If you visit a great deal of blogs you may have seen the “Bloggers of the World blog award” circulating among various blogs. The award was started by Colin of Free PC Security.
I was a recipient of the award. It’s always nice to be included in a list and receive an award and while I appreciate the award, I requested to be removed from the list. That is my prerogative and a special thank you to those who respectfully honored my request as well as Colin for removing me from the original list.
Why did I request to be removed?
The only way to build up your Technorati rank is get more blogs to link to you and what better way than a scheme that increases your ranking.
Not only do I think this is wrong, but I’m also being a little cautious.
I’m not sure if Technorati even cares about these schemes used to increase ranking, but I do. Who knows, perhaps at some point Technorati will catch on and start banning blogs that take part in these schemes.
I’m sure that you all recall the 2000 blogger project and that a lot of participating blogs were been banned by Technorati.
Even the most popular bloggers are not immune from being banned by Technorati. I know that four bloggers have been removed from the Top 100 ranking list because they didn’t get there naturally.
Alex King, John Chow, Matt Mullenweg and Binary Moon were all banned from Technorati Top 100 ranking.
According to Dane Carlson who created the How Much is Your Blog Worth widget, using Technorati’s own API, he was banned too.
Alex King, makes some great plugins so I don’t understand why he was removed.
If they are going to remove these four bloggers, why not do something about all the schemes used to increase ranking as those ranks are not gotten naturally.
I think that the practice of Technorati schemes are a little sad. I rather have bloggers link to my blog because they feel that I have something of value to offer not because I was included in something like “Bloggers of the World” that is now being copied and showing up on various blogs.
These kind of schemes do nothing but boost ones ego and I get enough of an ego boost. “Laugh”
I would much rather have 5 genuine readers link to my blog because I have something of value to offer them then the 20 incoming links I received from this. I hope you understand my opinion on this.
Linking can be fun, but I want incoming links pointing to me that are genuine.
It is easy to say that you don’t care about being listed on Technorati, or ranking and if you don’t then by all means participate away.
But, if you’re concerned at all with PageRank like I am then you may have read through Google’s guidelines, especially the part that says “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.”
Colin has stated ” I am well aware of what Google states, and thus far I have maintained my PR on all of my blogs and sites. This is not a scheme to ‘increase site ranking’, but one which does reflect upon Technorati ranking. ”
Well it could be too early to tell as there has not been a tool bar update as for Technorati ranking, I think I made my opinion clear on that one.
Your thoughts?
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4 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Jan 9, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Rose – I fully appreciate what you are saying and I respect that. If my PR on this blog goes down I’m not too worried as I have a good readership, whereas my Free PC Security blog I hold a tight rein on as that also has the same PR and an excellent readership, mostly through search engines.
I am aware of those that got banned from Technorati’s Top 100, and in time Technorati may well follow the same steps as Google. If this is so, then major changes will undoubtedly take place.
As for any future awards that I send your way they will only be awarded to 5 or less individuals without cross linking.
You have an excellent blog, and I harbor no ill will whatsoever, and I wish you every success
All the best,
Colin
Wrote: Jan 9, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Alex King was probably removed because he — and several others — was on the default blogroll whenever WordPress was initially installed for a new blog. I noticed that wasn’t the case the other day when I install it for a test blog. A lot of newbie bloggers never changed the blog rolls, so Alex and some others had a highly inflated number of links coming in, so much so that it was meaningless.
At least, that’s the way that I understand it.
It’s good to see some new posts from you, Rose!
I do understand what you mean about being on some of these lists. My own Technorati rating is higher than it should be because I got on one of those lists.
Wrote: Jan 11, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Didn’t we talk about a year ago in regards to something like this? Was it the Blogger’s Choice Awards? I can’t remember.
Wrote: Feb 26, 2008 at 2:18 am
hi, after reading this, i remembered we had this project for our interactive marketing and one of the criteria for grading is the technorati ranking and there’s this one group who cheated their way up with a program.. they got banned but for some weird reason got back in the game..