Saturday, September 16, 2006

Why Technorati is pissing me off

Yes, Technorati is an amazing website that has been extremely beneficial to the blogosphere. It allows you to announce your blog to the rest of the world, and easily find information that other blogs have blogged about. It also lets you know where your blog stands in comparison to other blogs - i.e. how popular it is.

Here's the problem: If you have an issue with Technorati, good luck getting help. In my case, Technorati for some reason is not recognizing when I ping it. Therefore, although I keep posting new posts on my blog, Technorati is not scanning my blog and these posts will not show up in Technorati. This is really pissing me off. So what do I do? First I go to Technorati's FAQ section and look for some assistance. What do I find? Absolutely nothing that is helpful. I was looking for something like "What do you do if Technorati is not recognizing your ping?" or something like that. I found this help section to be useless.

So what do I do? I try and contact them. This is the automated message that I get:

Dear Technorati User,

Thank you for taking the time to drop us a line. If you are reporting a problem you may be having you will be contacted by a support technician once we have had a chance to review your message.

If you don't hear back from anyone within a few business days then please let us know and be sure to include the subject and ticket number, "[Feedback] Blogger #48489], " in your note so we may properly track your issue and its progress. In the meantime, you can also check our Support FAQ located at "technorati.com/help/supportfaq.html" which may answer some of your questions.

If you have written us to share feedback, ideas or suggestions then you will not normally receive a response but we do appreciate and value any and all comments, alerts and suggestions.

Thank you for using Technorati and we hope we may be of service.

feedback@technorati.com

This is BS. Why do I need to email them again to remind them about the email that I sent them??? Anyways do I hear from them? NOPE! Five business days later I email Technorati again as they instructed above and I've yet to hear from them. Technorati plays a crucial part in the lives of blogger and if it has faulty technology then it better have good customer service. If Technorati has crappy technology and bad customer service that it has a huge problem. There's an opportunity for another player to step in and become the new technorati - one that listens to its members. If another player comes into this space I will give them a long, hard look and may consider jumping. I can't afford to have a service like this not spider my blog.

Has anyone had other issues with Technorati?

Chad H.

PS - Maybe Dave Sifry, the Technorati CEO, will see this post and someone will finally listen to me.
PPS - Here are some other blogs that have writen about the problems with Technorati:
PPPS - After doing some searching on Google, I found a great post from Janice called: Having Trouble Claiming Your Blog? It looks like all I have to do is post this code (which I could NOT find on Technorati): Technorati Profile We'll see if this works!

UPDATE 09/20/06: Technorati has responded to my emails and has ensured that my blog has been updated on Technorati. Thanks Janice!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chad;

I am so glad you posted this message. I love AND hate Technorati.

First, its servers are dirt slow.

Second, it is always behind blogsearch.google.com and bloglines.com for timely information.

Third, it only seems to update its ranking sporadically. When it does, it tells you one thing on one page and a different thing on another!

Fourth, I often cannot get my watchlists to work.

Fifth, and most importantly, it can go for weeks without updating its directory on my postings (despite all sorts of different kinds of pings). If my listing is not up to date AND neither is yours, this means thousands of others are not as well. Translation, they are not "up to date."

I have nearly abandoned the service. The only thing that keeps me coming back is the ranking.

Thanks for letting me rant!

Mike

Ed Kohler said...

Great post, and thanks for the link. I've found Janice (who you linked to at the end of your post) to be a great resource for troubleshooting pinging and update issues.

Good luck!

Chad said...

Mike - I'm glad I wasn't alone. The good news is that they did respond to me and hopfully they'll see your comment and help you out. Isn't blogging great? I figure if Technorati isn't monitoring the blogosphere then all the fortune 500 companies out there are screwed.

Eric - thanks for the comment and for pointing me to Janice as she helped me out.

Leo said...

What code you have used to technorati update your posts ? The ping dont work.

Anonymous said...

They're assholes over there at Technorati.

I've sent them over 50 emails the past year trying to get help with 3 of my blogs that won't claim.

Nothing. No reply.

I tried calling and leaving a message.

Nothing. No reply.

My 3 urls are:
www.data-entry-jobs.net
www.refinance-refinance.net
www.payday-loans-advance.net

Those assholes didn't even have the balls to reply and tell me their software sucks and that there is nothing they can do about it.

Typical.

Chad said...

Lucas - sorry for the delay. No code actually worked. It took this post to get Technorati's attention as well as few emails. The issue was with their system and not my blog.

Anonymous - keep after Technorati and if you're not happy, keep writing about. Someone is bound to listen. Thanks for your comment!

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