatic and Technorati a hundred times and If I continue I’ll waste 1 GB of Broadband this way!

  11. […] Really frustrated as I am, I also found that many other blogs are facing this very problem, the biggest of them being Problogger, which has a Technorati Rank of 97, utter irony and technorati says that problogger has posted nothing for the past 222 days. Poor Darren, repeated attempts at contacting those guys failed utterly. Well, my problem is not desperate as his is but I definitely could use some hits from Technorati. […]

  12. I’m crossing my fingers as I write this, but I don’t have any problems with indexing or claiming any of my blogs. I use a plain and simple classic template from WordPress with a bit of tarting up around the edges and the minimum of plugins. Many of the problems noted probably come from XHTML gobbledygook creeping into all the changes some people make.

    BTW, Technorati did respond to your last post, Darren. Niall Kennedy wrote a couple of lengthy comments which were very helpful. I added the individual ping code for T’rati after pingomatic, as he advised, and it seems to work even faster.

  13. Well, ranking around the 35,000 mark, I don’t have to worry about paying them to get listed in the top 100 :-)

    I do ping Technorati for updates, and I do put at least a half-hearted effort into tagging, but frankly I don’t *use* it for anything, so I’m not sure what the fuss is about. Are there really so many people actually using this (that is, using it to find content) that any of us should get overly excited? Aren’t most of us searching with Google et al.?

    I tend to treat all of this tangential stuff (Technorati, Blogspot, DMOZ etc.) as less than critical. Maybe I’m clueless, but I just don’t see that this has legs. I got a little more excited when there were rumors about Google buying Technorati. Now the same rumors are going around about Yahoo and Technorati but why on earth would they? Tagging obviously doesn’t help accuracy, obviously does encourage spamming efforts, so why should Yahoo, Google or any of us care?

    “Tagging” seemed like a good idea on the surface, but reality shows us that it gives just as much crapola – maybe even more. Am I wrong?

    I don’t know. Maybe I’m missing something?

  14. I agree with pcunix, and also thought that I might be clueless since I don’t understand the value of the tags for T-rati, Delicious or Furl. I’ve read plenty of posts on many blogs about what a great idea tagging is, but so far have no come across a very good explanation as to “Why” that might be. Is it just “noise” when a Google or Yahoo blogsearch would serve us better?

    If someone can point me to a source to enlighten me on this subject, I would be grateful, because I do feel as if I may be missing the boat. Problem is, I don’t know what the boat looks like.

    At any rate, I’ve noticed that they’ve stopped indexing my blog as well. Maybe it’s my attitude.

    Thanks for the update.

  15. Hey Darren,

    I’m not really having any problems with Technorati. They seem bo be indexing my Blogs fine.

    I find that I’m getting 80% of my traffic from MSN Search and am getting a good ranking on Blogtopsites.

    So, until something goes drastically wrong, I’ll just keep pinging along the way I have been.

    Just my 2 cents
    Joe

  16. Well to add to this discussion, my weblogs are not updated either and I am not sure why. Some weblogs are not updated for 170+ days while some are updated right away. I have used the internal pinging of Movable Type as well as Pingoat at times and ping-o-matic at times as well.

    I was concerned that maybe there was something wrong with my templates but do not have a good reason to think that customized templates could break something as simple as pinging. It only appears that the problem must reside at Technoratis end.

  17. Technorati hasn’t pinged my blog over a month, and I’m getting tired of adding the tags. What’s the point of making your site friendly to a search engine if it refuses to index you?

  18. Well, as I said, I’ll keep doing Technorati tags and will ping them and all the others to notify of updates, but:

    Fo this past week my Analytics referrer report shows almost 35,000 referral’s from Google, and exactly 2 from Technorati. Oh, and del.ico.us sent 20, so I suppose that Technorati probably deserves credit for those, but really, who cares: I get far more inbound traffic from Problogger and Digital point than Technorati. They are way down in the random noise area and I wouldn’t even know they were there at all if I didn’t go looking for them.

  19. Oh, and as to whether a Google or other search is better, I’d say absolutely.

    In the first place, there is a LOT of content that never has been tagged and never will be, so Technorati knows nothing of those pages. Secondly, there are too many idiot users who tag promiscously so you get unrelated content. Many of these are just lazy: because they *sometimes* write about SubjectX, SubjectY etc. , they tag every post with every tag they ever write about. Finally, the splogs of course lie about their tags (but then they lie about everything).

    The result is that a tag search is going to miss some content and possibly turn up even more irrelevant content from people who open the salt shaker top to pour on their tags.

    And that’s undoubtedly why I don’t see much from Technorati in my logs.. intelligent people realize all this pretty quickly and don’t search with Technorati or anything like it. All of us keep tagging our content because we are afraid there are people who DO search that way, so we effectively give the impression that these sites are valuable – and they really aren’t (my NSHO, of course).

