Technorati has gotten a little bit of heat recently from Marc Canter and Dave Winer, which prompted me to take a look at how Technorati stacks up against its competition in the blog search space. Hat-tip also to Josh Hallett, who pointed me to a relevant post of his the other day.
Alexa is an excellent traffic-ranking tool, owned by Amazon. Take a look at the following comparison graphs from Alexa - you may be surprised by the results. They show that Technorati is growing at a rapid rate. It's recently overtaken Bloglines and is blitzing Feedster. My thoughts on WHY are at the end of this post.
The graphs below are all comparisons of "daily reach", which measures the number of users a website has. The time span I'm measuring is 1 year. So these graphs show how each website has grown (or not) in users during the past year.
This clearly shows that a gulf has opened up between Technorati (blue line) and Feedster
(red line) since the beginning of 2005. Prior to that the two sites were relatively even,
with Technorati always slightly ahead. But now Technorati is streaking away from its main
competitor. Dave Sifry and his team will be rapt by that, but it must be a major concern
for Feedster.
This shows that Technorati overtook Bloglines at the beginning of June and it looks like
they may hold that lead too (judging by the sudden spike for Technorati during
June/July).
Shows that although PubSub are growing, it's not
nearly fast enough compared to Technorai.
This graph compares Bloglines to Feedster - now ranked 2 and 3 respectively in the 'blog
search' space according to Alexa. Bloglines has a healthy lead - and again it shows a
slight tailing off with Feedster.
Shows that PubSub has a bit of work to do to catch up to
Feedster and the others.
The usual caveats about Web stats apply - i.e. assume the data may be unreliable. Nevertheless, the main trends here are clear:
1. Technorati is on a roll. I think this may be due to their recent tagging initiatives. Bud Gibson has an interesting theory about this. In a post entitled Folksonomy makes tag aggregators king of search rankings, Bud explained that Technorati's aggregation of tags has resulted in high search engine rankings in Google, Overture, etc.
Technorati's re-design and high-profile promotions, such as the recent Live 8 one which Marc referred to, have also probably contributed to the rise of Technorati.
2. What's happened to Feedster? They were once neck and neck with Technorati, but these stats show they've dropped off the pace. Maybe it's because Feedster is focusing on different niches nowadays - e.g. they're rolling out an ambitious Media Network, which I'm going to be testing soon btw.
I really like Feedster - they recently made me their Feed of the Day for the second time (first time was a couple of years ago). I'd like to see them succeed, so hopefully this is a temporary blip on the radar in terms of their user stats.
There are other trends to note, but I think I'll go ahead and post this now and let others jump in via the comments.
UPDATE, 7 July 2005: Several people have left comments that the companies I chose may not necessarily have the same business models - and indeed may not be "competitors" (a word I used in my post). Chris Redlitz from Feedster also emailed me about this matter. Chris said (I have permission to quote him):
"Technorati and Feedster are fundamentally very different businesses. Feedster is focused on feed subscription, syndicated search and advertising. Many people do not search feedster.com but access us through feed subscriptions, which is not reflected on Alexa."
Fair enough and point taken. I still think the Alexa charts show some valid trends that are worth noting. But as the comments I've received highlight, it may not be a level playing field for PubSub and Feedster in particular when it comes to Alexa stats.
Some people also pointed out the technical issues that Technorati has from time to time. Shelley Powers illustrated this by telling me I've been Squidded. Heh.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Technorati the No.1 blog search engine according to Alexa.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2467
Richard McManus uses Alexa to track weblog search services. It seems as if Technorati is doing much better these... Read More
Technorati sembra essere il sito pi˘ utilizzato per la ricerca dei contenuti pubblicati sui blog, questo Ë quello che rivelano le statistiche di Alexa. I dati mostrano un ritmo di crescita incredibile di Technorati, che ha ormai largamente staccato ... Read More
This week we saw a number of interesting web 2.0 developments. Far outstripping everything else, however, was the terrorist attack on London on July 7. Blogs and the Internet played a big role in getting information out to people, as television lagg... Read More
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
Gotta look beyond the HTML output from these players to get a full perspective on their usage...
