Technorati is a massive internet search engine specifically for searching blogs.  The name itself derives from the words 'Technology' and 'Literati' which invokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism (Wikipedia).

Splogs or blogs?

Technorati have greatly improved the measures they use to confirm a blog as being legitimate, and as such their value is increasing, with less spam-blogs (or splogs as we affectionately call them!) being included in their directory.  It may take a little while to get listed, but once you do it can have beneficial results in terms of driving traffic to your site - particularly if you are fortunate enough to be one of their 'featured blogs'.

If you aren't currently writing your own blogs, Technorati is a great place to find useful and informative blogs that interest you - it's also a great place to see what your competitors are doing!  There is even a section which tells you about how to become a better blogger - great to read if you're thinking about starting up!

How does it know what is a good blog?

Technorati uses a system which is not hugely dissimilar to Google to rank its blogs.  This system is known as 'Authority' and  is calculated by looking at your blog, what links it has going both in and out, the type of categories you are using, and so forth.  It is based on a scale of 0-1000 with 1000 being the highest - you can read more in the Technorati guide to Authority.  You will see the blog Authority level on the site when you are browsing, and also whether they are moving up or down the rankings.

Getting started

To get started with submitting a blog to Technorati, it is a very simple process:

1. Create an account at http://www.technorati.com
2. Confirm your account by clicking an emailed link
3. Go to your account and enter your blog URL in 'Start Claim' - at the bottom of the page.
4. Enter your blog details (including RSS feed URL)
5. Create a blog post with your verification code, this will look something like 1ABCD2EFGHIJK - note it must appear in the RSS feed, so if the feed only shows the intro text, you must have the code in the intro text.
6. Click on 'Check Claim' and then 'Verify Code' once your blog article is posted to complete the process
7. Your submission will then be checked by the Technorati faeries and if they like it, you'll be added

Troubleshooting

If you are getting failed messages, check your RSS feed and ensure that the code is actually appearing in the RSS feed text.  If it's not, you need to alter where you are putting the code.  It is possible to create a blog post just containing your code, for the purpose of verification, and then remove it once verification is successful.