Technorati Profile

What is Technorati? Technorati is a search engine for blogs, and other social media such as photos, videos and forums.

Class of tool: Search engine

Other blog search engines: View the definitive list.

Cost: Free

What makes it different? Well, it’s the biggest of its kind, and it promises real time indexing of blog posts, with these posts being available to search within seconds.

Popularity: Alexa site ranking(link): 898 (worldwide traffic rank) with 264,689 sites linking in.

According to Wikipedia, as of June 2008: Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

Who is using? Every blogger is listed, whether they signed up or not. Describes itself as the world's top blog search engine.

Ease of use: Signup process (referred to as "claim your blog") was not simple, but ease of use after signup is excellent. If you are signing up to use site tracking features, and not to claim your blog(s) then it's very easy. There are numerous other featuresonce the account is open.

Time to setup: See above regarding claiming blogs. Otherwise, 3 minutes and your registered, complete with profile picture.

Time to maintain: Depends on your needs. If you are promoting your blog, then it could take a few minutes extra per post, although this can be automated. If you are signed up to track keywords and the top blogs in your industry, then an hour per week should suffice, unless you are a hardcore tracker.

What you need to know: Claiming your blog, although sounds simple enough, is not as easy as they make it sound. A quick search online will reveal many who have had trouble. The short answer seems to be this: write a new blog post with your claim token (a letter/number code) pasted into the body. Once you advise Technorati that it is there, their spider crawls your blog and confirms the claim token. Once they email you that it's been confirmed, you can delete this post. Another 24-48 hours and you'll be listed.

Building "authority" takes time, and you must maintain relationships with like bloggers, who will link to you and your articles. When blogs are posted that match the keywords you provided, then your rank increases.

Bottom line: Not necessary for most bloggers, but can increase visibility. If you don't mind the hassle getting listed, then it’s a good idea, especially with automated pings (or updates of your new blog posts).