Although their list of the top 100 blogs can hardly be manipulated, I have seen manipulated authority rankings ranging anywhere from the top 2k to the top 150k. It appears that in this range of blogs, few rankings are determined by how much free stuff they give away or how much paid promotion they have done, rather than natural, in content links.

Ways In Which Bloggers Manipulate Technorati Authority Rank

1. Purchasing bulk blog posts on hundreds of blogs over different C-Class IP’s – Head over to the link sales section of DP and you will see what I am talking about. For around $100 you can make your ranking go from 1,500,000 to 40,000 very easily.
2. Commenting on hundreds of blogs of which you get in the top commentators widget – This method is free. I have found that most bloggers don’t even realize when commenting that there is a good chance of them getting one Technorati authority point because they are in the top commentators widget. I feel that including the links in this widget is inaccurate as the linking is not controlled by the owner of the blog, but by the commentator.
3. Distributing free items – By distributing free items such as WordPress themes and widgets that include a link back to your blog bloggers can gain thousands of links counted by the Technorati authority system, effectively placing some blogs into the top 2k list even though they may have very minimal presence or traffic.

It’s not just Technorati authority that I feel can be easily manipulated. Alexa is probably even worse.

Case Study

Variable 1. A blank domain name with no site and no traffic, it is simply visited by me once a day to check my stats of this blog on. Alexa Rank = 700,000
Variable 2. A functional soccer website averaging about 20 visitors a day since I have neglected it and never visited by me. Alexa Rank = 5,800,000

Can you see how dodgy it is… Whatever rank you want can be controlled by you.