Kumiko's Cash Quest

It's not a just a bit of fun to find out how your blog ranks against others. Technorati is an absolutely essential site for bloggers looking to keep their money-making finger on the pulse of the World Live Web. Once you know thesecrets to using it!

Technorati was founded by David Sifry and tracks the links that occur between blogs. As the site puts it:

"On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster."

Why new bloggers should visit Technorati:

Technorati receives a lot of attention amongst bloggers because of it's ranking system. Technorati tracks the number of other sites on the web that link to you and how many links there are coming into your site. It then compares this against other blogs to achieve a ranking. For example, this site currently has 539 links from 382 blogs which gives my site a ranking of 7,633 when compared to other blogs listed on Technorati. But watching your Technorati rankings change is just a bit of fun. There are two little known aspects of this ranking that can be used to any new blogger's advantage.



Technorati tracks exactly which sites are linking to your blog and the page they are linking from. How can this be used to a new blogger's advantage? Think about why the person is linking to you. Most blogs have a 'theme' or 'niche', be it technology or just a personal blog. When someone else links to you, they are showing that your site is relevant to this niche and should be read by others. Furthermore, Technorati tracks the link the instant that it happens. The blog linking to you will have the link on the front page and be the hot topic of the day on the blog.

This opens the door for you to get in contact with the linking blog. When you see that a site has linked to your site, always visit this site to see what they're saying and leave a comment related to the context of the post or even start a discussion about it in the comments. This establishes your blog as being part of the niche's community and an active member in it. In a sense, you've become an invited guest of the site and your blog is part of the 'hot topic' of the day. Technoratiinvites you into other blog's conversations.

Then take a look at who else they are linking to. Judge for yourself which sites are the quality ones and start reading and commenting on those sites. This brings you into the community even further which is guaranteed to increase the traffic to your site.


If a blog posts about joining AGLOCO these days, it will probably be skipped by most readers. Why? It's yesterday's news. Technorati provides an up-to-date list of the top tags and searches amongst blogs and this can benefit new bloggers incredibly!

Often new blogs are filled with 'yesterday's news' as they are blogging about other things they've seen on the web which has already been blogged about a million times - that's why it's been seen!For new bloggers, being able to find and blog about the hot topics is crucial.

To illustrate, 'American Idol' is a popular search term at the moment. So what are bloggers blogging about? Amercian Idol. Has it been written about on a million blogs? Not with the latest information - the amount of searches outnumbers the nubmer of posts. If I was going to choose a topic to write about right now, I would choose American Idol and I'm positive that it would generate a number of hits.

The two most repeated and best pieces of advice for building a successful blog are to become part of a community and to write quality content that people want to read. Technorati allows you to do both easily.

And the rankings are fun.

Why Technorati isn't number 1:

Technorati misses out on the number one spot as while it is incredibly helpful once you've started generating incoming links, this can be a difficult task to achieve for new blogs. Granted, writing about the hot topics will help the amount of links coming in, but every new blog finds it difficult to be 'found' at first.

It also lacks in that while visiting Technorati will help your blog grow immensely and increase traffic, it won't directly improve your blog or make you money immediately.

It beats the previous entries in the list due to the doors it will open and the information it provides but it isn't the most essential site on the list.

In conclusion: