Update: The leaderboard has launched. See it here.
Blog search engine Technorati’s founding CEO is gone, its traffic party has ended and its core search functionality is under long term fire from competitors like Google Blog Search, Ask.com and Sphere (among others). Constant strategic shifts haven’t helped much either.
But Technorati still has one stronghold left – it controls the definitive, editorially unbiased list of top blogs. The list is based on unique incoming blog links over the previous six months. More links = a higher position on the list. To get a top 100 spot, a blog currently needs about 3,700 unique links.
But links from other blogs may no longer be the best indicator of the popularity of a blog, particularly today when blog links can be obtained by simply opening up the checkbook and paying. Also, Technorati clearly counts spam and other blogs, which can have a significant impact on rankings.
That’s a statement that will be hotly debated. But tomorrow bloggers will have a new top 100 list to aim for – the Techmeme Leaderboard.
The list will be created based on the blogs that created the most headlines on Techmeme over the previous thirty days (so it will change frequently).
TechMeme has become the definitive site for tech blogging news, and its sister sites Memeorandum (political news), WeSmirch (celebrity gossip) and BallBug (baseball news) hold a similar esteem in their markets. It’s about time founder Gabe Rivera started to release some of the great statistical data he’s been collecting since launching the original site in 2005.
To be exact, top blogs will be ranked on presence – “the percentage of headline space a source occupies over the 30-day period.” Discussion links are not taken into consideration – only full headlines are counted.
I think this is a much better way of ranking the very top blogs than the Technorati approach. Technorati has deep flaws, for reasons stated above. Techmeme, by contrast, has zero spam and tends to mirror what the tech blogosphere is writing about perfectly.
I am somewhat biased, however, as TechCrunch is currently in the no. 1 spot, whereas Technorati only ranks it no. 4. Also, our sister site CrunchGear is ranked no. 28 on the Techmeme Leaderboard list.
Look for this sometime tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll see leaderboards for the other Techmeme sites soon, too. Until then, check out the screen shot above, which only includes the top 30 blogs. Click for a larger view.
So what do you think is the better way of ranking blogs – Technorati or Techmeme’s approach? Or do you have a better idea? (don’t tell us, just build it)
Update: Dave Winer (his Scripting News is no. 36 on the list), posts the entire current top 100 list.
Update 2: Ben Metcalfe points out that a third of the sources on the list are not blogs, they’re mainstream news sites. He makes a good point wrt to how much of an apples-to-apples comparison this is with Technorati. What I think is also interesting, though, is that perhaps its time blogs and mainstream news sources go head to head on lists like these. As a group we are continuing to kick them in the pants.
Very cool, and my last reason to use Technorati has been taken away.
the formula for calculating the popularity of blogs should not be based just on backlinks from other blogs.
Other areas to consider should be news articles and online magazine profiles
And, if possible, an estimation of unique visitors
It is also interesting to compare the traffic of blogs in the Technorati top 100
seoptimization.blog.com/1221628/
ANY “Top X” list is going to have issues, either editorial bias, or the ability to game the system via leveraging the ranking algorithm. Pick your poison.
Interesting indeed. How do you think Technorati will respond, if at all?
techmeme is pretty amazing. Wish they would revamp UI though.
As someone who had to create a Yahoo Pipe to rip the TechCrunch entries out of the main Techmeme RSS feed (because everything you write shows up on Techmeme – in fact just for goofs, lets see if this post does) I can’t say I’m surprised you’re a fan. That combined with you saying “tends to mirror what the tech blogosphere is writing about perfectly”.
it is a great way of measuring things in a niche – however as it only looks at blogs writing on technology it misses 99% of the blogosphere.
Is there a need for this other than the cool factor?
I use neither Technorati nor TechMeme, and as such, surely has to be inaccurate. That’s like saying you should only measure your presence off of merely Google search results.
This is a pretty poor replacement for Technorati’s rankings. As Darren has pointed out, it’s only a ranking for a narrow niche of the blogosphere.
i think niche is the point, a ranking of TECH blogs…
technorati on the other hand tells me engadget is bigger than icanhascheezburger. what the hell does that mean?
