Technorati Makes Breaking Change to Multi-Word Tag Syntax: Hyphens Replace Plus Signs – Epic #Fail
Update 11/15/2009: Multi-word tags with “+” word separators and search feeds now seem to be working. The following capture resulted on 11/15/2009 from a SQL Azure Database (SQL+Azure+Database) tag:
Update 11/13/2009: @TechnoEric said “[W]e really should get the old tags working with our new system; you may not need to change.” in an 11/9/2009 tweet.
Update 11/12/2009: Brandon Turner of the Windows Live Writer (WLW) team responded to my tweet regarding updating WLW as follows in an 11/9/2009 email:
Sadly, we don’t have a work around in our code right now, if this is a problem for you, then you might want to look into a 3rd party plugin.It’s strange they want to use dash instead of a plus sign, when all other blog tag aggregators seem to still use a plus sign. This is probably because URL encoding requires spaces be convert to a + sign or %20.
None the less, I have filed a bug to look into the issue. We’ll see what we can do.
While testing Technorati tags generated by Windows Live Writer in my recent blog posts, I discovered that multi-word tags, such as Windows Azure (Windows+Azure) were returning hundreds of links to posts apparently tagged Windows.
Similarly, posts tagged SQL Azure (SQL+Azure) or SQL Azure Database (SQL+Azure+Database) returned links to posts having no conceivable relationship to Microsoft’s new cloud-based relational database (click image for full-size capture):
Following is a transcript of my Twitter conversation with @TechnoEric about this problem:
- From @rogerjenn 11/8/2009: @technorati: Tag-based search with phrases (word1+word2) ignore the second and higher terms. Try any link on http://bit.ly/2wAQGC. #Fail.
- From @rogerjenn 11/8/2009: @technorati: The http://technorati.com/tag/W... URL returns mostly Windows 7 posts, neglecting the Azure restriction. Epic #Fail.
- From @TechnoEric 11/9/2009: @rogerjenn @technorati:for multi-word tags try dash: http://technorati.com/tag/W... Not perfect, but better.
- From @rogerjenn 11/8/2009: RT @TechnoEric: Dash for multi-word tags is better, but requires manually editing tags created by Windows Live Writer. Why the change? #Fail
Substituting hyphens (-) for plus signs (+) does, indeed, improve the results, as indicated by SQL Azure (SQL-Azure) or SQL Azure Database (SQL-Azure-Database) links:
As I mentioned in my reply to @TechnoEric, this unannounced (and unwarranted, in my opinion) change requires manually editing the Technorati tags generated by Windows Live Writer, my preferred blog editor. However, this gratuitous change renders non-functional about 10,000 tags in my earlier blog posts.
I’ve contacted wlw-team@microsoft.com to request the option of changing the space separator to and from plus signs in new posts. I’ll update this post, if and when I hear from @TechnoEric or the Windows Live Writer team. I’ve temporarily reverted to Google Alerts for cloud-related blog posts.
Technorati TagName Articles Pages Are Missing the RSS Feed Icon: Another #Fail
Another issue I encountered after Technorati overhauled their site was the loss of an RSS feed icon on the page(s) returned by tag URLs. Previously, I was able to add feeds to my reader that returned links to updated tag-specific pages, which Technorati calls “search feeds.” Clicking Internet Explorer 8’s RSS feed icon returns an “All Items” feed, which, of course, is totally useless:
There are several recent @TechnoEric tweets that mention “Technorati search feeds went away w/redesign. Back soon. You're getting original articles feed” or the like.
Technorati has invested thousands, perhaps millions, in an attempt to upgrade its service. The foolishness described in this post indicates a lack of attention by Technorati to the needs of the majority of the site’s contributors.
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