A Response to Technorati Optimization Criticism

Yesterday's post on Technorati Optimization has fueled some stinging commentary from a few sites:

Brendan Borlase of Incoherenly Surreal was the first to respond and really broke things down well. I'd like to go through some of Brendan's comments below:

"The problem isn?��Ǩ�Ѣt just specific to a lack of ?��Ǩ?�ping.?��Ǩ�� Many blog engines (including Wordpress) are actually pre-configured to update ping-o-matic on post creation, which in turn proceeds to update a great many services, including Technorati?��Ǩ�Ѣs ping service."

True, but I'm submitting sites that are not registering links on Technorati, so they must not have preconfigured their blog platform's pinging capabilities. I highly recommend using a site's pinging feature, or utilizing a site such as ping-o-matic or pinggoat. If you take the time to write something, take the easy extra step to make sure it gets syndicated.

Brendan goes on to write:

"Removing nofollow and beefing up spam prevention will lead to better results, for all pro-blogger content services (and not just Technorati). The ideal is to encourage linkage across blogs and discourage spam, not discourage linkage and ignore spam. Make sense? Excellent!"

I absolutely agree. And since search engines rely on inbound link counts to determine authority, strategies that help search engines make an accurate count is a good thing, right?

He continues:

"You are doing nothing more than artificially inflating your rank on Technorati (even if you beleive the link should be in Technorati, is entriely irrelevant)."

If a professor misgraded your test, would you bring it to her attention? If every student didn't bring the professor's errors to her attention, that would be 'artificial inflation' on your part, correct? I certainly don't think so. Getting credit for what you've earned isn't artificial inflation. Creating splogs that link to your own website would be, but the links in this case are coming from legitimate, third parties who have been kind enough to create unsolicited links to this site from their site.

To me, this sounds like a "Technorati isn't perfect, so just accept it" argument. I'd rather be the student, with his arm raised asking about the test result that doesn't seem quite right. The squeaky wheel does get the grease (credit) in the form of Technorati Optimization.

He goes on:

"It?��Ǩ�Ѣs 'gaming' the system to your betterment, which is not even remotely ethical or advisable no matter how innocently you might believe it is."

Sticking with the professor/student analogy, it's certainly not gaming the system to hold the professor accountable for their oversight. In fact, not doing so would be accepting mediocre performance from the professor (or search engine in this case).

Brendan then offers a series of possible negative outcomes from my perceived "gaming":

"you may find yourself in hot water for attempting to 'game' Technorati"

Technorati's site relies on links to determine relevancy. The more content they're aware of, the better the site becomes. My optimization tactic aligns quite well with the goals of their site.

"you may find yourself blocked (no linky linky for you)"

Should I assume Brendan thinks I'm pinging spam sites? If so, he is mistaken.

"you are making a fellow bloggers decision for them, possibly without their knowledge"

True. Just like search engines do every day. Search engines generally operate on an opt-out model. Why? Because they would never be able to provide relevant search results if they were dependent on sites opting in to their site.

"you are artificially inflating Technorati?��Ǩ�Ѣs data, which then distorts on everyone else?��Ǩ�Ѣs"

Am I inflating Technorati's data or correcting it by bringing missed data to their attention? Getting proper credit for what I've earned is simply smart marketing.

"may be a breach of the Technorati terms of service"

How so?

Brendan concludes:

"No mater how innocent the idea behind Ed?��Ǩ�Ѣs post may be, it?��Ǩ�Ѣs the very reason such linkage destroying, content busting, ping breaking, desperate methodologies such as rel=nofollow came into being."

Going back to the professor/student analogy one more time: have you ever heard of a college cracking down on students who ask their professors to review test results that were incorrectly scored? I sure haven't. The same reasoning applies here. Take steps to get credit for what you've earned. There is nothing unethical about this. To the contrary, I would argue it is advisable.

Steve Rubel takes a different approach to criticizing this Technorati Optimization technique. He chooses to stand up for the person who doesn't want to be counted:

"It is unethical to ping a search engine on behalf of a site you don't own or manage. The reason is simple. They may not want their blogs indexed in these search engines. We need to respect these wishes."

I'm convinced that people publishing a blog with a public feed are not opting out of search engines. They simply don't know that blog search engines exist or how to use them properly. Blogging application providers could certainly provide better information on what pinging does and why it is a useful tool for most bloggers. Until they do, however, I'm going to keep pinging unpinged sites that were kind enough to link to me.

I don't think it hurts to ping someone else's blog via Technorati. Their ping interface is public and they seem to welcome manual pings. However, it would seem like proper netiquette to first request the blog owner to do their own ping. They might not even be aware of the problem.

I've been playing around with Technorati lately and have found that sometimes I do need to ping manually. Here's a free, open source tool I put together to track Technorati hits and Technoratibot visits (so you can see if your pings are having the intended effect): Technorati Tracker

Also, here's a game I created to make browsing Technorati tags a little more fun: Technorati TagMan

Yes an no.. In the teachers/student example(s) you've given suggest that the teacher has done something wrong, or has otherwise not performed as expected.

Which isn't really quite the right analogy imho. To perhaps use your analogy, it's closer to you submitting marks for your own work, on behalf of the professor. :)

I do agree Technorati needs a "bump" from time to time - I also agree that many folks either do not know what it is, or do not have their blogging software configured to ping it.

This is where leaving a comment is a great icebreaker, or providing some feedback suggesting they look at Technorati (after all, it's in their best interests too).

There is a difference between search engines "walking" sites and artificially boosting one's own results. Again, Technorati does do some data mining over websites, as do most search engine, however, many search engines frown on "gaming", so again I don't think I'm too far off the mark.

I agree with Richard that it's very much netiquette to check with the incoming link poster first.

Brendan, I think your "students submitting marks for your own work, on behalf of the professor" is a fair description. Assuming the student is "grading" their tests accurately, why would a professor have a problem with this?

Since this tactic doesn't hurt the incoming link poster one bit, and in fact helps them by potentially generating additional traffic to their site, I don't think their is a netiquette justification for contacting them. However, there are plenty of good reasons to engage people who've linked to my site, so I do so often.

I actually found a flaw in the technorati link stats. The glitch actually allows a cerytain blog to get padded link stats. I wrote the explanation here: http://www.yugatech.com/blog/?p=606

Thanks, Abe. I've noticed that too. It seems like a fairly common occurance with typepad.com blogs, where people get backlink credits for links from their typepad domain to their primary domain.

That's a loophole worth shutting down because it truly artificially inflates the ranking of certain blogs based on a technical glitch. I don't think many people are intentionally exploiting this, but the example you give in your post may be an exception. That site is currently ranking 20,659 on Technorati based almost entirely on links from his own site!

Ed, thanks for playing the Technorati version of the TagMan game. It's meant to be more than simply a fun time waster, however. I thought it would make browsing tags more fun than, well, browsing. This post explains what I mean.

Comments

1. Posted by: Roald Marth on January 27, 2006 10:43 PM:

Open discourse, debate of new and important ideas, this is what makes the interactive web so exciting. Thanks to Brendan and Steve for joining Ed in this discussion. Please continue it with us, so that we all can benefit from the dialogue. Thanks again! Ro

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