What is Authority?

Scoble says that Technorati just turned on a new feature that sorts keyword searches by authority (e.g. in-bound links). This triggers the philosophical side of Steve. Just what IS authority?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, authority is:

a) the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience

Hmmm, Technorati link counts don't let me boss anybody around.

b) a person or organization having power or control in a particular, typically political or administrative, sphere

Hmmm, nothing about links here.

c) the power to influence others, esp. because of one's commanding manner or one's recognized knowledge about something

Hmmm, links sometimes mean someone is knowledgeable about a subject, but not always. Blogs cover many subjects.

So, I am going to argue that links - be they Google or Technorati - have turned the entire concept of authority into something rather trivial - popularity. Does this mean Britney Spears is an authority too just because she's popular?

Yet, in a Google society links convey authority in our mind. Honestly, links are temporary. Authority to me sounds more permanent. This connotes that Boing Boing's the most authoritative site on the Web, according to Technorati. Sure, it's an awesome blog, but can you tell me what they're an authority about?

Semantics, you say? Perhaps. But you can't argue that we now measure relevance in links. And that feels strange to me.

Technorati Tags: Google, Technorati

Comments

[Bob Gladstein]

Technorati may tell us that authority is just a measure of links, but that doesn't make it so. Search engines have certainly moved beyond that idea.

Moreover, I've already seen a result at Technorati on which the #4 result has more links than the #3. I don't know if that's a glitch, or if they've actually got other criteria.

[Mathew Ingram]

I think that's an important point about Technorati and other such ranking engines, Steve. All they measure is raw links -- in other words, the blogosphere's version of votes on American Idol. In some cases, those votes might reflect the fact that someone is a particularly good blogger, with lots of wisdom and pith (you and I being obvious examples), but in many cases blogs -- like singers -- are popular just because, well... because they're popular. Those rankings might be a starting point when it comes to finding good blogs and interesting voices, but they shouldn't be an ending point.

[Bill O'Day]

Just a guess, but perhaps it is "c".

I would say both "A-Listers" and Britney Spears have the power to influence others (although the concept can be quite frightening in the latter especially) due not because of knowledge, but their commanding manners. They may not come out and say, link to me, but others will link because it will curry favor.

Personally, I think the line between popularity and authority might (at this point in human history) is blurred.

[Philipp Schumann]

I suppose that when Google started measuring relevance in links, it just turned out to produce better search results back in 1998. Now everybody and her dog does it not because it is the ultimate in authority or relevance, but simply because no better way has been found yet. I predict that is not going to change until search is based on natural language queries -> natural language answers with links to "relevant sources" from which the answers were extracted (relevant now not measured in links, but in how they deal with the topic and relations covered in the query).

[Danny]

The notion of [authorities = sites with lots of inlinks] is pretty well documented in the context of the web, usually contrasted with [hubs = sites with lots of outlinks]

Google "hubs and authorities", quite few papers.

[Javier]

Excellent example about Boing Boing there. It makes your point perfectly.
Links cannot in any way reflect authority.
How many people link to New Scientist web? And yet do you think they have less "power" because of it in the scientific and pseudo-scientific world?
regards
http://niquel757.blogspot.com

[Jeremy Pepper]

And, this says what about the cluetrain?

But, hey, talking out of both sides of your mouth (and in third person, no less): first, popularity and rankings don't matter, then 60 seconds later, it's all about "authority" (read as links)? Which one is it?

[Daria]

Authority according to Technorati:

Technorati calculates a blog's authority by how many people link to it. Filtering by authority is a good way to refine your search results. There are four settings (left to right):

1. Any authority. This will show all results.
2. A little authority. This will show results from blogs with at least one link.
3. Some authority. This will show results from blogs with a handful of links.
4. A lot of authority. This will show results from blogs with hundreds of links.

They didn't check Oxford dictionary. Technorati seems not to know the difference between popularity and authority, that's for sure and what do they mean by 'handful of links'.

[John]

Agreed that popularity / inbounds do not equal relevance / weight / significance.... So how else might the blogosphere organise, order and measure itself to more consistently reflect quality and to allow new voices to be heard? Possible alternatives or additional tools? How else might the blogosphere determine and represent influence? How could that influence be transferable between hosts, sites, or projects? Is a LinkedIn (or other compound) profile a good way to go? What if Feedburner had profiles for users, so that a blogger could see a list of readers? How does the Kinja model of recommended additional reading factor in? How could "technokarma" track, for regular bloggers as well as the A-listers?

[Deepak]

Steve,

Excellent question. I am a strong believer in analytics. At the same time, qw all know that quantity and quality don't always go hand in hand. Is # of links a sufficient measure of "authority" in the blogosphere? I would say it is one measure and within a certain tagspace it might be somewhat relevant, but there needs to be some form of measure that combines links with a rating system. For example, can we rate other users on technorati. Could some form of weighted authority scheme be used? Would the rating of someone with higher authority count more?

Just some thoughts

[peter Hirshberg]

Steve, thanks for the thoughtful post on the Technorati authority filter and its implications.

As you might imagine, we spent a lot of time thinking about what to name this feature and how it might be used. You raised some great points and I'd like to address two issues : the semantic or values implication of the word "authority", and the problem of tossing all blogs on all topics into the same pool and therefore concluding that a popular blog like Boing Boing with many links must be an authority on everything.

