Most people I know are like me in one respect. They would work for hours rather than ask for customer service help, especially where a computer is involved. Usually it’s because the folks in customer service aren’t much help at all. With Technorati, it’s either because the service has been touch and go, or because we understand how much Janice Myint and her Customer Service Team have to straighten out. . . .

So I figure a review of where things stand after this latests upgrade might let us all know what’s there the next time we need to find our way.

A Family of Support Pages

There is at least one addition in the Technorati household. The cute little fellow has a serious adult name. It’s called by the moniker, Technorati: Support FAQ. Perhaps the family is thinking it’ll grow into it.

Now Technorati has quite a family of support documents to choose from. They are all under the HELP link in the gray nav bar at the top of the page. A click there will lead you to all of this information.

• About Technorati gives basic information about the blog search engine. This is where you find out that Technorati is currently tracking 33.1 million sites and 2.2 billion links.
• Blogging Basics covers the most basic description of weblogs in a Q&A format.
• The FAQ answers frequently-asked questions about Technorati and terms and symbols used on their site.
• How-tos is a collection of posts by
  Steve Rubel,
  Know More Media,
  Paul Stamatiou,
  Improbulus,
  David Fordee,
  Ryan Daigle,
  Fitzgerald,
  Sam Sugar,
  and Brad Isaac

  The posts cover topics from hot-to hack Technorati, how-to build tags, to how-to use tags to increase your blog’s traffics. The links above are not all that you will find there. Some writers did more than one post.

• If you like that page, there is Technorati Tools, which includes Browser Plugins, Bookmarklets, and more links–this time tools from users, including Lorelle VanFossen and David Smith, on tools for using Technorati to its fullest.
• Of course, you’ve already checked out the Publisher’s Guide, which
  gives the basics on claiming a blog.
• Two pages: Blog Finder and Tags explain what the tagged web is about.
• The Support FAQ. the newest addition, but I wouldn’t call it the baby.

The Support FAQ

The Support FAQ page is a concerted effort to address most of the issues that have been the talk of Technorati. Someone, or some ones, have spent some time putting it together, and though such things are never complete, this page is a fine start. Here’s what you’ll find there.

• What to do you if you have trouble claiming your blog–with special notes on Yahoo 360, MySpaces, MSN Spaces
• An explanation of the difference between post and blog tags
• How link counts work
• What you might do to when spiders aren’t reading your posts correctly
• How to ping Technorati when your posts AND links from others aren’t showing up
• How the Technorati user name display works
• How to redirect a URL change so that you keep your links
• What to do if you no longer want a post in the index–hint: don’t delete it!

Okay done. Believe me, I don’t, nor do I wish, to work for Technorati. I’m sure that’s a relief to David Sifry. I would like to stop by, though, the next time I’m in San Francisco to meet all of the folks who work on my blogs, especially those who made a big deal of Friday’s fairy tale. 🙂

Now we have all of the support options together in one post for a quick run down. Hopefully this will help us when we need to know our options. An even bigger hope is that we’ll never need to think of any of this again.

Of course, while I was writing this post, I repinged all of my blogs. Sigh.
Good thing, I’m still the nice one.

I’ve started a new category–Technorati. It’s become a case study in building a brand.

ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
A Tale, Sister Marlene, Stephen Covey, Mike Sigers, & Power Linking
Technorati Without Janice–We Won’t Have to Know
Put Your 2Cents In–What’s Technorati Worth–Without Janice?
Technorati Has a NEW Home Page–My Blogs Are Stuck Again