Techmeme stories are selected by:
“Coverage is driven by a mix of industry insiders, passionate independents, and established journalists. So Techmeme gets the story no matter where it appears, and often days before it hits major sites.”
Technorati and Techmeme rankings seem pretty aligned, but it seems that there are some major differences between both. Technorati seems to be more automated by using a crawler to determine trackbacks and ranks sites based on what’s discovered. But it seems like Techmeme does most of their discussion selection manually as described in the above paragraph. Other major blogs could be overseen.
For example, I rarely see Mashable articles appear (if any) on Techmeme, yet they’re still ranked #8 on Technorati. But on the other hand, Technorati sometimes doesn’t catch important trackbacks. For example, Yahoo! 360’s blog linked to me today, but Technorati didn’t pick that up.
There are limitations on both automation and manual technology news trackbacking. However, I still think that Techmeme Leaderboard is a great tool and TechCrunch deserves the place it has right now as a top blog, but I give these rankings as much credibility as Alexa.
Huh look at that, this post is in the Techmeme RSS feed already.
Techmeme is very biased and those leader boards count for little but a popularity contest. TechCrunch’s discussions get turned into headlines just because it’s TechCrunch. In fact, some blogs overtake the original headline by mere discussion, which is completely bs. Until Gabe stops this favoritism on techmeme, the site will have skewed headlines and sources. And of course this is the very reason you wrote about the feature and got inside access.
Scoble wrote a one line post and made techmeme, hmm? Should we sacrifice quality for popularity?
I don’t know about the unbiased part of Technorati’s Top 100… It says on JohnChow.Com’s Technorati page, that his rank is 47, but he’s nowhere to be found on the Top 100 page…
While my blog does show up on Techmeme on occasion, by and large, 99.9% of the science blogosphere doesn’t, so Technorati is still going to mean a lot more to me to keep track of the links back to my blog. Also, doesn’t this only accelerate the meaningless efforts to try and one up everyone?
Speaking of improving UI, technorati is a clunky monster imo. Not at all intuitive and constantly bugs in firefox for me. Why can’t people come up with something that doesn’t suck.
Today every WordPress blog announces a new post by pinging Technorati. When Techmeme will enter the pinging game, that would be end for Technorati.
Given that techmeme focuses on news of a tech/business orientation, I’m not really sure how this can even be compared to Technorati’s listing which, while heavy on tech/business, features more blogs that are not part of that niche than are.
Technorati – including its top 100 listing – has a lot of issues, and I’d love to see something better. But this is a grapes-to-apples comparison, and not the best tasting grapes in the world are going to replace apples.
great!
I think this is a much better way of ranking
the very top blogs than the Technorati approach
rc
trading tennis blog
Techmeme doesn’t “mirror what the tech blogosphere is writing about perfectly.” it mirrors what the tech A-listers are writing. Problem is, today’s A-listers are feeding of corporations PR more than anything else, the real tech scene is not there anymore.
Techmeme needs some makeover in terms of interface though….
there still some junks in Technorati.
As Darren said, Techmeme picks blogs related to technology only. Moreover, all of their stories come from top blogs like TechCrunch, Giga Om
I have never understood why blog-ranking systems use the blog as the unit of measurement. In the age of RSS, I believe, a blog *entry* would be a better unit. That is, they should divide the number of incoming links by the number of posts (during the last 6 months).
That would filter the boring more-posts-is-better blogs from the top list.
(of course, for somebody who follows blogs via browser instead of RSS reader, the current system provides better results.)
http://www.iTechArt.com
Wow. Talk about missing a key point. Technorati will still appeal to the vast majority of bloggers (for now) because it’s (mostly) not about accuracy of results within a niche market – it’s about ego checking.
As has been pointed out, other services offer equal or better blog search functionality than Technorati, but what keeps the many non-professional bloggers who aren’t in the top 100 coming back is NOT whether TechCrunch is number #1 or #4, it’s a free, simple, painless (and not particularly accurate, but who cares?) way of looking at the place of your own blog and maybe comparing it to others’.
