Technorati Blog

Introducing the Technorati Link Count Widget

Posted by Tantek Çelik on November 17, 2006

Category: widgets Permalink · View blog reactions

Bloggers,

For a long time, many of you have added Technorati links next to your post permalinks, comments, and trackbacks, that let your readers click to see the number of links and read bloggers' reactions to your blog posts.

Many of you have also asked us for additional functionality - showing the number of links to each post inline right there on that Technorati link, so you (and your readers) can get an idea of which posts are getting linked to, and watch which hot posts get more links by the day (or perhaps by the hour for you A-listers out there).

Your wait is finally over. Introducing the Technorati Link Count Widget.

As you can see on this very blog, installing the Technorati Link Count Widget will display a "View blog reactions" link next to each blog post. When other bloggers link to one of your posts, that text changes to show the number of posts linking to that particular post. For example the State of the Blogosphere October 2006 post shows "275 blog reactions" (or more by the time you read this).

So take a look at the instructions for installing the Technorati Link Count Widget and give it a try. So far we've got specific easy template embeds for Blogger, MovableType, TypePad, and WordPress.

For other blogging systems, and, in fact, for any kind of real time web page that people link to (e.g. shared photos and videos, wiki pages, products etc.), you can similarly install the widget and configure the embedded hyperlink to include the appropriate permalink. The Link Count Widget will display the number of links, and when clicked display realtime blog reactions to that page or item.

I'm trying it out on all my new blog posts on my blog starting with November (yes, that's what happens when you use a static file based hand built/coded blogging system, the past tends to remain unchanged). For better examples, take a look at a few of the many blogs already trying out the Technorati Link Count Widget (chosen only slightly randomly with some editorializing by yours truly).