InsideGoogle

Technorati Is Run By Sadists

I think Technorati likes all the abuse its been getting lately in the blogosphere. If it didn’t, then why would it launch a new feature that is already broken?

See, as Scoble explains, Technorati responded to “top blog list” criticism by introducing Blog Finder, which ranks the top blogs for each of many tags. Problem is, if my first experience with the thing lands me on a page where the first four of twenty results are the only displayed, and the rest are either trunctuated or killed by a lack of scrollbar (see first link), then I guess if I were the one bringing all the criticism, well, this wouldn’t help.

And need I remind anyone that the true crticism of Technorati (and all of its competitors, as they all have the same flaw) should always be that it is simply not concentrating on the search engine enough, something we just see now again with this small, and ultimately less-useful-than-real-blog-search feature?

UPDATE: Bug repro’d in Opera:

Believe me now, Dave?

I’ve circled the four critical areas in the screenshot. The page clearly indicates that 20 results should be shown (and in Firefox it does) yet there are four results, the last one is cut off with missing data, the scrollbar is missing and the left sidebar is gone. Clear bug!

In IE its broken, but not as bad:

While I appreciate Dave Sifry showing up in the comments to defend his company (something he is very good at), do not try to tell me that “this is not a bug”. Once again, you see the 20 results that are reported at the top of the page, but only four are shown. Once again, the fourth entry is cut off at the same point. See that big empty space where results 5-20 are supposed to go? That’s your bug.

UPDATE: Now that I’ve calmed down, here’s where I rank (using Firefox, since it doesn’t work in any other browser):

• AdWords #1
• AdSense #1 (both well-earned :-))
• AOL #1 (what, is nobody blogging AOL?)
• Blogs #15 (not bad! InsideMicrosoft is #50)
• Controversy #2 (out of 7; unpopular tag)
• Culture #11 (Jeff Jarvis is #1)
• Desktop Search #1 and #2 (for InsideMicrosoft!)
• GDS #1 (of 2; but I beat Scott Kingery)
• Gmail #2 (behing Neil Turner, arghh)
• Google Images #1 (of 1, ouch)
• Google News #1
• Humor #16 (an honor! InsideMicrosoft is #82)
• Jeeves #1 (of 1; sorry Jeeves)
• Microsoft #8 (hilarious, since its InsideGoogle; InsideMicrosoft isn’t in the first 160)
• Search #10 (behind, in order, Tim Bray, Techdirt, Battelle, Rubel, Google blog, Dave Sifry, YSearchBlog, Ross Mayfield and Phil Windley; InsideMicrosoft is #24)
• Search Marketing #1
• Services #2 (behind GeekNewsCentral)
• Stock Market #1 (#1? WTF?)
• Tools #2
• Yahoo #5 (behind Zawodny, Beattie, Sifry and Yahoo itself, proving my theory I could do a great Yahoo blog if I just moved my Yahoo posts over to a different blog; InsideMicrosoft is #13)

InsideMicrosoft also ranks #1 for Applications and Internet Explorer and Vista, #2 for Media Center and Spaces, #4 for Longhorn, #5 for Xbox, #6 for Corporate (Scoble is #1, probably to his dismay), #8 for MSN, #14 for Linux and Open Source (Doc is #1 on both, I wasn’t aware I was some sort of authority on that), #15 for Windows, #35 for Law, #36 for Google.

So, according to Technorati, InsideMicrosoft is more of an authority on Linux and Open Source than on Windows? Gotcha.

September 2nd, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Blogs, General | 14 comments