So, if you’re like me and have updated to Wordpress 2.3, you may have also noted that on the Wordpress dashboard, the “inbound links” list is now being populated by Google’s Blogsearch and not Technorati.
There’s been some talk about how relevant Technorati has been (including a particularly shrill post by yours truly), and perhaps because it *hasn’t* been, getting Google to index inbound links, therefore, is a Good Thing.
But is it?
Is Google’s Blogsearch *good* at finding those inbound Blog links?
Now, a quick look by myself shows that for Deep Jive Interests, the answer is resounding “HELL NO.” The last time Google shows any inbound link is October 30th, but in fact I have inbound links all the way until yesterday. In fact, Technorati is able to find blogs that have linked to me within the minute those posts (that have those links) are published. Google looks like its about a week behind.
Now the caveat here is that I am still waiting for my blog to get re-indexed by Google after I was hacked. So, maybe *that*’s the reason why Google doesn’t look so good, right?
Well, I had a few cursory looks at a few of my other favourite blogs, and the same sort of pattern emerges. Technorati is able to find the “reactions” within minutes of those inbound links actually being published.
Google? It has trouble.
Now, I don’t know the actual “why’s” for this happening; perhaps its because everyone and their sister who has a blog registers it formally *with* Technorati so they can follow their own Authority ranking and so on. And furthermore, because by Default, Wordpress pings Pingo-matic, which by default usually pings Technorati.
On the other hand, I’ve read that Google also monitors Pingo-matic, and should therefore also update whenever Pingo-matic updates. If that’s the case, then, I don’t know — perhaps actually registering your site (and pinging) with Technorati makes it easier to work these kinds of relationships out and in a much quicker fashion.
In any case, I suggest you try and figure this out for yourself.
1. Go to Google’s BlogSearch at http://blogsearch.google.com/
2. For the search term, enter “link:URL_OF_YOUR_BLOG” –> and of course replace the URL of your blog as necessary.
3. Note the results which are sorted by default according to date. Marvel at how dated some of these results are.
4. Then, go to Technorati at http://www.technorati.com (naturally)
5. Enter your own blog URL again, and note the number of reactions. Marvel at how fresh these results are.
If you find that I’m totally off my rocker, let me know. However, in the few blogs that I’ve checked I’ve come up with similar results. Maybe I *will* install this plugin now. ;)
9 Comments
Concerning the quantity of inbound links Yahoo! beats them all. My personal results:
Google Blog Search: 25 (hello!?)
Google Search: 147
Technorati: 100
Yahoo! Site Explorer: 3,148
If I look at the quality of the inbound links Yahoo! wins too. I know comparing Yahoo! Site Explorer to Google Blog Search does not seem fair but if I look at the results Yahoo displays more blog inlinks than Google blog search. In fact I hardly see any non-blogs in my Yahoo! results.
The downside is that you can’t check the freshness of the inlinks in Yahoo! Site explorer.
Thanks for pointing that out Anne. Up until now I’ve never really paid attention to Yahoo … although you’re completely correct.
In spite of the numbers, you can’t actually review the inbound links by date, which is kind of silly / absurd / stupid.
Cheers
Google and eMoms is cool, my traffic from them gets bigger daily. But on Google Blog Search I look like a loser:
Google links: 258
Technorati: 1,265
:(
(PS – SOBCon in ‘08, perhaps?!)
I think that google is trying to cut down on how many inbound links that they show in addition to devaluing visible page rank (the green bar) in an effort to cut out the sales of paid links.
Wendy — its funny that way, huh? I find that Yahoo contributes almost nothing to my traffic, but it indexes way more pages than Google, and certainly keeps track of more inbound links.
@ryanol — it is possible that they’re being strict with blog spam, but I don’t think that’s the case. Blogsearch is just missing a whole lot of inbound links from legitimate sites.
F’r instance, I think that Gigaom.com is a legitimate site, don’t you?
I don’t think it matters whether a site is legitimate or not.
It seems to me since the last pagerank update…that they have devalued visible pagerank, decreased the amount of links results that show using operators….and shrunk the index results in general.
I’ve noticed the same thing Tony. I think Technorati’s blog search provides more links than Google’s Blog Search and as mentioned above Yahoo is even better.
Because Yahoo is so difficult to use (no sort, etc) I stick with Technorati despite the fact technorati isn’t always the most consistant when it comes to indexing etc.
I could not agree with you more. I think Technorati is much better at this than Google. I hope this is not a permanent situation.