Convert Technorati Tags to Blog Search Links: Part 1
I was thinking about how I can make my Technorati Tags work harder and it occurred to me that I should be able to convert them into Category Search Links with Google’s new ‘Blog Search‘ feature.
As you may know, the basic structure of a Technorati tag is thusly:
(PLEASE NOTE: IN THESE EXAMPLES I HAVE LEFT SPACES @ THE LINK ANCHORS < a , SO THAT THE TAGS WILL BE READABLE. WHEN YOU ARE ACTUALLY USING THESE TAGS PLEASE REMOVE THE SPACES OR THEY WILL NOT WORK).
Technorati tells us that we don’t have to necessarily link to Technorati. Apparently we can link to any web page URL address - even our own site. So they provide us with an example like this: iPod
Are you with me so far? Ok, so now I have to make the tags work double duty by making the link point to a blog search keyword that will show my related posts. I will accomplish this by using Google’s new Blog Search feature (like I do with my Categories list on the right sidebar).
So a tag incorporating this method might look something like this (I’m using blog bloke as my keyword/category example):
< a href=”http://search.blogger.com/?as_q=blog+bloke&ie=UTF-8&ui=blg&bl_url=instabloke.blogspot.com&x=40&y=10″ rel=”tag”>blog bloke
The actual link would work like this: blog bloke. Or just click on any of my category links found at the end of this post for more examples.
Make Your Own Links:
Now it’s time to make your own links. Do a Blog Search for any category keyword that you want. Click on ‘Use Search Options’, put your keyword in ‘Find’ and your blog URL in the ‘In Blog’ section. Then click on ‘Search Blogs’ and copy the URL that you find in your browser address bar. Paste that URL within the href=” “ quotes as shown in the example referenced below, and voila - you have just made your own technorati/blog category link.
Here is a working example that you can use with your blog:
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Great idea Bloke. Thanks
Yes, thanks very much.
i start my blog have litle more then 2 months, is very hard to me to understand how is the write way for to post , hae tags, feeds, is too many expreesion that don´t make sense in portuguese, if i try to translate. I would like to make evrything write but i read and read about how to do it, and i just understand that i can´t to understand how ; ((
Hi Santa. Sorry to hear you are having difficulty. Code is code, and it is a universal language. Just copy and paste, and the only thing that needs changing is your choice of “keyword” and your “dot.com” address. I hope that helps.
Any guesses why this wouldn’t work? I don’t need the Technorati angle, but I have gone through and added categories to each post via this sort of method, but it refuses to work!
In theory it should, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why it won’t!
Any ideas would be immensely appreciated at this point!
Thanks!
(if you click through to my profile, it’s the “My So-Called Blog” that I’ve tried implementing this on…)
It looks like you are using Google web search instead of blog search. The easiest thing to do will be to just copy and paste my code above into your template. Just remember to modify it with your own keywords and blog address. And close up the anchor links.
It will work — trust me!
Cheers from your friendly Blog Bloke!
i would just plink those in, except that performing a blog search for the already implemented categories from the navbar yields zero results either.
Why don’t you email me?
Where should the tag go in my template? I can’t seem to find the right place.
Thanks!
Hi INAMINI. Put the tags at the bottom of each post - not in the template. To make it easier, I created a text doc with my most common tags which I cut and paste into my posts. It’s not high tech but it works.
Hmm. The example tag you’ve posted here doesn’t actually conform to the reltag microformat - see the ‘tag spaces’ section: http://microformats.org/wiki/reltag#Tag_Spaces
Tags are only allowed if they are part of the URL, not a query fragment. I don’t agree with the microformat on this point!
So if Technorati doesn’t pick them up, that’s probably why (plus the usual issues with Technorati ;)).
An interesting lecture but in reality the technique actually works… and for me that is what is most important. But thanks for the lesson.
I had to leave spaces for the link anchors in the examples above so that it would be readable and not work as an actual tag (which in this case closing the spaces would have rendered it invisible).
I have therefore added further clarification and a text box with the intact code.
Feb 25th, 2008 at 8:15 am
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