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Google Adds Blog Search Engine
September 14, 2005
SearchDay tells us that Google's Blog Search is now online in beta stage. I'm looking forward to testing it for freshness and depth.
You can access the engine here (with a traditional Google interface) or here (with a Blogger interface). Either way, it's the same engine returning the same data. I did several random searches to confirm this, because my initial fear was that the Blogger search interface returned results only from Blogger sites, which is not the case.
To get your blog "found," Google says it's necessary only to publish a site feed in any popular format and to ping at least one popular service. Speedwagon runs on Movable Type, so we ping several sites after each post. However, I'll test the Pingomatic service recommended in the SearchDay article and report the results to see which is faster and more reliable.
The Google Blogsearch FAQ says the query box supports "all of the standard Google Search operators," including link: , site: , and intitle:. I found this not necessarily true. a search for [site:seoblog.intrapromote.com] to return no results, while a simple search for [seo speedwagon] returned about 37 - not a full crawl, but fairly representative of our current site.
While the site: command doesn't seem to work to give a full index count of a blog, it does seem to work in conjunction with another search term. In other words, a search for [link building site:seoblog.intrapromote.com] does return pretty accurate results.
What Does All This Mean for You?
Typically, niche bloggers find and report stories long before major news outlets because they aren't tied down by annoying constraints such as "fact-checking" and "source confirmation."
Lame humor aside, as a searcher, you'll probably find this service to return much fresher results on very hot topics.
For our clients with whom we're consulting on blog-building and maintenance, it's yet another potential traffic source, and we're excited about the possibilities. More to come.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at September 14, 2005 06:37 AM
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