Posted by: Tony Gentile | July 5, 2005 10:47 AMComparing Technorati to Pubsub doesn't make sense, because Pubsub is a subscribe model. They send out RSS feeds to people, who see Pubsub in their feed aggregators, and only visit the Pubsub site to make a new search subscription or look at some special page on the site, but not for search purposes. Technorati gives watchlists (similar search feeds), but also has a search page on their site for looking at old information. So therefore people visit the site much more often.
Posted by: Joe Gatz | July 5, 2005 6:29 PMTony and Joe, yes that's a fair point. Particularly in the case of PubSub, because - you're right - by design its business model is to deliver information to users and not have users visit it.
But in respect to Technorati, Feedster and Bloglines, I'd argue that the html hits are still very good measures of success. Not the only measure, of course. But certainly good enough to spot some relevant trends.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 5, 2005 9:24 PMIn addition to reiterating the comment that Alexa is not a good measure of a sites usage (our highest traffic days don't necc. equal a high Alexa day), it would be nice to see some real evaluation of these services. It's great that more people use something or other, but it doesn't address the issue of who's got the best coverage, best results, least spam, fastest indexing, etc. There might just be a less-well-known player out there who's doing a better job. Or not. The point is, these kinds of statistics don't say much about the quality of any particular site.
Posted by: Greg Gershman | July 6, 2005 1:38 AMThe new technorati is buggy.
I get errors most of the times when I try to see who has linked to my blog.
http://www.technorati.com/search/labnol.blogspot.com
Posted by: amit agarwal | July 6, 2005 1:47 AMTechnorati may be winning the war in the minds of the consumer, but all of these services are failing to meet basic quality of service expectations. Someday, Google is gonna wake up and roll over all three, by simply providing quality results.
The funniest thing is the reach number for PubSub.com, which believe it or not, doesn't even out-rank my personal Website (kbcafe.com). I think Bob needs to hire someone in marketing.
Posted by: Randy Charles Morin | July 6, 2005 7:47 AMAlexa is a joke. Just look at the sites Alexa tracks and then compare them to sites where SiteMeter is being used. Steve Rubel's site, Micropersuasion, is a top 3,000 site in Alexa but averages 1,200 viewers a day. I run several sites doing between 5,000 and 10,000 viewers a day, but they end up in the 300,000 range on Alexa. Why? Because they're not tech sites, and only tech geeks use Alexa.
Alexa is simply a joke.
Posted by: Ed Rusch | July 6, 2005 8:11 AMEd, Steve is ranked 33,865 by Alexa. Agree, Alexa is not totally accurate, nothing is, but it's a great visual tool, as Richard just showed us.
Posted by: Randy Charles Morin | July 6, 2005 8:26 AMI totally agree that this isn't a measure of quality. I nearly mentioned in my post that I continue to have technical issues with Technorati, whereas I find PubSub (for example) to be high quality. But I decided to focus just on the 'daily reach' trends. It's more of a popularity measure than anything else, but those things are important especially when you're trying to make a decent business of blog search/subscribe.
As for Alexa, I agree it's by no means perfect. But it's as good a tool as I know of to study website trends. If anyone knows of any better tools, let me know.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 6, 2005 9:01 AMAlexa is not perfect (no measurement tool is). But it is pretty good and definitely good enough for performing the sort of analysis being done here.
Posted by: pb | July 6, 2005 10:17 AM"But now Technorati is streaking away from its main competitor."
I'm curious how you're defining "competitor" for the basis of this comparison, as I'm not sure *any* of these companies have defined their business models publicly yet. That means it's hard to know who they're competing with for a customer's dollars.
Posted by: Anil Dash | July 6, 2005 11:24 AMGenerally I'm talking about the 'blog search/subscribe' space. I mentioned 'blog search engines' in the title of the post.
But I agree that business models are still being sorted out... maybe I should've added "Your mileage may vary" to the end of the post :-)
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 6, 2005 11:32 AMThing is, I *visit* technorati for the features, but I *read* three feedster feeds every day. The feedster feeds are their core business.
