Looks like Kottke is upset with Technorati: I hate to post negative news (especially when it’s about my friends over at Technorati) but I’m trying to be constructive. So here it goes:
When it does return results in a timely fashion for links to kottke.org, the results often include old links that I’ve seen before in the results set, sometimes from months ago. And that’s to say nothing of the links Technorati doesn’t even display. The “kottke.org” smart list in my newsreader picks up stuff that Technorati never seems to get, and that’s only pulling results from the ~200 blogs I read, most of which are not what you’d call obscure. What good is keeping track of 14 million blogs if you’re missing 200 well-known ones? (And trackbacks perform even better…this post got 159 trackbacks but only 93 sites linking to it on Technorati.)
I think it’s time to stop adding features and start focusing on search quality. I’ve always felt that Technorati’s (and PubSub’s) obsession with covering every blog out there is a space race that I just don’t care about. Kottke is right. What does it matter if you’re covering 14M blogs if you’re not covering the top 250 correctly.
I’d rather have a Technorati that was fast and always worked even if that meant only indexing 1M blogs. Even 500k blogs as long as they are the top 500k blogs.
I’ve had to do this in the past and it’s not fun. Most of my time at Rojo was spent on architecture issues. Code doesn’t scale easily and sometimes you just have to pull up your sleeves and get work done.
The other thing is search results quality. I’ve been using IceRocket as my link search mechanism and it just works. It finds links where Technorati can’t find anything.
The sad thing is that I wanted to do a compare and contrast with Icerocket and Pubsub right now and Technorati is giving me the following error:
Sorry, we couldn’t complete your search because we’re experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or add this search to your watchlist to track conversation.
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Trackback on Aug 19th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
So long, Technorati
That’s it. I’ve had it. No more Technorati. I’ve used the site for, what, a couple of years now to keep track of what people were saying about posts on kottke.org and searching blogs for keywords or current events. During that time, it’s been down at l…
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Trackback on Aug 22nd, 2005 at 3:58 am
Rumblings
It sounds like Google will have a big week. From PaidContent comes news that Google might release their IM client…
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Trackback on Aug 22nd, 2005 at 4:00 am
Rumblings
It sounds like Google will have a big week. From PaidContent comes news that Google might release their IM client…
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4
Trackback on Aug 22nd, 2005 at 4:03 am
Rumblings
It sounds like Google will have a big week. From PaidContent.com comes news that Google might release their IM client…
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5
Trackback on Aug 22nd, 2005 at 4:26 am
Rumblings
It sounds like Google will have a big week. From PaidContent.com comes news that Google might release their IM client…
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6
Trackback on Aug 22nd, 2005 at 4:30 am
Rumblings
It sounds like Google will have a big week. From PaidContent.com comes news that Google might release their IM client…
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Trackback on Aug 22nd, 2005 at 6:13 am
Weave a circle round him thrice
I just Kevin Burton’s response to Jason Kottke’s abandoning Technorati in which he says: I’d rather have a Technorati that was fast and always worked even if that meant only indexing 1M blogs.
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Trackback on Aug 24th, 2005 at 8:46 am
Why Tagging is Like Sex
Or, it’s about context, Stupid. quote Sorry We couldn’t complete your search because we’re experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or two. We’re working hard to make our search results better. Thanks for your pati…
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Trackback on Aug 24th, 2005 at 8:47 am
Why Tagging is Like Sex
Or, it’s about context, Stupid. quote Sorry We couldn’t complete your search because we’re experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or two. We’re working hard to make our search results better. Thanks for your pati…
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Trackback on Aug 24th, 2005 at 8:49 am
Why Tagging is Like Sex
Or, it’s about context, Stupid. Sorry We couldn’t complete your search because we’re experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or two. We’re working hard to make our search results better. Thanks for your patience. …
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August 19, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Thanks for using Kevin!
Blake Rhodes
IceRocket.com
August 20, 2005 at 11:55 pm
Yeah, the most annoying thing about Technorati isn’t its reach (which seemed to be Kottke’s gripe, after initial comments on the slowness), but its speed - the inordinate number of times one has to see the “please try again or add this search in your watchlist” (even when the search IS in your watchlist, and clicking on the link just adds a dupe in your list) is annoying.
August 20, 2005 at 11:58 pm
Yeah. Apparently they are working on it super hard. The thing is that they need a fix for this yesterday.
Anyway. I’m holding my breath.
August 21, 2005 at 12:47 am
I can understand his frustration completely. As I write this, Technorati has just again timed-out on me.
Thank you for pointing out IceRocket as well.