New Search Engines Help Users Find Weblogs – Now Google Launches Blog Search
(Migrated weblog post from LSR)
This looks like it is just perfect timing, folks ! Yesterday I created a weblog post about New Search Engines Help Users Find Weblogs and today here we go with probably one of the major IT announcements in the recent months: Google launches Google Blog Search. Oh, yes, this is some big announcement, specially for the Blogosphere, because apparently this new search engine will provide you much more accurate results than other search engines so far available. At least, that is what quite a few web sites and weblogs are saying at the moment, apart from all the hype all over the Internet about this exciting piece of news.
WOW ! That was a good collection of links to web sites to keep you busy for a while reading on the announcement. But what does it exactly mean for us, webloggers? Well, first thing, it is the inevitable testing and further reviewing of how good Google’s new search engine is. And, because seeing is believing, it is a good time now to mention what I think about the actual search engine.
Impressed ! To say the least, it is a very good attempt to perform searches with some really promising results. In fact, I went ahead, probably like everyone else has already done, and performed a number of searches under three of my favourite search engines for weblogs: Technorati, IceRocket and Yahoo! and I then I compared their results to those from Google’s Blog Search engine. I used a relatively simple query to get me started and by the looks of it I think I would need to keep a close watch on it. Ok, I tried using these keywords: lsr + blogsome in all of the search engines and here you have got the results:
Goodness ! I guess it shows which one is the winner, right ? I must say that I am a bit disappointed about the results returned by my so called favourite weblog search engines and it looks like they are not as powerful as I thought they were. At least, that is what we could all see from the results. Let me explain. All of the different search engines have not been able to provide me with the entire list of weblog posts I have created since the very beginning whereas Google has just been able to provide that entire list except for the last post I created yesterday! That is not too bad indeed, all the other way around. I am not sure at this point in time I would have a favourite weblog search engine anymore since I would need now to see all of them how they perform with different keyword searches, and, most importantly, how each of them will face weblog spam.
I think that controlling weblog spam in the results may eventually be the key success factor in the long run, but for now and seeing how things are going, Google’s Blog Search engine seems to be the winner. We shall see if it holds further or if the other major search engines continue to improve what they are already providing. However, and while that happens I think it is time to take Blog Search for a spin and see if it can keep up with all the hype. Nice work, Google !
[...] Disappointed ! Yes, a bit, actually. That is probably how I feel so far about the so-called search engine of all search engines. Apparently, Google’s Blog Search is not as good as we thought it was. And, of course, it is still Beta. Not long ago, I created another weblog post where I was commenting on the recent Google announcement about its Blog Search engine. And if back then I was rather content and surprised with the results I guess that was bound to change at some point. And by the looks of it I am not the only one, it seems. Check out the following news article by Stephen Baker: Google’s Lackluster Blog Search, where he more or less comes to the same conclusion I have about Google’s Blog Search: “The Bottom Line: The search giant fails to deliver a KO. For now, it’s just another blog search engine” [...]
[...] Some time ago you would remember how I created a weblog post that mentioned how Google was finally entering the weblogging search world with Google Blog Search and how it apparently seemed to be just another search engine for weblogs, like many others. [...]