Do you pay attention to your blog's Technorati 'authority' ranking?Why?
I can't fault you if you do- for years I had one of their icons on my sidebar and I paid careful attention to my ranking, agonizing when my 'authority' dropped, exulting when it rose- what a waste of time that was.
Technorati 'authority' has nothing to do with gravitas or credibility and everything to do with advertising and revenue- it's a tool for modern-day Thugee cultists to quantify their virtual Ponzi machinations, sometimes pronounced as 'Ess Eee Oh'- an acronym for a phrase that rhymes with Birch Fringin' Croptimization- the idea is to fill your website with catch-words that will direct traffic to your site, traffic that (hopefully) will click on your advertising links , generating .008 cents per click- if enough clicks are made, the web-site gets a payout. Generally speaking, one needs a great many websites to generate any significant revenue- dozens of redundant websites under the control of a single 'Web Master' are not uncommon.
What's wrong with that? Not much. In fact, it's advertising that keeps services such as Blogger free...Blogger isn't a public service, after all, it's an advertising medium, just like MySpace , Facebook et al- content is secondary, traffic is King as far as Bloogle is concerned- and that's OK with me since I would rather see Bloogle ads than pay a monthly blogger fee.
But.
I take umbrage when self-appointed arbiters of 'blogworld' behavior start telling other bloggers what they should and shouldn't do on their own blogs; specifically those who leave angry comments about blogger memes that involve links...
...don't put links to your friends in your posts, don't link to yourself, they kvetch, you are disrupting our Technorati rankings...
This is akin to a telemarketer calling you at home and lecturing you on the proper way to use your telephone.
I stopped taking Internet 'authority' seriously when I discovered that I had a great deal of it- at any given moment I'm in the Bloggle top 10 for a large number of subjects ranging from cryptozoology to fossil-fuel alternatives- in my favorite example, I 'invented' Whalanol on this blog- a satirical discovery that was plagiarised by an Ess Eee Oh outfit and passed off as real 'news'. I tracked down the offender; after some hassle I was given twelve dollars for making stuff up- the Ess Eee Oh outfit stopped paying for content at around the same time. I don't know if my kerfluffle had anything to do with it.
It doesn't matter if whalanol exists or not- all that matters is if you believe in it. If you believe in whalanol ,you will buy it, abstraction or not.
Information is the Schroedinger's Cat of the Internet. The Consumer is Pavlov's Dog.
Caveat Emptor, motherfucker.
-Do possums attack people? (#2 of 13,000; the more I mention it, the more 'authority' I get.)
-Eating hagfish? (#2 of 11,800)
-Doing dishes as erotic foreplay? (#2 of 2800 -and trying harder!)
-Umbrellas on airplanes? (I am #1 of 375,000 for this, a higher ranking than Time Magazine!)
(Update: This post is already #2 on Google for umbrellas on airplanes, I just checked. Still believe in Internet 'authority'?)
Believe it or not, the Internet is full of bullshit. I have created my fair share of outrageous claptrap and have been rewarded with 'authority' for some of my most egregious transgressions against reality- seriously, there is no such thing as whalanol.
Yet, I mean.
My satirical come-on for hagfish farms may have been a bit more prescient than I like- according to my burgeoning sitemeter referrals, there is an uptick of global interest in the economics of hagfish husbandry- an accurate, if overlooked, barometer of the current world financial state.
Do you remember oil shale? Hagfish farming is like oil shale extraction, it comes up when economic times are tough-and oil shale is back in the news- this time the technology involved seems to have some serious weaponization potential- using microwaves to melt the earth sounds dangerous...is it true? We will find out someday, I'm afraid.
P.S. Bonus 'authority' points if you can name the man on the book cover (above) that isn't Gandhi.
14 comments:
Great post!
The guy kind of looks like Jerry Garcia but I'm sure it isn't.
this post could have been written in chinese for all i under stand ..ha..I blog and that's it.I understand none of the rest of it..dont get face book, myspace or anything of the stuff that goes with them..im lucky to post pictures..
You know what amuses me most about this? I actually visited via a Technorati search. I stop by all the time, of course, but the one time I surf over from Technorati (which I rarely visit) you're blogging about it. Okay, well, I thought it was amusing.
As for Technorati rankings and other stats, I try to ignore them, but I'm not very good at it, which is awful since my blog is only a few weeks old. It's just easier to check blog stats once more than, say, write a real blog entry, ya know?
Whim- Did you know that nihilism was a jailable crime in 19th century Russia? True!
JS- Now is the time to invest in hagfish. In 2005 I was making it up...now it's real. Ugh.
C- I saw that and it is funny...geez, my Technorati rank went down over 700,000 places since 2006?
I put the 'pathetic' into 'apathetic'.
Is it Bukanin? What do I win, a year's supply of whalanol I hope....?
those poor google guys need all the money they can get. maybe i should sign up for some advertising.
i could donate my technorati revenue to the poor underfunded hilary clinton or rudy guiliani to make this a safer world.
now that was interesting allan!
i keep myself on technorati just for link's sake, but i gave up checking my "authority" when they changed their system and i dropped from two hundred and something to fifty something!
is it lenin on the cover?
Actor Ben Kingsley?
Michael Chertoff with a fluffy mustache?
You, with a fake nose and mustache?
Who is it?
Oh! My bad, that really is Gandhi. You were asking about the other guy.
Thank goodness you know me or you might think I was a bit flakey.
Dang. I also thought that was Jerry Garcia.
I for one am delighted to announce that it was indeed my search for hagfish recipes that led me to you.
Schlep- Good guess, but no...Bakunin would have made a better philosophical counterpoint to MG than the man on the cover though.
BP- I let them keep the thirty cents that my Google ads earned in 2005.
Beth- And fake hair...c'mon, how many famous anarchists are there?
TG- Geez, maybe it is...the book doesn't actually say... I just happen to collect pics of dead anarchists- one of my first posts is about that.
Hat- Join my Hagfish Cult!
It's gonna be bigger than Scientology- we are gonna feed those Hubbard-heads to our voracious hagfish- it helps the fish produce their famous slime.
I started a technorati ... what, account? login? something, when I first started blogging, but promptly forgot my password or whatever it is you need to do whatever people do there. I didn't know they could give you authority! Now I wish I remembered my info so I could see if I have any...
MC- You have friends. That's better than authority. Way better.
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