Due to its simplicity, blogging is being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including libraries.According to San Francisco based Technorati, a leading search tool and authority for blogs, there are “over 175 000 new blogs every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly - over 1.6 million posts per day or over 18 updates a second.” Technorati currently tracks 62.5 million blogs. If the blogging trend continues, it is estimated that Technorati will have tracked its 100 millionth blog in just 5 months.
How do you get your blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you are already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you will need to claim your blog yourself.
Tagging posts with Technorati tags is easy too. Add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post (see example below) and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.
There are many features in Technorati, including the capability to search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, limit a search by language, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).
Explore
Learn more about Technorati:
- Technorati Tour – videocast of new features & new look
- Technorati Discover & Popular features
Perform a keyword search for “Library Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags, and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
For an optional challenge, learn how to tag your posts with Technorati tags so they can become part of Technorati tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “LibraryLearning2.0.” Consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist.
Please note that when adding HTML code, ensure you are in Blogger's Edit HTML window.
Connect and Reflect
This tutorial has two sections. If you have completed the first section, Tagging and Del.icio.us, as well as this secion, return to the Tutorial 6 Web page.
