For quite some time, Technorati has allowed you to find out how many other blogs have linked through to a particular post, they even provide live widgets.
Technorati will also allow you to search a particular blog regarding a keyword and pull up related content.
Technorati Is Missing 2 Things That Google Blog Search Does Much Better
There are 2 extremely useful features that Technorati has missing, that are vital for quality search results.
- Supplemental Results – Huh? An SEO blog saying that supplemental results are good? Well in Technorati’s case they would be – they do pick up duplicate entries, and display them as such in some search results, it is not universal. Because of the way Technorati tends to crawl sites, there are quite often duplicates of the same content. You will notice in the screenshot at the top of the page, the Bruce Clay blog has a listing for their front page, and their permalink.
Some blogs have many more listings for the same content, mine probably more than many, but that doesn’t mean I want 10 of my results showing on the first page of results for a particular term.
You will see at the bottom of this page that I am pulling a search query by RSS from Google Blog Search – If I did the same from Technorati it would be full of duplicate results.
- Extended Results – This is an interface issue that Technorati could easily fix. Whilst it is possible to search a site for a particular term, you have to know that site has more information first, and navigate your way to the right interface, which with Technorati is not always obvious.
Google Blog Search Extended Results
I am going to cover this first, because this is a brand new feature introduced sometime yesterday, and I am probably one of the first to notice it, and happen to have convenient screenshots taken just 23 hours apart.
In my last post on Google Blog Search, I used the following screenshot, grabbed just before I published my post.
Now if you look at the result at the bottom of the screenshot, you will see my own listing, which had a fair amount of longevity.
Publishing the post displaced my old blogsearch content from the listings, maybe permanently if Google decides that that listing is more relevant, or maybe until it is no longer given an extra benefit due to freshness.
I only have one listing, and it is my most current or the one with most authority – the balance seems to normally tip around the 4 or 5 day mark.
Here is a new listing for the same search taken 14 hours ago, just 23 hours after my followup post on Google Blogsearch was made.
You will notice there is now an extended results link. That signifies that my site has additional information about this topic.
For a casual searcher things like that are not significant, but for someone like myself who uses Blogsearch as a serious tool to find relevant content, it is extremely useful.
The fact that Google also knows about that additional content on my site, just hours after publishing is also extremely significant, because that can also have a significant blogsearch weighting factor. If someone has mentioned Blogsearch multiple times, they might have more authority on the subject
That additional authority on a particular subject doesn’t seem to have any weighting on Technorati… at all. Technorati authority seems to mainly based on total number of links, and not based on authority of a particular subject.
As an example, Technorati doesn’t think I am much of an authority on [tag]dofollow[/tag] or [tag]tagging[/tag] – it is only recently I have moved up from having “a little authority” to having “some authority”, no matter what the subject.
Also of note is that Dougal Campbell isn’t looked on as an authority on plugins for WordPress, and his recent post that I linked through to from my Ultimate Guide to DoFollow Plugins isn’t listed in a search for Dofollow as an authority.
Yes I know that WordPress developers were removed from the Top100 because they dominated the Top10, but that shouldn’t mean they have no authority.
If you want WordPress news “straight from the horses mouth”, don’t use Technorati, as an example a search for WordPress 2.2 news with a lot of authority will not bring up recent developments, which I know Dougal has posted about, and so has Matt.
Back to Google Blog Search…
All things being equal (which they never seem to be), I should always outrank Techcrunch or Problogger when discussing something like Blogsearch, but there are other factors, as you can see by the fact that Alister’s blogsearch post on Problogger.net is still outranking my post with an almost identical title (though it does have more words in it)
Did you notice I am outranking the Bruce Clay blog? – The Lisa posted linking through to Alister on Problogger within a few minutes of my post – I am not sure who was actually first to post.
Alister’s article on Darren’s site so far has had 64 references, compared to the 2 references I had from Matt at Globally Local and Dan at The Wrong Advices.
Google Blog Search Supplemental Results
Another thing I noticed for the first time is that Google also have introduced supplemental results for the references. The Lisa was linked by Danny Sullivan in his roundup. If you look at the references you can see one listing, plus supplemental results.
Now for anything to do with RSS, I don’t want to read supplemental results. The feed I am using at the bottom of this page would be useless if it contained supplemental results.
The number of items found on Google are not affected by duplicates, so it is a real number. Technorati’s numbers tend to be inflated by the duplicates.
Things to Improve
I would like a listing that includes the additional references that were part of the extended results, so if a site has 10 documents that are looked on as being or suitable authority, all of them will be shown.
If I am trying to mix RSS content, I want the “real deal” and not just the most recent item.
Aftermath
It is a shame so many of the people linking through to Alister’s guest post are attributing it to Darren.
Now the even more worrying thing I have seen from all the people linking through to Alister’s post is that many want to increase the size of their blogroll, and I am sure 95% of them have no clue about linking structures or the fact that blogroll links also appear on all their duplicate content pages.
That is why I originally took the time to write a post in response to Alisters, because in all things there has to be a balance.
The majority of bloggers don’t research what they write, or don’t research using a blog search engine that brings up results based on the authority of the content, and not the historical authority of the blogger.
Read more on Exclusive: Google Blog Search Extended Results | Supplemental Results…
I have just tagged myself a SchMOe on MyblogLog
