Technorati Displays New Authority Ranking

by Ben Yoskovitz

Technorati just released a new feature.

I went to check incoming links to Instigator Blog on Technorati and found the interface had changed.

Technorati Authority

You’ll see that my blog has a new score called Authority.

But the number of incoming links has been removed.

My Rank still shows up although it’s gone up quite a bit in the last couple hours from around 1860 to 1808. That tells me Technorati has adjusted their algorithms a wee bit, although I’m not sure how.

There’s no news yet on Technorati’s blog according to Stan Schroeder who also noticed the change.

It’s clear that a higher Technorati Authority is better.

A lower Technorati Rank is also better, which means this concept remains unchanged.

That seems rather confusing, and I’m not sure why I need two scores to generally tell me the same thing - my position within the blogosphere - although I’m sure the Authority rank takes more into account than just links.

It will be interesting to see news break on this further and get some explanations from Technorati on what they’ve done, what Authority means, and how it can be influenced.


May 5th, 2007
More in Blogging
What next?
Related posts:
  • It's simply the number of unique blogs that reference your blog. It's always been a value reported on Technorati, they just recently 'branded' it with the release of their sidebar authority widget and now the new layout of the site.
  • Douglas - Makes sense. I can't remember how many unique blogs were linked to mine when we used to see:

    # of links from # of blogs

    The number does look similar though, although I was fairly surprised at the jump in ranking which had been very stable or edging up just slightly over the last few weeks.

    Thanks for the info.
  • Its rather difficult now to check the number of links. The interface is good. They have categorized it neatly. I like the FAV BY feature a lot.

    But how do you say low authority is also good?

    If its some kind of ranking then low authority means less popular blog ?
  • I noticed this earlier today, too. Do you think this is a reaction to the Technorati favorites train that has been going around?
  • That's a good question, Char. I'm sure there's been more talk + analysis done by people more in the know than me since I posted this ... but I haven't followed up yet.
  • I don't notice much difference yet -- they are dropping the number of link since that number is not used to calculate ranking, and then rename the number of incoming site as "authority". At least this is what happened to me.
  • More people are saying that Authority is equal to the number of links coming to your blog from unique sources. That's probably true, but what I find odd is that my authority hasn't changed since they implemented it, whereas my Technorati Rank has changed.

    I know new links are coming in from blogs that have never linked to me, so I wonder if other factors are at play, or if it's just a time delay on re-calculating Authority, while Technorati Rank is faster?
  • I noticed the changes too and wrote about them as well. Looks like the Authority number equals the number of unique blogs links. Although Technorati is trying to characterize the authority by the avg number of posts, avg number of posts per 30 days and avg age of the blog in days.
  • IMO, Technorati needs to weigh incoming blog counts by their 'Authority.'

    http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/suggest...

    --rj
  • I am curious too how these numbers are tabulated. It seems they made this change after the recent surge in "favorited" postings.
  • Within the new technorati interface, I can find out my actual rank. By change, only once, I could reach the page
    http://technorati.com/search/hronir.blogspot.com
    where the rank is shown. Now, when I type the url above, it automatically redirects me to the reactions page:
    http://technorati.com/blogs/hronir.blogspot.com...
    Now I cannot see what is my rank!!!
    Do you all see the same thing? Do any of you know if there is some other way to see one own rank value?
    thanx
  • I just noticed that Techorati is assigning an authority to some of the single posts, in effect making them look like a completely separate blogs. I guess it is not going to become more reliable any soon.
blog comments powered by Disqus
Co-Founder of Standout Jobs.
Entrepreneur and Opportunity Seeker!
About Me · Email Me · Twitter