At some point, my blog was in the top 5000 of Technorati. I hadn't really looked at it anymore for ages because I felt it kind of lost it's relevance. However recently I had to look into it again because my wife told me that publishers use Technorati to evaluate book bloggers in terms of how relevant they are.

I found out that my wife's book blog has a 'Technorati Authority' of 1. That kind of means: completely irrelevant. Given the amount of inlinks and the amount of traffic her blog gets this is obviously bullshit. Yet this thing is damaging because publishers look at it and think it has value. Just like some people still think Alexa rankings have any meaning.

Then I decided to take a look at my own blog which has been in existence for well over 5 years by now. Pretty well established, 1100+ RSS subscribers and excellent traffic. Guess what?

Hah! Apparently my blog is also COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT in the blogosphere according to Technorati. I think I'll start sobbing now?

Then there's the 'blog claim' process. For some reason completely beyond me Technorati has decided to take this process into the stone age. Once opon a time a blog claim could be made in less than a minute. Technorati would provide a code, you'd stick it in your source and TADAAA claimed. Not so much today anymore. It takes days and days before your claim is complete. And god forbid you do something wrong. If you do (like forgetting what the code was to put in your source) the process is 'stuck'. I can now not delete my wife's blog claim because apparently that TOO needs to take many, many days AND I can't make a new claim because the system already has the site as claimed. Facepalm extraordinaire.

I wouldn't give a rats ass about all this if it weren't for the fact that the '1' authority can potentially hurt my wife's blog. Because my own blog too is 'completely irrelevant' according to Technorati I'm pretty damn sure this number has nothing to do with real-world blogosphere authority. So... WTF Technorati? Why are you guys still even bothering? What once was the most awesome blog directory / radar now seems to have deteriorated in an utterly useless (albeit pretty looking) service.

If anyone has something insightful to say about all this, by all means go ahead and leave a comment!