Google Blog Search Reverb

For a glimpse of how much bloggers like to write about blogging, check out the collection of links piling up on Gabe Rivera’s just-launched automated news page tech.memeorandum.com. Google’s belated foray into blog search bears notice for a number of reasons but what the avalanche of instant react underscores is the utter frustration of bloggers and the non-bloggers who read them when it comes to the state of blog search. It also points to a kind of insecurity, as though something doesn’t quite exist until it’s a tab on the Google front page. For my part, I’ll add Google Blog Search to the mix but it’s not close to being a primary blog search tool. It is clean and fast, both major pluses; now it just needs depth and breadth.

Jason Calacanis has already started a write-in campaign to put blos on the front between web and images, arguing that such a move “will double or triple” blog traffic. “Normal folks will be on the same level as MSM. That is what this about when it comes down to it: equality.” What he doesn’t mention is how important traffic is financially to blogs, blog networks and ad networks like Weblogs Inc. (It matters to us, too, of course, but not in the same league as a business running a fleet of consumer sites.)

Mary Hodder, Napsterization (and formerly of Technorati), tried “about 20 searches” she routinely does on five feed search engines. Google turns up too many references from the blog and not enough about it. She adds, “I’m noting there are a lot of recent missing entries at Google as well. … I’ll keep playing with it, but I think they have a ways to go in understanding blog search and getting the result sets right. And they need to pull in the rest of the results I know are there for all the searches I did. However, the search result layout is clean, and organized. It’s a good start. And is very fast.”

Danny Sullivan, SEW, reminds us that Google actually is producing a feed search, not a blog search. “You are only searching through any feed that Google has found. Some blogs don’t have feeds. Some feeds don’t come from blogs.” It’s also not full-text search unless the feed includes full-text — “meaning that it actually may be ignorant of a huge amount of blog content that’s not pushed in a feed.”

Dave Winer, Scripting News, finds gaps in the way his own posts are picked up and adds, “We knew the day would come when Technorati would have to compete with Google. They could have prepared much better for this day, imho.”

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