Steve Rubel believes blog search engines are in a “pitiful state” – a view that I believe it 100% accurate.
The question is why given blogs are such a vibrant, dynamic and growing part of the Web. You would figure that Google would do for blogs what it has done for general search but anyone who has used Google Blog Search knows better.
Maybe the blogosphere is simply too difficult to track given it changes so quickly and there’s so much to spider. Or maybe Google believes there are bigger opportunities elsewhere.
All I know is the blog search market is ripe with opportunity given no one is doing it particularly well right now.
Perhaps some of the startups such as Cuil and Powerset gunning for Google should focus their efforts on blogs where Google is vulnerable.
Technorati Tags: google
4 Comments
Hi Mark,
FWIW, Technorati had your post indexed within a few minutes of the ping. The spam is vastly reduced in our index and we’re doing a lot of retooling that we think will help serve bloggers and their readers better.
-Ian
Technorati
Ian,
Thanks for the comment. To be honest, Technorati’s biggest challenge is convincing people that it’s a service that works well to do blog searches. At one point it was the go-to service but that reputation has waned in recent years.
Mark
I agree that there is significant room for improvement when it comes to blog search tools. I’ve been involved in an effort to create a blog search capability focusing on sports blogs (buzztap.com). Ultimately, I think specialized blog search engines will be able to better fill the need in areas where generalized search engines are failing.
Hi Mark,
I have to agree with both your post and the comment about Technorati. They seem to be doing a half decent job, but somehow the site just doesn’t have the feel of a true market leader.. Don’t know how to explain it.
Do you have an idea about what is missing or should be available to blog search? I would assume that the classic indexing approach to blog search somehow fails because it doesn’t filter the actual post topics well enough.. Any ideas?
Cheers,
Martin