Technorati launched a significant update yesterday. While I'll let others discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of the new design, I'd like to lament the new scoring that Technorati offers bloggers. Previously, there was a ranking score which produced a number from 1 (the highest) to <unbounded> the lowest (or, effectively, unranked). With that form of metric, you could look at the number and get an idea as to where you were and track any changes you were making. With the new 'authority' score, we have a range from <unbounded> (the highest) to 0 (the lowest). Consequently, you can no longer look at your score and figure out where you are in the grand scheme of things. You would have to at least know the highest score.
This, to me, is a poor design of metric.
Interestingly, as the comments on the TechCrunch post indicate, reaction to the ticker at the top of the page has been somewhat mixed or negative. If you look at them closely, you will see that it isn't a real time stream of terms, but a cycle of terms repeated over and over (refreshed at some point I assume). In other words, the ticker nature of it is a presentation decision, not necessitated by the fact that it is (could have been) a real time stream of data.
In the big picture, I think the new design is an overall improvement, and the search speeds to appear to have improved.
'Authority' score...what does this represent? IMHO, it's a poor use of the term which has a lot of baggage already, and if you do some searches on their site, you see the near meaninglessness of it. What does it mean to have a certain "authority score"?...that you have a lot of authority in the subject matter, in general, in...? They've also done a poor job of providing some quick help or info near that term so that an end-user could quickly determine its relevance or meaning. With it's latest set of changes, I admire that they keep trying to do something rather than to fold up and call it a day, but having a new unrecognizable version of their service every 2-3 months suggests that they really don't understand what business they're in. As well, it feels like while they have some very smart people there, there's a certain creativity that's lacking.
While I know many who like their search service, I for one found it too spammy to be useful so can't say I've ever really been a big fan despite lacking several of the people on their team. At this stage however, my question is, how much long can they sustain this business given that their last financing wasn't very big? Hmmm...
Posted by: p-air | May 23, 2007 at 12:24 PM
Your critique of "authority" posits that the ranking system gave you a clear picture of your blog's standing. The ranking is still there, but it's as useless as it has always been for anyone not in the top 10,000 or so; ties are legion and there is no indication of how many blogs yours is tied with. There might be, for example, 100,000 blogs which share position 60,805 with one of my blogs, Think in Pictures, because they all are linked to by 261 blogs within the 180-day tracking window. Consider the ramifications of this all along the integer scale and tell me how useful it is to know my blog is 60,805 "positions" from being #1 - that 65K might represent 1,000, 5,000, or 500,000 blogs, and there's no way of finding out. The last quote Technorati used before the interface redesign said something like "75 million blogs..." - note that their ranking system bottoms out at about 3 million. How's that for a metric?
Posted by: Jeremiah | May 23, 2007 at 12:54 PM
Scratch 65K, I meant 61K. I flunked rounding.
Posted by: Jeremiah | May 23, 2007 at 12:55 PM
I noticed that Technorati's top 100 blogs now defaults to the top 100 *favorited* blogs. Technorati's top 100 by links was always very buggy. If you can't fix it, replace it. (Which may also be the reason behind the change in the authority metric.)
Posted by: Natalie Glance | May 24, 2007 at 12:47 PM