Another Wordpress Blog

Alert: Submitting your blog to Sphere could bring your blog more traffic. It takes 30 seconds; do it.

What is Sphere?

Sphere is a fairly new type of search engine that lets people find blog articles related to other blog articles. Unlike Technorati, Sphere’s search is based on semantic analysis of the content of posts. It’s sort of like Google, only the search is based on the contents of an article rather than a key word.

Sphere had it’s full launch in the spring of 2006 and initially focused on getting it’s product called SphereIt implemented on news sites. It now appears to be ready to take off at blogs. If it does, we will see a new form of search engine optimization: you will want to write blog posts that rank highly when people search for “similar” blog posts.

I don’t know how Sphere will work or if people will use it. However, a number of prominent blogs are including links to Sphere it. If the reader clicks that link, they will be sent to related articles they may be interested in.

How well does Sphere work?

So, so. I installed the WordPress Plugin in an inconspicuous location at my blog; I’ve also clicked on the SphereIt buttons at Techcrunch.

I’m seriously unimpressed!

When I clicked the SphereIt icons at Techcrunch, a very large popup appeared. As far as I can tell, SphereIt thinks Read/Write Web, GigaOM and VentureBeat are related to every single Techcrunch article including the one on a possible copyright suit involving Apple and YouTube.

I had to ask myself whether those blogs might not be paying to appear! Then I realized it was much more likely a small insular group of “tech” folks entered the 50-100 blogs they think “everyone” likes. The result is users are presented a very narrow selection.

For this reason alone, I think you may not want to install “SphereIt” at your blog. You don’t have to waste your space or your readers time just because Techcrunch does!

There is another more important reason not to install the icon.

I found the SphereIt widget both here and at Techcrunch often opens a popup I can neither move nor easily close because the “close” button autoscroll past the top of my my Firefox browser screen. I could probably spend time figuring out how to close it; but why? The time saving solution is to leave Techcrunch.

So, if you do add the widget, don’t imitate the guys at Techcrunch; test the widget on several browsers. If the close button vanishes, don’t add that widget until SphereIt fixes the issue. (.)

So, why should you submit your blog to Sphere’s index?

You should submit to their index because other blogs and newspapers are adding the widgets. When their visitors use Sphere, you want your blog to show up. Since the base of blogs Sphere indexes is clearly narrow, you would benefit if you added your blog.

I’ll be fiddling the next few days to see if I can “fix” the main problem with that Sphere It icon. If I can’t fix it, it will vanish. But whether or not I eventually decide show the SphereIt widget, I did request they index my blog.

You can too: just click.