Well look at that: I started bragging last week about inching up on the Top 5,000 in Technorati, and while I’m in mid-strut they go and knock up everyone’s ranking by a thousand or more. I’ll still hit the top 5K soon, but what’s the deal with that, dude?

I know Contest Blogger wasn’t the only one to get slapped, because I checked some other blogs too. Our Technorati Authority remained unchanged, though, so I don’t have much to complain about.

I’m a fan of Technorati and use it frequently to check on our incoming links and rank, and I’m not sure that I like the fact that WordPress 2.3 now uses Google Blogsearch to see backlinks. I’m not too familiar with it yet, but Blogsearch doesn’t seem to show backlinks as well as Technorati.

While we’re on the topic, though, does anyone really care about Technorati Favorites anymore? I used to run contests on my blogs trying to get bloggers to make me a Favorite, and over at Romance Tracker I’ve been favorited by almost 150 people.

I thought that getting favorited by so many bloggers would end up doing something magical for the blog’s popularity or traffic or something, but it has brought exactly zero new readers, dude.

Which begs the question, what good is Technorati Favorites for except to stroke your own ego? I mean I’m sure the Top 100 Favorited Blogs get some extra traffic from it, but most of us are never going to make it into that category.

Anyway, a lot of you have probably reached this conclusion on your own, but I would advise against running a contest where the entry requirements are to make your site a Technorati Favorite. It might make you feel popular, but it will do absolutely nothing for your traffic or backlinks, dude.

And by the way, if you get a chance, don’t forget to make Contest Blogger one of your Technorati Favorites. If about 280 of you do that, we’ll get launched into the Top 100 and leave you small-change chumps behind.

Hey, why not subscribe to the Contest Blogger RSS feed?