Monday, September 17, 2007

The Algorithm Version of Garbage In, Garbage Out

Rather Than Working
http://ratherthanworking.blogspot.com/
Authority: 48
Favorite it
Rank: 124,330
My thoughts about law, politics and the often absurd life we lead.

That's me on Technorati today. I check it once a week or so. So you know, my rank has more than doubled since the last time I checked, as has the "authority."

Technorati ranks and authoritizes based on how many blogs have links to your blog. Not favorite lists. Is your URL in someones blog? If it is, you have authority and you have increased rank.

So, is my new found fame, of sorts, an indication of the compelling nature of my posts, my scintillating wit, my profundity, my innate sexiness? Nope.

I got "tagged" by a lady that has a lot of readers. I accommodated her request to pass on the tag. From what I can see, all the blogs that have my URL embedded in them never clicked over to me. The rest is Google, Techorati, etc. algorithms.

Does this mean anything in terms of who reads what I write? Nope. I just went and checked Sitemeter for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm "clicking" along at under and over forty visits a day. "Page views" average a bit higher. I just noticed in checking though that a high day for both was September 11. Right around then, Curmudgeon and Dr. Sardonicus, as usual see Recommended Sidebar, sent people to my place to read about my experiences.

So, what do I take from this boomlet in fame? It isn't fame. It's 0's and 1's in a couple of programs that track who links to whom. If I were an internet advertiser, I'd be very, very leary of statistics used to get me to buy ads on blogs. Don't worry, those of you that make weekend money with AdSense and the like, not that many people read what I write, and those that do, don't appear to count in the big picture, though I love you guys anyway.

Oh, Jeni, do another meme. If you do so soon, I could get into the top 100,000 on Alexia and get ranked, rather than going to wholinkstome.com and seeing the "not ranked in the top 100,000" every time I visit.

5 comments:

Jeni said...

This is funny! Me, with a lot of readers? Sorry to say but prior to doing the viral meme and then the "Warm the Globe" thing, my readership count was running around 13-18 back in early August - down from the 20-25 I had been averaging. I didn't see any increase with the viral meme thing but the "Warm the Globe" - wow! My counts almost doubled most every day, some days they more than doubled. My "authority" though - now that did move way up to almost triple now what it was prior to that post on September 10th.

Frankly, I don't like the regular memes at all - with the simple questions and such which always come in when I am running even more brain dead than normal. Occasionally, I will do one but usually I tend to pretty much ignore them. I did the viral meme mainly because it did kind of hit my funny bone and the "Warm the Globe" -that one I didn't even think of as a meme cause I liked the principle behind it. Yeah, I also liked Rodney King's statement "Can't we all just get along too." Call me a sucker for things like that.
Now, because I am technologically challenged as you profess to be, you'll have to explain Alexia and page ranks to me cause I haven't clue one about them.
Is this the blind leading the blind?

Patois42 said...

Fame. It's rather fleeting. I had to track you down because of your comment about Jeni making you famous. Nice post. Love the title!

Dave said...

Jeni, go to wholinkstome.com. Fill in the URL of your blog and the page will tell you using Google, MSN, Blogrolling, Technorati, Yahoo, Icerocket, etc. who has embedded your URL in their blog. Alexia is a similar service. It doesn't rank below 100K. I guess it's for the big boys and girls.

Patois, thanks for stopping by.

Jeni said...

Thanks for the info, Dave. I'll be totally confusing myself now trying to figure out heads or tails of this stuff. All I have figured out for sure right now is that my blog is definitely NOT one of the big guns -over 100,000 readers. LOL There's a big surprise, huh?

Ripple said...

Yeah, I remeber a little time ago I got some outrageous page ranking from Technorati, but it was due to my linking to a hot topic issue on religion. I went back to obscurity just as quickly.