High tech gurus like Gideon and Ken Lammers probably have a better way, but I check Technorati to find out if anybody has linked to Simple Justice.  Technorati isn’t exactly the most reliable method, as it’s fairly hit or miss as to whether it picks up everything going on in the blawgosphere, and has constant updating problems.  It’s not unusual to see something a day or two after it was posted, if at all.  But then, the price is right.

One of the other things that Technorati does is attribute “authority” to a blog.  By that, it notes the number of different blogs that link to you in the past 6 months, and quantifies your place in the blogosphere based upon that number.  This is pure vanity, having absolutely nothing to do with anything substantive about blogging at all.

And I’m miffed.

A couple of days ago, my authority was 303, and there were a couple of new blog links that had yet to be reflected in the number (Technorati takes its time doing that as well).  Then yesterday, my authority fell to 280.  What the?  So I checked to see what came off the back end, since authority only runs for 180 days and then goes away.  I couldn’t find anything to explain a 23 point drop.

This morning, it’s down to 273.  By the weekend, I should be hovering around 6.  This is really beginning to bug me.

I posted on the Technorati discussion board, and while the admin responded to questions before and after me, I was left high and dry.  I sent Technorati an email about the problem, and received an acknowledgment informing me that they were very busy over at support and I could expect a response sometime before the end of my natural life.

No, it doesn’t change anything about Simple Justice if my authority is 6 instead of 303.  But it isn’t doing a darn thing for my self-esteem.   So if anyone reading this has a cousin who works in Technorati support, would you ask them why their trying to crush my spirit.  I’m only human.

Update:  I finally received a response from technorati support:

My apologies for the delay. Your authority looks up-to-date for the number of blogs in our system linking to your in the past 180 days. It does look like a large number of links fell out of the 180 day window recently which would explain the drop.

So, given the non-responsive response, I decided to manually go back 180 days and see what fell off the back end.  It appears that there was a flurry of blogs within the Lexblog sphere of Kevin O’Keefe that had added Simple Justice to their blogroll.  But if I’m in the blogroll, it shouldn’t fall off the back end unless the blogs were never indexed again. 

It doesn’t make sense to me, but apparently, the Technorati answer is “it is what it is.”  And Kevin, have you grown tired of SJ?

Update 2:  New piece of the puzzle just came in from Technorati.  I’m informed that when they scan a blog for links, a blog on the blogroll is only counted the first time it’s seen.  After that, it’s not counted again, so it falls off the back of Authority after 180 days even though it’s still there.

To those of you on my blogroll to whom I thought I was showing a little authority-love, I apologize.  I didn’t know it worked this way.  I don’t think it should, since the blogs that remain on a blogroll are there for a reason every day.  And yet, Technorati thinks differently.