Techmeme’s strong point is the ability for it’s readers to scan the days headlines in 60 seconds or less. Then, at the end of the week, I hear it all recapped in podcast form by listening to TWiT. Between the two, I learning about new technology when the stories break, which is critical to getting a strategic advantage when making sound business decisions.
I never used technoraty anyway. I guess that I can now say so long Technorati, long live techmeme!
Technorati rankings are not worth much anymore as do not appear to be that accurate or up to date anymore. Glad to see Techmeme offering a way to put some people/blog names in lights but it is my understanding that Techmeme does not treat all publishers equal so it will most likely not be an accurate way to measure blog rank either.
I think the TechMeme approach is better – for the fact that it seems to checking links within the niche (tech blogs to other techblogs). Many splogs make their way into the Technorati rankings.
Second, I feel like TechMeme has proved its worth as a blog aggregator in terms of quality blogs. So this is just a different way of looking at the same data. The quality should carry over.
It would nice to have a search engine solely based on finding blogs within your niche. I will anxious to see what techmeme will bring to the plate.
Yeah, but 33% of the sources are not actually blogs.
http://benmetca...f-what-exactly/
I think Technorati will still survive. Techmeme’s ranking based on blogs that created the most headlines on Techmeme over the previous thirty days will not cater for all blogs.Only top blogs will feature on Techmeme’s leaderboard. Small or less recognized blogs will still need Technorati.
This is a great feature, but I don’t think it’s Technorati’s *last* stronghold… mostly because the blogosphere is a much bigger place than just tech and politics. Technorati still has an advantage as far as the long tail of blogs goes – and I think they could easily get their mojo back if they’d just refocus their efforts on helping bloggers find and discover more blogs in their niche (and do something about the damn spam).
Techmeme, minimally, would need to expand into more verticals to be a Technorati killer – and even then, I don’t see Gabe Rivera building a Techmeme for such topics as gardening, knitting, photography, etc. While Technorati doesn’t do a great job of organizing these kind of topics, it’s the only site that really makes any attempt to. That’s it’s real last stronghold.
I agree with Ben. I often see company Press Releases on TechMeme.
But still, I find TechMeme to be the best place for me to see what’s going on in the world of technology and who’s saying what about it on the web – at a glance.
Since 99.9999% of blogs will never get “Headline Space” on Techmeme, it is really just a measurement of All-Stars.
As I try to grow and build an audience within my niche, I’ll want something that reports back something OTHER than a zero. For me, my T’Rati Authority ranking is an internal yardstick.
And there are a lot of people blogging within niches.
If you are enjoying TechMeme and TechMeme leaderboard, check out http://www.socialrank.com. We are launching dozens of niche sites that give you todays top stories coming out of the blogosphere, whether on marketinglens.com, startupsignal.com, etc.
they should make the list 1000 blogs and write what these blogs deal with.
Uber uns: “ACG Logistics” beschaftigt sich auf dem internationalen Markt mit Dienstleistungen in Sphare der Logistik seit mehr als 15 Jahren. Durch das Vertretungsnetz in 15 Landern Europas und in den USA, gewahrt der Unternehmen das breite Spektrum an Dienstleistungen, einschlie?lich Lagerdienstleistungen, Beforderungsdienstleistungen beliebiger Waren (Meer, Luft, Eisenbahn- und Kraftverkehr), sowie an Dienstleistungen der Zollerledigung.
Heute ist “ACG Logistics” einer der weltumfassenden Fuhrer in der Guterverkehrssphare. Au?erdem verwirklicht der Unternehmen seit 2003 die Grosshandelslieferungen der elektronischen Ausrustung und arbeitet mit 50 bekannten weltumfassenden Produzenten zusammen.
Dank den Bemuhungen des Personals “ACG Logistics”, hat der Warenumsatz die Summe im Wert von 8 Milliarden Euro in dem Jahre 2005 gebildet.
Unsere Gesellschaft sucht nach den Manager fur die Arbeit mit den Kunden.
