Technorati is dying, says the Blog Herald:

A melodramatic title to be sure, but I didn’t want to use Technorati is broken because I’ve used it before, and also I’m sad. Because Technorati is dying. It’s not the same depth of sadness you’d have for a close friend or family member, its more like losing an associate, you know, the sort of person you wave to or say Gday (sorry Hi for US readers) to on your way into work.

Obviously I agree with this. It doesn’t need to be permanent, but right now, bloggers need an alternative.

So, what are the other options?

PubSub is an obvious choice, but I fear it’s slowly decaying as well, as it isn’t spotting anywhere near the number of links that Bloglines is either. Bloglines is good in its own way, but sometimes searches come back with a “database error” (fixed upon refresh), and it isn’t really the fastest. Blogpulse is nice, accurate and fast, but it isn’t really geared towards “counting links”, which is what most bloggers want.

So, what is the real alternative to Technorati?

IceRocket.

I only discovered this service in the last few days, probably thanks to a tip from Jason (but I’m not sure).

IceRocket is like Google + Feedster + Blogpulse.

You can search, you can find up-to-the-hour links, you can trend searches and you can create RSS feeds from searches and link requests.

I’ve only been using it for a few days, but so far it’s tickling me as the best of the bunch.

If you are having any degree of frustration with Technorati, I’d highly recommend you at least give IceRocket a try. It’s got an awful name, but it might just do the trick.