Developer Center

Search Query

A keyword search lets you see what blogs contain a given search string. On the Technorati site, you can enter a keyword in the searchbox and it will return a list of blogs containing it. The API version allows more features and gives you a way to use the search function on your own site.

The call is made using a REST-ful interface. Send either a HTTP GET or a HTTP POST to http://api.technorati.com/search?key=[apikey]&query=[words] with mandatory parameters "key" and "query" and additional optional parameters described below.

Parameters

Mandatory

key: Your Technorati API key, which you can obtain on our API key page.
query: Set this to the words you are searching for. Separate words with '+' as usual.

Optional

format

This allows you to request an output format, which by default is set to xml. At the moment only the XML (xml) and RSS (rss) formats are supported. We plan to support the Atom Syndication Format as well as XOXO in the near future.

language

Set this to a ISO 639-1 two character language code to retrieve results specific to that language. This feature is currently beta and may not work for all languages.

authority

Set this to filter results to those from blogs with at least the Technorati Authority specified. 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:

n: Any authority: All results.
a1: A little authority: Results from blogs with at least one link.
a4: Some authority: Results from blogs with a handful of links.
a7: A lot of authority: Results from blogs with hundreds of links.

start

Set this to a number larger than 0 and you'll get the start+20 freshest items (links or blogs), e.g. set it to 20+1, and you'll get the second page of rankings 21-40.

limit

Set this to a number larger than 0 and smaller or equal to 100 and it will return limit number of links for a query. By default this value is 20.

claim

Set this to 1 to have each link result embellished with any user information associated with a link result's parent blog.

Response

The search query either returns a list of links and associated info or an error message. Error responses are always in default XML format and look like this:

Success

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- generator="Technorati API version 1.0 /search" -->
<!DOCTYPE tapi PUBLIC "-//Technorati, Inc.//DTD TAPI 0.02//EN" "http://api.technorati.com/dtd/tapi-002.xml">
<tapi version="1.0">
<document>
<result>
  <query>[query string]</query>
  <querycount>[number of matches]</querycount>
  <querytime>[duration of query]</querytime>
  <rankingstart>[value of start parameter]</rankingstart>
</result>
<item>
  <weblog>
    <name>[name of blog containing match]</name>
    <url>[blog URL]</url>
    <rssurl>[blog RSS URL]</rssurl>
    <atomurl>[blog Atom URL]</atomurl>
    <inboundblogs>[inbound blogs]</inboundblogs>
    <inboundlinks>[inbound links]</inboundlinks>
    <lastupdate>[date blog last updated]</lastupdate>
  </weblog>
  <title>[title of entry]</title>
  <excerpt>[blurb from entry with search term highlighted]</excerpt>
  <created>[date entry was created]</created>
  <permalink>[URL of blog entry]</permalink>
</item>
...
</document>
</tapi>

If the claim parameter is included, claimed blogs will be noted with an author element set in each weblog listing.