Technorati Adds Icons to Indicate High and Low Inbound Links

Posted on January 10, 2006

Technorati has added new icons to Technorati's search results to indicate blogs that have zero inbound links and blogs that rank in the Technorati 100.

The Technorati talk bubble appears faded out for blogs for blogs with no inbound links.
If a Top 100 blog appears in the search results you will notice a special button next to the blog name.

The faded talk bubble does make it easier to filter out splogs -- which tend to have few, if any, inbound links. But splogs will probably eventually find a way around this. And if you do ignore the blogs with faded talk bubbles you will be missing some genuine blogs that are either new or have yet to receive an inbound link.

Zoli's Blog argues that it was easier when the actual link count was provided.

Until recently Technorati had a far more meaningful indicator, the actual link-count listed in the search results. If they insist on switching from meaningful numbers to cute graphics, could they at least be more granular, and have a color-coded scheme for major brackets, like 50, 100, 500 ..ect links?

That's a great point because under the new search results the only way to find out how many inbound links a blog has is to put your mouse over the talk bubble icon. This creates an extra step for people using Technorati's search engine.