Technorati Makes Me Think of Illuminati: Thing 14

Way back in the beginning of my Internet career, we used to have to provide our copy editors with a list of keywords that they would imbed into the HTML code of our stories. This way, search engines could find us. But scam sites and advertisers would do the same thing. So searching for a particular topic would bring up a slew of unrelated junk trying to sell you something or leech viruses onto your machines.

Then along came Google. The reason Google works so well is that it ignores keyword tagging. Instead it uses a method of how many other sites link to a particular site when using a certain word.

Technorati, like the search engines in the old Internet, uses keywords -- which is both good and bad. Good, if you are an honest blogger trying to get your writing a larger readership. Good, if you are looking for knitting blogs (A found a TON more that I had never heard of). Bad in that you may waste quite a bit of time not finding what you are looking for -- just finding items incorrectly (or loosely) tagged that way. For example, when I searched "library," the top pick was Miscellaneous Mom, who has no association with libraries except that she recently visited one. So the keyword tagging relies upon the honesty of the tagger. Hummmmm.....

However, the "Popular" feature is a great way to find new blogs that people (other than the blog owner) like. In that way, it's a lot like Digg.