Feb

6

2000 Blogs to Delete

February 6, 2007 |

It looks like Technorati has heard the outrage in the blogosphere over the 2000 Bloggers thing sweeping the blogosphere. At its essence, it is a random link list, meant to game google and technorati. Zoli Erdos has written the best summary so far:

Links are good, but they are supposed to refer to content. Not here. No-one can seriously claim that we’re really “discovering” 2000 bloggers this way …. the whole game is not about checking out new blogs, it’s just an efficient copy/paste link-generation machine.
I can somewhat understand the enthusiastic response the 2000 Bloggers
scheme received: who would not be happy with hundreds of new inbound
links, a major improvement in their Technorati rank? But if you think *that* will make you an A-lister, think again…and again.

But it seems Technorati is listening.

We’re listening to these concerns. In the same manner in which we decline to index blogs that don’t meet our quality criteria (AKA “splogs”), we’re loath to indulge these “chain posts” (”pain chosts”, ouch). Your voice is the most important one in the blogosphere’s
distributed conversation. To dissuade chain posts from submerging your voice in their dilutative effects, we’ve updated our indexing systems on an experimental basis to filter out links of this nature. We all love photo collages of faces; we’ve had them, albeit on a smaller
scale, on the Technorati site since last summer. However, “join us and use these links” memes such as 2000 Bloggers is really a disservice to rank measurement systems and thus this decision to change our indexing policies in that regard.

Exactly. Gaining a few ranks on Technorati means nothing if it is achieved through gaming the system. It will have zero meaning whatsoever, but it is going to make the gamer feel good - for a little bit. At PayPerPost the Posties do a similar thing. Almost every PPP blog has a link list and on their forum, people often ask for links so that they can work the almighty Google PageRank. I hope Technorati is also going to have a look at this.

At the end of the day, a link should mean something. Linking for the sake of linking is simply a disservice to your readers.

Technorati Tags: , ,


Share This

Related Posts

Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Rose on February 7, 2007 3:24 am

    “At the end of the day, a link should mean something. Linking for the sake of linking is simply a disservice to your readers. ” How right you are. That is why I have delinked myself.

  2. Gary on February 20, 2007 2:41 pm

    I agree that Technorati should not count the “2000 Blog” links for rankings. However, I asked to be included (don’t know if I will be or not) not because of ranking but because I like the idea of being part of an artistic representation of blogging; of seeing my picture in the collection. I would like the pictures to maintain their links but to appear only on one site. I would enjoy clicking on the photos to visit other blogs.

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind