Getting a "Reaction"

Chris Catto of http://blog.chriscatto.com/ was asking about how to get a "reaction" on Technorati.

A reaction on Technorati is a blog giving a hyperlink to another blog. To some, this is known as link love, or even a link exchange. To get a reaction, just get someone to link to your blog, or any article on your blog.

Reactions are only reactions if they come from Technorati indexed blogs. If the link is less than 180 days old, then this also adds to the blogs "Authority". A linking blog may provide as many Reactions as it wishes, but only the last Reaction counts as an Authority vote.

Once you have a reaction to your blog, then the next time you post an entry to your blog and Technorati gets pinged and indexes you, then the reaction is converted into Authority.

90 Days in One Day

For some blog programs to make money, such as PayPerPost, there is a requirement to have your blog be 90 days old. Why wait? Age your blog in a day.

The PayPerPost Blog Requirements state:

• Your blog must be at least 90 days old, verifiable by a third party index of the site.
• If over 90 days old, your blog must have at least 20 entries in the past 90 days. If just around 90 days old, your blog must have 20 pre-existing entries.
• No blogs with gaps over 30 days (no entries posted for 30+ days) will be accepted.

So to get around this just create a bunch of new blog entries and change the timestamps on your blog entries to spread them out over a three or four month period. (Hint: put more of your entries in the current month so they will still count in a few days for now. Your first attempt to get your blog accepted is likely not going to work. It may take you a couple of weeks to get everything right.)

Once you have done this you can then submit your blog to Google and get it indexed. Also submit your blog to the main Google index.

This probably won't really work for you. So what you need to do is get some "link love". Get several people to link to your site in exchange for you linking to them. While submitting your site will get Google to crawl your pages, the link love is what makes Google decide to put you in the public index so people see your site.

Freshness Variances on Technorati

The term "freshness" as used on Technorati refers to when the last post was made on a blog.

For one blog I have the "everything known" page says the blog was last updated 1 day ago. Yet my favorites page indicates the blog was last updated 13 days ago. A freshness variance of 12 days. This same blog also seems to have questionable content and a few days ago Google ads stopped showing on it. So I do not know if this is a precursor to flagging, or if this is some strange hiccup in the Technorati data warehousing updates.

Technorati on again, off again flagging

Technorati has a flagging policy I can't understand.

I created a blog sometime back called Poker Room Notes. My first post was in March of 2006, about 18 months ago. I'm a little embarrassed. The original purpose of the blog was to show how annoying online poker software was. So I would spend hours creating messages complete with custom graphics that detailed annoyances in the software. I develop software for a living and think that in general poker software has a lot of bad design issues. Initially, there was no advertising on the site. And later I expanded the site to talk about Atlantic City poker rooms.

Well, the Technorati spiders saw "poker" so they flagged the site for "spam." This sounds good now that I hear about it, but I don't email anyone about the site, so it is not a spam site. So what's a flagged person to do? Technorati will manually remove the flag when you ask them to. I did, and the site came into the index.

Well, it was indexed for five days or less, then reflagged. I've sent in a ticket to support and am waiting on a reply again. This re-flagging makes no sense. I'm waiting to hear the rationale behind it all.

Flagged for Review by Technorati

Technorati will flag some blogs for review and not index them at all. In one case, the blog was about experiences in poker rooms. The blog was flagged as possible spam. Ironically, at the time there was no advertising of any sort on the blog. Just description of software problems with online poker, and talk of experiences in Atlantic City poker rooms.

The following email came from Technorati Support

I've taken a look at the issue regarding picking up your pings for
http://redwhiteandbluepoker.blogspot.com/. After making a small adjustment, I've sent our spiders to revisit your page and your blog should be indexed successfully from now on.

Please let us know if you experience any problems in the future. I apologize for any inconvenience. I'm afraid that your blogs were inadvertently flagged for review due to your blog subject. Unfortunately, poker is a subject that at high risk for spam. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions. Thank you for using Technorati!

Best Regards,
Janice Myint
Customer
Support Specialist
Technorati

Some Link Love

Link Love is when you provide on your site a link to another site.

To help increase my Technorati Authority, I am linking to blogs of strangers. I hope to have some of them link back to me.

Authority works by Technorati receiving automatic (or manual) pings when a person updates the content to their blog. Technorati spiders the site looking for new posts (well, actually I think it checks the RSS feed) and extracts links to any page of other blogs. An Authority vote only counts if a link exists or not, not to which page or how many links. Authority also checks the "freshness" of the last link and only counts for 180 days.

In return for more Authority your blog becomes higher in the Technorati search engine.

Here are the blogs I have picked to link to.

http://www.mustardandcatsup.blogspot.com/

Everything and Anything ~ Abc's of fine design ~ Living well with diabetes ~ Mixing It Up Cash Buddy Cafe

My Single Mom Life//Twisted Psycho

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings Lisa Reviews

The Reality of a Brat - The Reality of a Brat

Grab a drink and head on over to The Den of Iniquity! Raspberry Patch Soapworks...reviews and recommendations on all things girly!

Fickle Food Shopping Blog Tiny Dog Blog All About Dogs Blog Mad Doll Doctor Doll & Teddy Repair Blog

magnusgrafex blogs:
http://www.secondlifeupdate.com/
http://www.lifediversity.com/
http://www.familyhelptree.com/blog
http://www.italypurses.com/blog

Technorati Profile

Authority vs. Page Rank

Technorati's "Authority" number is similar in concept to Alexa's ranking and Google's Page Rank (Google PR). Alexa's is the easiest to manipulate, PR is the hardest to manipulate. Alexa's ranking is semi-worthless as a true ranking tool, though it is the standard many companies use to rate blogs. Google PR is the gold standard, but it has it's faults.

On the other hand, while not used by many for rating blogs, Technorati Authority is a potentially better way to rank blogs and is not as easy to manipulate as Alexa.

Page rank is a log scale number from 0 to 10 that tells how popular an individual web page is based on how many web pages link to it. Authority is a similar popularity contest but is a gauge for the entire blog site, not just a single web page. If nothing changes, PageRank lasts forever while Authority is only good for links made within the last 180 days. Also with Authority, only one link (vote) from each blog counts towards the receiving blog. This is unlike Page Rank, which allows many or even every page link to "vote" for a web page.

Authority is only for blogs, while PR is available for any web page. Authority is a non scaled number that is the count of the number of blogs that link to your blog. This must be a hard link in either an article or in the sidebar. A link in a javascript widget does not count. This link only counts for 180 days then the "voting" blog must post a new link or you lose that Authority point.

So a blog with an authority of "2" would have two blogs that link to it. A blog with an Authority of "500" would have 500 blogs linking to it.

Technorati uses Authority to determine search results. So even if it is not a gauge normally used to rate your blog by services such as PayPerPost, with a higher Authority you will get more traffic to your blog. Oh, and the links help increase your Page Rank as well.

Resources:
Technorati's Authority Checker widget (near the bottom of the page)
Technorati Manual Pinger