Die Hauptforderungen zum Kandidaten:
das Alter ab 18 Jahren,
die Arbeitsfertigkeit mit den Programmen Microsoft Office und Outlook Express
Internet
der Kandidat soll ehrlich und verantwortlich sein.
Seinerseits “ACG Logistics” gewahrt:
das stabile monatliche Gehalt von 1000 Euro kostenlose Ausbildung/Weiterbildung
monatliche Pramie bis zu 100 %, je nach den Ergebnissen der Arbeit
die Uberlassung der sozialen Programmen, um den Lebensniveau der Mitarbeiter zu erhohen
Die Hauptpflichten, die der Manager erfullen soll:
die Annahme und die Bearbeitung der Paketen
Verkauf dieser auf den Online-Handelsplatzen wie Ebay usw.
Operationen mit den Geldmitteln
Schicken Sie bitte Ihre Bewerbung an info@acglogistics.biz
Привет.
Продаю персональный сертификат WebMoney за $99.
Можете проверить: WMID 322973398779 Redfern
Всё чисто, не одной жалоб. Сделан на утерянные документы. Всё законно.
Если нужно, то есть сертификаты ещё.
Стучацо в личную почту на Вебмани.
Это не спам. Не пишите на мой WMID жалобы в арбитраж Вебмани.
Amerikanische Firma „ACG Logistics“ sucht nach Mitarbeiter in Europa fuer die Arbeit im Logistikbereich. Interessanter Job mit guter Verdienstmoeglichkeit.
Schicken Sie bitte Ihre Bewerbung an info@acglogistics.biz
Привет.
Продаю персональный сертификат WebMoney за $99.
Можете проверить: WMID 322973398779 Redfern
Всё чисто, не одной жалоб. Сделан на утерянные документы. Всё законно.
Если нужно, то есть сертификаты ещё.
Стучацо в личную почту на Вебмани.
Это не спам. Не пишите на мой WMID жалобы в арбитраж Вебмани.
Hi!
More cell phone ringtones bay your screensaver cell phone ringtones sexy more fun monthly cell phone ringtones can phone. Com offers phone including cell phone ringtones mobile may logos cell phone ringtones a nice collection cell phone ringtones cell phone ringtones cell phone ringtones images cell cell phone ringtones phone ringtones phones. Here free cell phone ringtones games lets you you own states australia username: cell phone ringtones about cell phone ringtones cell phone ringtones cell phone ringtones phone hot state banner amor are the latest for to your shortie 9/25/2007 cell phone ringtones will been new artistdirect. 98 to purchase $1. 99 is we’ll cell phone ringtones your number now a whole number. Don’t the cell phone cell phone ringtones ringtones di
splay name chose. Charlie cellphone cell phone ringtones cell phone ringtones made cell phone ringtones cell phone ringtones like expand ringtones ringtones.Ringtones which have cell phone ringtones topic enough cell cell phone cell phone ringtones ringtones phone ringtones one joel2600 phone better why 4805 sac239 cell sep bigmeat1 of 5:16 for classic of pm 12 phone for messages modify cell phone ringtones and dos cell phone cell phone ringtones
We have a great range of;
I find the ringing of mobile phones most often so distracting and irritating that this thirty seconds of silence is the only ringtone that i can imagine composing. -John Oswald
Polyphonic Ringtones For Nokia
Discover how to obtain Luxury Vacations at Wholesale, plus an opportunity to earn income
and have the time of your life!
http://www.plati1.ru
They should disqualify any blog that can’t weed out obvious spam comments.
Hello,
Great forum!
I found a lot of interesting information here.
Does this forum helpful for you also?
What’s Up?,
I’m new here. And it seems like a great forum.
I just wanted to give a friendly “how’s it going” to all of you here.
-Susan
They should disqualify any blog that can’t weed out obvious spam comments.
to Ike! +100!
While Technorati doesn’t do a great job of organizing these kind of topics, it’s the only site that really makes any attempt to.. these methods aren’t incredibly streamlined and they probably don’t represent best practice, but it’s very simple!