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How To Build ‘Blog Authority’ – Technorati Style

Posted By Darren Rowse 8th of November 2006 Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 Comments

Dave Sifry’s ‘State of the Blogosphere’ posts are a quarterly occourance and generally cause a bit of a stir around the blogosphere for different reasons. Some use the stats to boast how far we’ve come – others to point out our weaknesses. Either way – this quarter’s one is out at State of the Blogosphere, October, 2006 – complete with the usual array of pretty graphs and interesting stats (well interesting to some).

There’s an interesting new section on blog authority and the posting behavior for bloggers that have different Technorati rankings.

The description of what they found about the blogs with very high authority (those in their top 4000) was interesting. I’ll break down their paragraph on these blogs into bullet points (with a little editing):

  • This group exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age
  • Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average
  • The post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group with lower authority
  • Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati
  • Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media.
  • As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.

The following graph summarizes some of the differences between the four groups.

Slide0006-8

Obviously blog age, posting frequency and post count have a a significant impact. The blog age bit fits with my own little study on Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs which found that they have an average age of 33.8 months.

Here’s the summary of the other parts of Dave’s post:

  • Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
  • Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
  • Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
  • About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
  • About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati’s filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
  • There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
  • The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
  • Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.
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. “Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media”

    This is an interesting trend. Do you think we could say that successful blogs are transforming themselves into mainstream media or the very concept of mainstream media is about to change?

  2. It has been good to read all that facts and so; but besides age and post frequency… i found that bunch of data useless…

    there’s no real tip or “how to”

  3. Kevin says: 11/08/2006 at 2:04 am

    So basically the people who stay at it and are looking for the long haul have a greater chance of success. I think many people want to post a few blogs, get dugg, and retire. Just doesn’t happen that way from what I can see.

  4. I wonder if the “4% of new splogs get past Technorati’s filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days” is really 3% and 1% of legitimate blogs are being removed from the index for no reason.

  5. Your blog can only be as old as it is. So is the proactive message here that to increase authority, “post more often?”

    Also, Darren, I’d be interested in hearing more about your view of these high authority blogs acting more “like our friends in the mainstream media.” If that means being more diligent, creative, supplying more info and just going at it with more gusto I say it’s not a bad thing.

  6. All of the numbers and charts and graphs *faints*

    The statement “About 55% of all blogs are active, which means that they have been updated at least once in the last 3 months.” is a bit misleading. Probably half of the newly created blogs (which is a rather large number) in the past 3 months were only worked on for a week…

  7. That was interesting and even gave me an idea for a post on both of my blogs :) Also discovered that one of them is now a medium authority blog, which is nice to know. To infinity and beyond.etc…

  8. Technorati have been causing headaches for me lately. Blogs that I had indexed & listed have vanished & now I’m unable to reclaim them without getting errors.

    Anyone else had experiences with this problem & how to possibly fix it? :)

  9. […] No matter. It sounds important and fancy-shmancy to say you were featured in a newspaper, but in real terms it does little for you in terms of traffic. Even a story in The New York Times doesn’t provide as much juice as a link from Instapundit or the Daou Report. In the end, there’s no better way to build traffic than to generate great content, every day, for several years. That and some simple promotion techniques will do more for your visibility than any service – be it MyBlogLog, Blogburst or Blog Explosion – ever could. […]

  10. That would be a Technorati problem Stuart and you should be contacting them directly. Technorati is notoriously buggy and you might have to keep bugging them (no pun intended) to fix your account. That’s what I had to do.

  11. I agree with HART on that…

    I’ve been submitting my support tickets (at least a dozen) for the last six months, regarding two of my blogs cannot be claimed.

    Ironically, I still see tons of splogs getting on second or third pages.

    Writing to them is worse than talking to an answering machine. At the very least the recipient returns your call. Technorati…flat hope!!! Yeah, Dream on, baby…that’s what Technorati would say to those with problems!

    And to quote their auto reply support ticket, ” We hope we may be of service.” What service? This…I so want to know!!!

    Boy, am I mad just the mention of Technorati.

  12. It’s a very impressive study.

    It confirm agian that your blog should at least be one year old to see some good results. There is exception to the rule though.

    I really got to do something for the post frequency on my blogs.

  13. Excellent information (yes, i found all the graphs interesting), much appreciated!

  14. Thanks, Darren, very interesting. I always learn something when I stop by.

    To me, the whole reference to the main stream just means that we take what we do seriously, continue to give something of value, as best we can, on a regular basis.

    Having fun at what we are doing is still the most important thing to me. Why take on something so time consuming like have a blog that requires regular attention, if you aren’t having fun at it?

    I guess if I wanted to get rich, maybe I’d try to look at it differently, or something, but then I probably would have a blog about something else besides Willie Nelson and music.

    But, if it’s not fun, why do it?

    Thanks again, Darren, you continue to inspire me.

  15. Actually, these days Technorati has problems indexing some sites. See their blog entry, Indexing Issues Follow-up, and a related thread on the FeedBurner support forum.

  16. […] I was going to write about the latest State of the Blogosphere report by David Sifry last week but, to be honest, by the time I got my arse into gear it seemed that everyone else had beaten me to it and I didn’t have too much to add. […]

  17. I would really expect there to be some actual info on here about what Blog Authority means and how it is built up…

  18. Thank you for the inspiration and encouragement. Now I have to be off to write a post… ;)

  19. The study is insightful and Problogger is always an interesting read, but I can’t see the link between the headline and the article…

  20. I know this post has been around for two and a half years now but it still makes a good read.

    To pick up on “Daily Blog Tips” comment, a journalist friend only the other week mentioned that one quality a good journo needs today is some basic html and other internet related skills such as knowing how to ftp, etc.

    According to the BBC a little while back, in a decade or so, the newspaper as we know it today will more than likely be a thing of the past. There will be portable “readers” that we will use to log onto the newspaper’s website (probably for a fee) and read the news that way.

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