Though there are pretenders to the blog searching and conversation tracking throne — and most people discover my blog through a simple Google, MSN or Yahoo search — there isn’t a more solid and useful service than Technorati’s.

Everyone is posting today about Dave Sifry’s blog post about The State of the Blogosphere. While this is, without a doubt, incredibly enlightening, something more fundamental happened last week that most people have either overlooked or didn’t think all that important: Explore the Blogosphere on Technorati’s front page.

As I’ve been thinking more and more about how all of these blog ‘conversations’ and individual input within the blogosphere can be harnessed (i.e., clusters of affinity blogs, tags or a high level taxonomy), Technorati has a head start on all others. Though a first effort that will be refined over time, already it’s almost thrilling to be able to go to, say, Advertising and see listings of advertising-centric blog posts that are high in the rankings.

Go to Explore the Blogosphere and start to read, say, the top five posts in any given category. You’ll quickly discover that (for the most part) the high ranked posts are from thought leaders in any given category. Neat stuff and is a good way to get a feel for what the conversations are within these affinity areas.