Technorati: Big business with bogus data
Since the PR giant Edelman and Technorati are working together they are both trying to become an industry reference for statistics on the blogosphere. Of course this is free publicity for both and in plus they can sell the data for good money to their customers. The question is how reliable is Technorati’s data? How serious is that business? Have a look:
Japanese, the most active blogging language? Really? Are all the “gomiburoggu” (fake blogs) part of that statistic? How is that data handled and sold and why has no one asked these questions before? Insiders know that most Japanese blogs are fake (to trick Google).
Reality check on Technorati’s EU top 100
First of all: Technorati is not as important as they want us to believe. A big number of bloggers don’t use Technorati and thus the data that they deliver is all but complete and often just plain wrong. Why do we know that?
Round table for top bloggers turned out to be old school self promotion with bogus data
Edelman and Technorati tried to bring the big European bloggers and the big European corporations at a roundtable and discuss matters of the blogosphere with them. As it turned out it was less a roundtable than a self PR for Technorati and Edelman. The one French guy I spoke to described the event as a mere disaster. In Germany it was commonly described as ludicrous (watch the Painful video if you have the nerve):
- It was announced as a meeting of bloggers and industrials. In Germany only two representatives from the industry showed up
- Instead of discussing (they called it round table) the attendants had to listen to a one hour presentation. But as bad comes to worse:
- Not just the event as such, actually the data that Edelman/Technorati presented on behalf of the situation of the blogosphere in Germany was totally bogus: Among the top 100 German bloggers there were many unknown ones in the top 10 and 36 of the most relevant were missing. And all the other European charts turned out to be as amateurish.
- Asked why that is the case, technorati tried to blame the beta stage of their software. No matter who’s fault it is: Fact is, Technorati’s data is incomplete and as such statistically not usable. Yet Edelman presents Technorati data as the mere fact.
Japanese leading the blogosphere? Unlikely
Sensational data should raise concerns
Based on obviously unreliable Technorati data, Edelman claims that the Japanese blogosphere defines about 31% of the global blogosphere while the English share is about 25%. Sensational, isn’t it?
Lack of reliable European data
By just comparing the overall Internet language market share of English (35%) and Japanese (8.4%) it becomes quite clear that this result is not just sensational but also rather unlikely. Technorati Japan is popular, that’s all this study tells us. Of course it depends how they define “blog entry”. But looking at how wrong they were with their top 100 European bloggers the whole study collapses like a house of cards. However you put it, that Japanese are 31 times more productive in terms of blogging than the German statistically just doesn’t seem probable. For someone that reads German blogs and lives and works in Japan even less.
Myspace alone has more blogs
More doubts arise if you look at the mere number of Myspace blogs (106 Million September 2006) and Facebook profiles (7.6 million). These mostly English blogs produce less entries than 8 million Japanese blogs (including 5.7 Million mixi profiles). No, guys, I don’t think so. The numbers just don’t add up.
Internet data is hard to verify
The problem with Edelman/Technorati potentially publishing unreliable data is that this data is hard to verify as there are hardly any resources to check back. The overwhelming amount of raw data and the fact that everyone refers back to Technorati as their main source just doesn’t allow to verify their claims.
Two brands profit from the publicity
Given how sensational it sounds to say that “31% of blog entries are Japanese”, it becomes clear that this data gets distributed quite quickly. And being cited everywhere by two big names it is also blindly believed. Japanese are crazy anyways, so you never know, right? Two brands obviously profit from that publicity.
But what if that data is all as bogus as the German top 100 bloggers? If that is the case, there is no need to boycott the two companies, sooner or later they will slip and fall on their backs.
Irresponsible Technorati?
Technorati’s chance to make big bucks
Please get me right: I don’t think Technorati doesn’t know about web related matters. I doubt their statistical competence and their responsibility. Eventhough they do acknowledge that they are “grossly undercounting the Korean blogosphere”, it seems irresponsible to publish and sell that messed up data as a work in progress. As this is not how it’s percieved by the public. We all know that people often blindly believe in numbers.
Edelman: Panic on the Titanic
And I don’t think Edelman is evil and presents us wrong data in order to manipulate us or push their Japanese customers into blogging by telling them how important blogging is in Japan.
20,000 Dollars per month “to check the blogosphere”
Looking at how naively they orchestrated and handled the repeated Wal-Mart flogging and how badly they operate their website, maybe they are just plain amateurs. Not in terms of PR. In terms of new media. Robert Pickard, CEO of Edelman Japan confirmed that “social media relations services might range from USD 5-25k per month”. And the main tool for “social media reliations” is Technorati. Again, if that is true, it’s not evil. It’s amateurish.
PR reinventing itself as New Media consulting?
Maybe they’re just a panicking PR giant, realizing that the days of PR are counted. Panicking, the try to shake off their ultra-conservative armor and quickly get into a new field to reinvent themselves as No1 New Media gurus. New field? Guys, to me it looks like you just ran into a mine field.
Or to be less dramatic: You’re about to get messed up like me, when I try to play Playstation against my teenage cousins.
Or to be clear: Like this grandpa, high on ecstasy, back in 1993, flipping and shaking to the pounding beat of hard core techno music on the dance floor of Les Bains Douches, Paris - flipping and shouting to break down only three minutes later and be carried out on the shoulder of some body guard under the loud applause of the young crowd.
UPDATE: Since December 2006 Technorati and Edelman no longer cooperate. Thank God.
