Why is Technorati so unreliable?
Grr…I need to use Technorati to do some research for the new bloggasm case study that’s suppose to launch tomorrow, and of course it’s deciding to act up right now by not displaying the results in the way it’s supposed to (or more specifically, it isn’t displaying a blog’s rank right now). And yet I keep coming back to it, mostly because the other blog search engines don’t provide nearly as many functions.
So what would other blog search engines need to do so that bloggers can have a viable alternative if they don’t want to stick with Technorati?
1. Create a ranking system. I’d say that a lot of Technorati’s searchers are mostly bloggers who are ego searchers. Almost every time I put a link up to a blogger, within 24 hours he or she visits my blog through a Technorati ego search. Obviously, a lot of bloggers, myself included, like to check in on their ranking every day to see if they’ve improved at all.
2. Have a profile-creating system. This allows all your blogs to show under your name within Technorati, and makes it easy for you to find other blogs that have the same writers, since a lot of bloggers have multiple blogs.
3. Create a tag way of searching. A lot of people search by tag rather than just by word-choice.
4. Have blog highlights and display top blog posts. Allows one to see what’s hot in the blogosphere.
5. List “most-searched” items. A lot of people are curious as to what other people are searching for, there’s been lots of times where I’ve seen an odd word on the most-searched list, clicked into it, and was immediately glad I did.
I think if other blog search engines put in these things, especially the blog ranking system, then people would feel more comfortable switching over from Technorati. But for now, most of the blog search engines just allow simple search, and without a good way yet of categorizing the blog posts like Google’s Page Rank system, simple searches mostly give way only to splogs.
UPDATE: looks like it’s working again.
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I’d really like to see an engine searching comments.
That’s actually a damn good idea. Although there would be a LOT of comment spam the engine would have to sift through.