The folks at Technorati quietly implemented a change to their metrics that has ignited quite a buzz in the blogosphere. Dorion Carroll explains:
On Fri. May 4th, we updated Technorati.com to include the Technorati Authority for blogs listed on the Blog page and in search results. This update changed the earlier references of “N blogs link here” and “X links from Y blogs” with the single Technorati Authority number. On the blog page, we also show the Technorati Rank.
Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.
It is important to note that we measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if a blog links to your blog many times, it still only count as +1 toward your authority. Of course, new links mean the +1 will last another 180 days.
OTB has an “Authority” score of 2,472 and a “Rank” of 333, derived from 23,526 links over the past 180 days. Looking at a random sample of top blogs whose names popped into my head, it seems that “Authority” is roughly a tenth the number of incoming links across the board.
Matt Mullenweg wishes there were “a little more secret sauce” behind the Authority score, rather than a single count. Indeed, since this score can be heavily influenced by permanent links such as in blogrolls, site templates, and mandatory links to software developers and the like, it’s not quite clear what the number reflects. It’s likely that “Authority” is not a good description, though.