12.13.2006
22:42
I’d love it if somebody could explain to me what the point of Technorati tags are from a bloggers perspective.
You are supposed to put links to technorati tags at the bottom of your blog posts. Those tags then link to Technorati, and typically your visitor get s a page of completely irrelevant information.
Why would you drive traffic away from your blog to something that provides no benefit to the user ?
And is it just me, or is technorati one of the slowest sites on the internet?
12.13.2006
22:50
Geek, They claim that in return they provide us with traffic. However the traffic is actually irrelevant. That’s why I took out the technorati tags (just made my page heavy).
It’s useful though to track who talks about you:
http://www.technorati.com/search/www.informationarchitects.jp
12.13.2006
23:19
They don’t provide traffic any different whether you have tags or not, though… at least not that I can tell.
I do use technorati to see who is linking to me. Definitely the only useful feature. (although almost nobody links to me yet)
12.13.2006
23:21
What you write IS pretty hard core geeky. Maybe you should increase your font size, so other geeks’d start reading…
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/100e2r
100% font size is definitely on the geeky side…
12.13.2006
23:26
It’s true there are a lot of Japanese bloggers out there (don’t forget Livedoor, Yahoo Japan and Geocities make up a very large chunk along with mixi), but also it would appear that Technorati is somehow mixing up their findings - the numbers just don’t add up. And yes, it’s a danger, having Edelman or anyone other Marketing company, give us stats. Stats should be independently verified, your blog highlights this like no other on the internet.
And remember, 86% of statistics are made up.
12.13.2006
23:30
I’ve been thinking about increasing my font size, actually. Thanks for the suggestion.
12.14.2006
03:35
Thanks for linking to my article.
12.14.2006
10:06
As an English-language blogger in Japan, many of the links I see through Technorati are from splogs or keyword harvesting site.
When I first started using Technorati it was great, but this year it’s been down a lot or slow to update, and I never got any traffic except for one time when I used slightly bogus sex-related tags! I just keep an eye on the WordPress control panel recent links panel.
I ditched visible Technorati tags a while back and replaced them with Jerome’s Keywords, which a) keeps traffic on site and b) creates an index page with the keyword in the title, which Google seems to like. According to the documentation, it also sends the tags to Technorati, but I can’t say I notice it doing so, but that might be because the recent redesign is very confusing to me!
12.14.2006
15:30
Well since I partly work with affiliates here in Japan from the corporate site (tons of them are, blogs, if you really could call them that). I can tell you, that a big part of the huge blogosphere in Japan consists merely of gomi-blogs.
In Japan there are more astroturfing and fake-blogs out there than you could shake a stick at, actually. A big number of the Japanese blogs out there have the sole purpose of creating money via affiliate programs, often enough using dubious methods, and many many more just act as a way to trick google ranking via heavy cross linking from all kinds of sites to one single sponsor site.
Somehow google have been able to somewhat suppress and control that kind of cheating in English language sites, but they’re still pretty ineffective when it comes to German and especially Japanese sites. Sometimes you search for a term and you’ll find endless lists of pseudo-blog after pseudo-blog which apparently do nothing much more but link to commercial sites (which actually are behind all this crap) or are trying to extrude money out of the same corporations via tons of banners and stuff.
It is not always quantity that matters.
Cheers
12.19.2006
04:28
Finally someone got the truth out there, i remember i’ve read at a german site about the wrong technorati numbers for Germany.
12.23.2006
14:37
Tags help me get indexed on google for my wordpress blog. Good enough reason for me to use tags.
12.26.2006
11:25
Oliver, I think you should be as transparent about your motives here as you counsel others to be transparent. Funny how you start flaming Edelman after you approach me for a job and most recently for web design business (should I post these e-mails I saved from you so people can appreciate your agenda with crystal clarity)?Could there be a connection I wonder? And if you are going to start quoting me, you should do so with precision: I said that our social media relations services might range from USD 5-25k per month, not 20k per month for monitoring.
12.26.2006
12:01
Thanks for the clarification about the price tag on the media services, Robert. I rectified that right away.
Your “threat”: Here is an .rtf of that mail conversation in Summer 2005 for everyone. Had to go through my backups to find it.
Your accusation: Looking at your recent track of scandals starting October 2006, I wouldn’t call 2005 “recently”. Back then a couple of companies received my resume. Please notice that this was before I heard about the Wal-Mart flogging (October 2006), before I understood why you partner with Technorati (November 2006). Ironically, I think our email exchange shows pretty well, that I didn’t really know who I was dealing with (I thought you were some low end start-up).
UPDATE: It didn’t take you too long to come up with the next faux pas, didn’t it? Or is it just me?
4.26.2007
18:47
I also laughed when I saw that… Especially considering Technorati has a branch in Japan… and investors etc… Anyway, looks like a complicated situation but it seems that the data could have been presented and broadcasted in a more transparent manner. Glad to see smbd had the b***s to say smth out loud.
8.23.2007
19:25
Most of the time blogs don’t carry alot of information and just made for time pass. But I think your blog is the one where I have learned many things with your practicles and experiences. Thanks
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18:37
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12.12.2007
04:58
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1.6.2008
19:28
They don’t provide traffic any different whether you have tags or not, though… at least not that I can tell.
I do use technorati to see who is linking to me. Definitely the only useful feature. (although almost nobody links to me yet)
love you technorati
1.22.2008
15:23
well done , i like it!!!