With the recent announcement of the slimmed down version of Technorati, s.technorati.com, my use of the blog search engine is on the increase once again. Now I’ve made it even easier to access by creating sTechnorati.

sTechnorati is a search plugin that works in both IE7 and Firefox 2. It’s actually built with the OpenSerch technology so as browsers adopt to that, they too can install sTechnorati. What it will do is install an option to search from your browsers built in search box and go directly to the s.technorati.com search results page. Just like the Google option that is already there now.

While making sTechnorati I took a few liberties. It’s set to search only English posts and posts with at least a little authority. I felt that would bring back the best results. If you want one with different settings, just ask and I’ll toss a new one together.

Enjoy!

Install sTechnorati

[tags] technorati,firefox,ie7,opensearch[/tags]

So guess what happens when you post to fast and don’t read all the details? You feel like an idiot.

One of my biggest complaints about Technorati is that I love blog search, but don’t need all the social media elements. Photos, audio and video just aren’t want I want to see. I wrote that the new Technorati is nice, but to over done for me. Guess what, they already knew that people felt that way and built a striped own version.

http://s.technorati.com is nothing but blog search. Quick, uncluttered and simple. A big thanks goes out to the Technorati crew for this!

Now the only thing that Google still has is the ability to search by date (past hour, day, week, month, custom) and yet sort by relevance or date. But now I guess I’m just being picky.

I’ve been a big fan of Technorati since the beginning, but once it tried to become the ‘one stop shop’ for social media search, I’ve strayed. I don’t care about videos, pictures and audio. I really want just a good blog search. So I switched to Google Blog Search. With the new design though, my want to use Technorati is coming back.

One big reasons for leaving, other than all the extra social stuff, was that when I subscribed to an RSS feed, it kept telling me the some post was new every time I checked my feeds. I haven’t signed up for any new Technorati feeds lately as Google Blog Search has that down.

My other big issue use to be how slow it was, or how it kept erroring out, during searches. It’s nice to see that with the recent re-launch, the site search speed seems better. However, the search results are still not working correctly.

I did a blog search for toprankblog and came up with 47 blogs and 5 pages of search results. However, when I get to page 2, I get only one result. When I get to page 3, I get “There are no Technorati blogs about toprankblog.” For some reason, Technorati only shows 11 out of 47 blog results.

In case you haven’t noticed, social media optimization (SMO) is the new big search marketing term. I think you’ll be hearing a lot about it this year and thought I’d give you an easy tip to get started.

First thing you need to know is what social media optimization is. Basically, it’s just getting exposure and traffic from social media sites like Digg, del.icio.us, MySpace and many others. For a more in depth explanation, check out the new rules for social media optimization.

What I’d like to share with you is one extremely easy way to get some social media exposure. It’s as easy as photo sharing.

Using photo sharing sites to host the images you use in your blog posts will give your site added exposure on other sites. Some photo sharing sites to check out include Zooomr, PhotoBucket and Flickr.

Flickr is one of the main photo sharing sites. Once you add your photos, they can be found by not only Flickr but also Technorati, Serph, the Flock web browser, Netvibes and other services that integrate with Flickr. It’s a quick and easy way to get in to lots of other sites.

Today’s tip is quite simple and easy, it’s merely creating an avatar for yourself which will represent you across the web.

An avatar is just an image. A logo or icon that represents you or your business. It could be your picture, your cat’s picture, a cartoon character or just a cool design. I’d recommend picking one that is original for best results.

Now, when you create your blog, put your avatar on it. When you register at a form, use your avatar. Services like Technorati and MyBlogLog have the ability to upload a profile image and you’d want to stick it there too. There is even a global avatar service called Gravatar that will show your avatar on other blogs that have this functionality enabled in the comments. Ideally you’d want them all to match to build your identity. But mixing a photo and a logo treatment also seems to work well.

What you are doing is making sure that you stand out. When people are browsing other services, they can quickly notice you. Avatars also show a sign of authority as spammers rarely take the time to worry about the minor details. It’s a quick and easy thing to do to catch the attention of others.

Technorati announced tagging just two years ago! I found it hard to believe that tagging is only two years old. But on the web, I guess two is much longer than I think.

“Tags are a simple, yet powerful, social software innovation. Today millions of people are freely and openly assigning metadata to content and conversations. Unlike rigid taxonomy schemes that people dislike, the ease of tagging for personal organization with social incentives leads to a rich and discoverable folksonomy. Intelligence is provided by real people from the bottom-up to aid social discovery. And with the right tag search and navigation, folksonomy outperforms more structured approches to classification”
- Technorati’s Tag Announcement two years ago.

Tagging revolutionized the web with it’s take on organizing information. Now, instead of categories, some sites are just using tags. Instead of folders, places like Flickr organize in tags. It’s one, almost universal, language. The only sticking spot is Google and their labels. Same thing, different name.

Technorati was one of the first big players in the tagging revolution. Now today, most blogging platforms, along with most social sites, support Technorati tags and they are being adopted more and more each day.

Today marks Technorati’s 3rd birthday and they have come out with a bunch of new updates.

The first thing you’ll notice is an all new design. Less cluttered and much nicer. That was one thing that was really bothering me and I’m glad it’s been updated. Not only that, but you are able to personalize it.

Technorati also has more speedy and accurate results. A quick few searches and it appears to be true. Nice!

Check out the new Technorati and rejoice as you see and use an upgraded blog search engine.

[tags]Technorati[/tags]