I see no particular need to visit feedster at all; I just read the feeds. That makes me invisible to your methodology.
Posted by: Mark Bernstein | July 6, 2005 11:32 AMPersonally I visit Feedster as much as Technorati - I use Feedster mainly as a blog search engine.
But it's certainly a valid point you've made Mark.
Your mileage may vary.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 6, 2005 11:36 AMThis is remarkably dense.
The number one blog search tool is Google. The percentage of the marketplace who know or care what either Alexa, Technorati, Feedster, or Bloglines are is probably in the single digits.
Yes, I understand *you* know and care... But you're so far in the bubble, you apparently don't know the bubble exists.
Posted by: Hal O'Brien | July 6, 2005 5:44 PMThe number 1 search tool is Google? Why didn't anybody tell me... now I have to re-write this whole post. I feel like I've just been punk'd.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 6, 2005 8:10 PMI'm relatively new to all this but I'm not sure Hal understands the bubble.
My recent adventures in the blogosphere with the Nasa Deep Impact mission, how it unfolded and how I was able to participate in the riples it caused on the net while also monitoring it all using technorati and other blog search engines lead me to think that there is a world of difference between regular search engines and the ones we are talking about here.
And I bet Hal doesn't even know Demi Moore.
Posted by: Mark Smith | July 6, 2005 9:26 PMLet me see if I can clarify. Yes, Google is a glaringly obvious answer for this task. But (he said, after searching the page in a double-check), until I mentioned them, nobody had.
I mean... A discussion like this is not unlike a debate over whether Zeta/Haiku/BeOS is a more capable operating system than FreeBSD. While there are perfectly valid arguments for either position, the overwhelming majority of users simply do not care.
And I don't just mean end users. I mean bloggers themselves. The universe of bloggers is now large enough, and the proportion who use these specialized tools small enough, that I would conjecture the majority of even *bloggers* don't know these tools exist, let alone use them.
It's not unlike... I think it was the 1992 Presidential campaign, where Cokie Roberts was asked in New Hampshire about the 50 or so Democratic candidates past the usual 7-ish. She said they simply didn't have the resources to cover the whole field. So she was asked, What's the criterion for the ones who *are* followed? Answer, without apparent irony: "The ones who get coverage."
In the same way, making comparisons between Technorati and Feedster is basically saying they're worth paying attention to because they get a lot of attention from the "right" folks. That's all very well, but it doesn't amount to very much in the vast real world *beyond* the "right" folks.
It's scholasticism. It's inside baseball.
Posted by: Hal O'Brien | July 6, 2005 9:37 PMCokie Roberts?
Hal, although I see your point I think you've taken my post the wrong way. I selected a group of blog-specific search/subscribe engines (for want of a better way to describe them) and did an analysis of them. Yes, that group is selective - but not out of any snobbery on my part. I simply chose what I thought were a similar group of blog tools.
Yes Google is the number one search tool. But you'll notice I also didn't include Yahoo, or MSN Search, Ask Jeeves, etc. Does that mean I'm practising "scholasticism" (whatever *that* means) with them too?
Don't take this too seriously, it's simply a post describing some trends that I think are relevent to the blogosphere.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 6, 2005 10:38 PMHal, you said "But (he said, after searching the page in a double-check), until I mentioned them, nobody had."
Your Webpage search algorithm is broken.
Posted by: Randy Charles Morin | July 7, 2005 12:28 AMGreat post btw. My comment is around the word 'competitors'. This market is growing fast there really isn't competition but instead I would suggest they are all partners. Feedster and others are trying to be completely different and do different things than Technorati. There is plenty of 'beachhead' for this massive market that's exploding.
Posted by: John Furrier | July 7, 2005 1:35 AMI like Mark Cuban's IceRocket.com blog search. I think it is much better than feedster or Technorati
Posted by: Lex | July 7, 2005 4:16 AMI've just posted an update to this post, to clarify some of the issues that have arisen in the comments. Thanks everybody for your great feedback.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 7, 2005 9:59 AM