Technorati searchlet broken

I started testing the new Technorati searchlet in January. This is a bit of code you stick on your blog that gives you a Technorati-based search capability for your blog. It's at the top right of this page, just beneath the regular search box.

I''m actually not sure how it works compared to the Google-based search I have as it's never worked. If you type in a keyword, any word, and have it search for that on this blog, you're likely to get no results.

For example, if you type in the keyword 'RSS' and have it search this blog, it will say no results. If you type that same keyword into the normal search box, you will get over 690 results. A bit of a discrepancy, wouldn't you say?

So why would I replace my effective Google-based search function with this useless one? I emailed Technorati support at the end of January to find out. Finally, a reply yesterday, nearly five weeks later:

Hi Technorati User,

Currently our searchlet feature is broken. It will do searches but it will bring back all the results from our indexes instead of just a single site. We are working as quickly as possible to fix this and will update you when we have resolved the issue. If you have any questions or concerns please let me know.

Thanks for using Technorati!

A zero result on "bringing back all the results from our indexes" isn't very encouraging and certainly not a result you would trust. And taking over a month to respond isn't too good, either.

Hopefully they'll fix it soon so I can try it out to see how it actually works. Maybe.

Technorati search, Google search... If they both worked more or less the same, which one would you choose? Personal preference would play a role here no doubt, but more over-riding, I suspect, would be the feeling of trust - which one do you believe would be the one that you feel does the job well.

That's no contest at the moment.

Comments

[Morgan McLintic]

That's odd Neville. I've been trying the same search engine on my blog and it seems to work. It returns search terms for my blog only. Perhaps re-install the code once more - maybe it isn't broken any more? Or perhaps it depends on the volume of content? I installed it two weeks ago.

Morgan

[Neville Hobson]

I'd thought of doing that, Morgan, but frankly I just couldn't be bothered. So many hoops to jump through, and the Google search works perfectly.

But if it works for you, I might now just do that.

[Robin Capper]

I think they may have broken it. Worked for me when I first posted/tried now it doesn't.
Off topic, I cant get GEOLOC to work at all on my site.

[amit agarwal]

Fixed now !!

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/02/technorati-searchlet-not-working.html

[Neville Hobson]

Thanks, Amit. However, it still doesn't work on my blog. I grabbed the new code from Technorati last week, but still no joy.

I emailed David Sifrey (Technorati CEO) on this following a comment he left on another post in this blog. Not had a reply yet...

Robin, re Geo-Loc, is is tricky sometimes! But if you've got the right code on your blog, maybe you have proxy issues?

[Josh Hallett]

Is there a correlation between the searchlet not working and you tweaking your DNS settings?

[Neville Hobson]

Good question, Josh. I did think that perhaps there might be an effect there. But the Technorati code searches on the underlying TypePad address not the domain-mapped address.

It looks like there are still problems with the searchlet, as Morgan posted updates on his blog yesterday.

[Markus Sandy]

There is definitely a problem with the Technorati "searchlet". There are numerous posts about this problem on the web now. There are at least three related problems: (1) no difference between blog and web search and (2) the returned search results are missing obvious items (no matter how long you wait - google does finds them easy however) and (3) the counts of the number of links are often wrong (an off by one error, it looks like - jezz).