    Yeah, I know: there are “big names” who think tagging and social bookmarking is the flavor of the century, but I just do not see it, sorry. If it weren’t for the sploggers and the indiscriminate taggers, and if it truly were ubiquitous, then sure: tagging would be great. But in the real world, it isn’t.

  20. They should be called:

    TechNOTrot.

    No response to problems, no mentions of trouble on their site, incorrect stats *everywhere. Amazing.

    I guess they just don’t care.

  21. […] I did some searching on the problem and I appear to be in good company. Many bloggers, including Darren from problogger.net, are battling this problem and appear to be unable to lick it. The only advice I found was to check the site for XHTML compliance. While the site failed miserably, all of the errors were minor and none affected the stories. In the end, fixing all of the errors I could produced no result. […]

  22. […] That’s not an isolated problem, as many websites share their similar – bad – experiences : Hans Mestrum, Problogger, Mindblog, and so on. Look at the posts themselves, as well at the post’s comments… […]

  23. I realise this post is a couple of months old now but I have only just found it (though google) after doing a search for technorati problems. I myself am having problems with their service – my blog has not been indexed for 87 days now and I have emailed them several times about it. Total silence on their part. It worked fine for me up until 87 days ago…I have no idea what “went wrong.” Not sure what else I can do really.

  24. Here’s an outline of the steps I took to resolve my Technorati issues: http://www.squidoo.com/technorati_tips.

    Let me know if they work for you.

  25. […] I’ve posted an update of my Technorati Problems here If you enjoyed this post Bookmark it at del.icio.us and Subscribe to the Free ProBloggerNewsletter […]

  26. It’s sad.. I ve the same problems with some of my blogs. Other blogs of mine are updated correctly. That’s really frustrating.

  27. […] Mon constat, si ce problème d’indexation a affecté mon blogue et que Technorati a un backlog important au niveau de son support technique, est qu’il y a sûrement d’autres blogues qui ont éprouvé ou qui éprouvent ce problème. A la suite d’une recherche, j’ai effectivement pu constaté que ce problème est récurent chez Technorati. Aucun détail sur la nature de ce problème n’est évoqué par l’entreprise. Même des blogues dans le top 100 ont déjà été affectés par ce mystérieux problème. Curieusement, l’information disponible concernant la solution de problème de ping et d’indexation est quasiment inexistante sur le site Web de Technorati. […]

  28. 12-07-2006 and the same Brokenrati problem is still here: updated 192 days ago!

  29. I can’t get any posts from my new blog to show up despite repeated pinging and yet I’ve never had difficulty with my other blogs. And the number of blogs that link to me resets to zero constantly. Go figure.

  30. “Technorati becomes deathnorati”
    claimed, worked then stopped, now my blog has updated 99 days ago….Poorest customer support I have ever seen, no reply, only auto reply emails, I guess the ping sever validation is following some very strict rules. If any other service similar to this please suggests me, I would like to stop using this anymore. Moreover communities, blogs are controlling products, brands not companies. If they don’t listen then have to pay the price.

    Kind grds
    Saran

  31. Technorati becomes deathnorati…

    in response to post : Technorati Problems – Update by Darren Rowse Technorati becomes deathnorati claimed,…

  32. Darren-

    Googling around to see that many, many people are having problems with Technorati.

    As for my experiences with them, they seem to be imploding over there. You should do a feature post on the current state, along with alternatives for bloggers who are fed up and ready to jump ship.

    I’ll bet that gets their attention better than a non-advertising email, too…

    -DH

  33. Do you think it’s possible to be bared from Technorati… by overpinging maybe? Just a thought like…
    Technorati is really driving me around the bend at the moment as only one of my blogs seems to be working in the directory…

  34. I hope they don’t ban for excessive pining because I have been ping happy trying to get mine indexed. My experience is bizarre, I hadn’t even thought of listing in Technorati and when I first visited there I noticed that many of my posts were already there. But they had stopped indexing inexplicably before I had even looked at Technorati in a browser let alone create a profile and start authorising my blog. I have done the respective auto ping/ping link from home page and create article with link code, and email support for further assistance. Reading this post and comments I am going to forget about trying to get Technorati going as expected and come try again in a month or so…

  35. wow, i am a bit worried now about the pinging. Sometimes you just dont know when something comes up.

    http://www.ezy-pzy.com

  36. I’m about ready to drop them from my site. The last few times I have tried to access their site, my computer freezes up on me and I have to log off before I can get away from it. I am on dial-up, so my speed is kind of slow, even with Propel, but still, Technorati is the only site that I consistently have this problem with.

    I don’t think there is a customer service department to speak of. I think they just come in every so often, add whatever new feature they want, and then just let it run. I don’t think anybody is home at that site.

    When I read your problem being listed in the top 100, I thought to myself, yeah, they probably want you to pay for that. Sure enough, that seems to be what you found out.

    I have had more problems with them than any other site on the internet, and if they don’t do something quick, I am going to first take myself off their site (when I can find the spare five or six hours that will probably take) and then I am going to take them off my blog.

    I am not going to continue to promote a site that has such consistently lousy service.

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