The term "authority" has become something of a term of art to when referring to inbound sources as a measure of attention. We often refer to a link as "a vote of authority," and filter by authority is a very useful way to focus a search on those blogs that command attention from other bloggers. But this shouldn't imply a value judgment. More authority doesn't mean "more
good" or even "more interesting." In many instances, less authority yields more interesting results: a greater diversity of opinion, less mainstream thinking, more individual voices. The authority filter is a tool to fine tune results, and its a great way to zoom in on the voices that are commanding the most attention, and then zoom back out and listen to the whole diverse medium that is the blogosphere. With so many voices in the blogosphere, think of filter by authority as an additional tuning control at Technorati.

You also make the excellent point that a single authority filter seems to make popular bloggers experts on everything. Taken to the extreme this would imply that if Boing Boing or Engadget got up one day and wrote about, say, soufflés, they would be the World Experts on food. Which thankfully they are not.

The blogosphere is like white light: we are used to looking at it in aggregate, but apply a prism to the light and there's a whole spectrum of communities, each with its own experts, linking patterns and conversations. And the blogosphere gets much more interesting and useful as media when seen as topical communities; that's why we built Technorati blogfinder to highlight hundreds of topical areas, each searchable and each with its own authority.

For example, there are 578 blogs about New York in blogfinder. Search for the word "snow" among NY blogs and you get great perspectives on this weekend's record storm from people who were there and like to write about New York. ( http://technorati.com/search/snow?blogtag=new%20york&authority=a4 ) This constrains the search to NY bloggers, which is all I care about in this instance. Notice also that the authority filter is still active, but now authority only applies to NY bloggers. I don't have to worry about Arianna Huffington or Boing Boing creeping into the results.

Our recent Technorati Explore feature builds on blogfinder, using topical bloggers as a kind of editorial board to surface the interesting and rising posts in a topic area. Explore answers the question, "What are the most interesting posts today about advertising or food or parenting..." Explore is an ongoing effort to render the blogosphere as topically relevant ... and move away from the one-size-fits-all kind of authority you lamented in your post.

(Dave blogged at about this at http://www.sifry.com/alerts/ yesterday; see our thoughts on the Magic Middle....)

Filter by authority is one of many tools we've built to make the blogosphere more useful. In many instances it improves searches dramatically. (For example, in PR: it helps answer the question, "who are the most linked to bloggers writing about Canon today?) But like any tool, filter by authority can be used smartly... or not so smartly! Thanks for the opportunity to explain some of our thinking and approaches; your post makes me realize we should write more about all this on our Technorati blog. After all, we don't want readers searching for posts about soufflés to mistake Boing Boing for Julia Child inadvertently!

[Paul Chaney]

I should have the most links then, because I'm an authority on everything. Heh.

[Gustavo Guerrero]

Does this mean Britney Spears is an authority too just because she's popular?

I think, yes. She is an authority for many teenagers. This is the same in other areas like politicians or chefs

The problem is if these blogs are popular because they are authority or because the links are a way to promote our own blogs. This is like a perverse circle

[Jeremy]

You must have some "authority". I googled "technorati authority" and your page was #1. Since I have been here many times, I trusted Google's advice and came here to read first. Now I'm off to read more. Thanks for a good beginning to my quest for "authority".

[Roger Jennings]

IMO, Technorati needs to weigh incoming blog counts by their 'Authority.'

http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/suggestion-for-technorati-blog.html

--rj

[Kate]

Thanks for the help. I was very curious as to what this entire "authority" thing was all about.

-Kate

[Ted]

Will I get authority for posting this comment? I am confused...

[Duane Nickull]

I am studying the Technorati Authority mechanism and conducting a pseudo experiment. This comment is an attempt to see if using links in the comment section does anything for authority or if Technorati just uses links in the main structure of another person's blog.

BTW - thanks for your blog post above. It was really enlightening. I'll make sure to share the results of this experiment back here. Please also delete this comment on Mar 2, 2008 (Technorati only uses 6 month old links). Cheers mate!

[Donald Mckenzie Jr]

This post has been a great help to me. I have always wondered what technorati authority was and how to increase it.

[ajabgajab.blogspot.com]

Hmm...
Technorati defined and it is what they defiend!

[kiki]

I was always vague on what exactly 'authority' meant to convey and what it was based on. I'm not alone, apparently. It would seem to me that 'authority' is more of a tool for advertisers, in essence an easy peasy number to look at to decide whether advertising on said site is going to amount to anything. Not so sure how I feel about that. But I still have the damn thing on my site. With it's measly one. :)

kiki

[kiki]

I was always vague on what exactly 'authority' meant to convey and what it was based on. I'm not alone, apparently. It would seem to me that 'authority' is more of a tool for advertisers, in essence an easy peasy number to look at to decide whether advertising on said site is going to amount to anything. Not so sure how I feel about that. But I still have the damn thing on my site. With it's measly one. :)

kiki

[Stock Market]

I'm still not sure what authority in technorati means. i had somebody votes for my blog, but my blog authority is still zero. is there any other criteria that technorati is considering before awarding authority ranking?

[The Kassandra Project]

It seems that Technorati uses an authority computing in the same way google does... when google started, this system was successful... but now there are other days... i think this system is deprecated.