Yesterday’s post on Technorati Optimization has fueled some stinging commentary from a few sites:
Brendan Borlase of Incoherenly Surreal was the first to respond and really broke things down well. I’d like to go through some of Brendan’s comments below:
True, but I’m submitting sites that are not registering links on Technorati, so they must not have preconfigured their blog platform’s pinging capabilities. I highly recommend using a site’s pinging feature, or utilizing a site such as ping-o-matic or pinggoat. If you take the time to write something, take the easy extra step to make sure it gets syndicated.
Brendan goes on to write:
I absolutely agree. And since search engines rely on inbound link counts to determine authority, strategies that help search engines make an accurate count is a good thing, right?
He continues:
If a professor misgraded your test, would you bring it to her attention? If every student didn’t bring the professor’s errors to her attention, that would be ‘artificial inflation’ on your part, correct? I certainly don’t think so. Getting credit for what you’ve earned isn’t artificial inflation. Creating splogs that link to your own website would be, but the links in this case are coming from legitimate, third parties who have been kind enough to create unsolicited links to this site from their site.
To me, this sounds like a “Technorati isn’t perfect, so just accept it” argument. I’d rather be the student, with his arm raised asking about the test result that doesn’t seem quite right. The squeaky wheel does get the grease (credit) in the form of Technorati Optimization.
He goes on:
Sticking with the professor/student analogy, it’s certainly not gaming the system to hold the professor accountable for their oversight. In fact, not doing so would be accepting mediocre performance from the professor (or search engine in this case).
Brendan then offers a series of possible negative outcomes from my perceived “gaming”:
Technorati’s site relies on links to determine relevancy. The more content they’re aware of, the better the site becomes. My optimization tactic aligns quite well with the goals of their site.
Should I assume Brendan thinks I’m pinging spam sites? If so, he is mistaken.
True. Just like search engines do every day. Search engines generally operate on an opt-out model. Why? Because they would never be able to provide relevant search results if they were dependent on sites opting in to their site.
Am I inflating Technorati’s data or correcting it by bringing missed data to their attention? Getting proper credit for what I’ve earned is simply smart marketing.
How so?
Brendan concludes:
rel=nofollow came into being.” Going back to the professor/student analogy one more time: have you ever heard of a college cracking down on students who ask their professors to review test results that were incorrectly scored? I sure haven’t. The same reasoning applies here. Take steps to get credit for what you’ve earned. There is nothing unethical about this. To the contrary, I would argue it is advisable.
Steve Rubel takes a different approach to criticizing this Technorati Optimization technique. He chooses to stand up for the person who doesn’t want to be counted:
I’m convinced that people publishing a blog with a public feed are not opting out of search engines. They simply don’t know that blog search engines exist or how to use them properly. Blogging application providers could certainly provide better information on what pinging does and why it is a useful tool for most bloggers. Until they do, however, I’m going to keep pinging unpinged sites that were kind enough to link to me.
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