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Google Blog Search reviewed

by Duncan Riley

Its literally gone live now: http://blogsearch.google.com.

Initial thoughts: it looks and smells like Google, and its quick as well, really, really quick. No need to wait half a day for an error message at Technorati any more.

Search:
naturally I put in “Blog News”. The search delivered two sets of results, a mini list of “related blogs” at the top of the page. The Blog Herald was listed at No. 1. The good news from this is that they’ve managed to divide what a blog is well, because the Blog Herald is No. 2 in the general index. The search results themselves were, well, a bit odd. They look and smell like Google News, title with extract.
Rating: B

The really good news is Google have learnt their lesson fully now on RSS and Atom. Any search term can now be put into a RSS or Atom Feed. Bloody hell! My Bloglines account is going to get an influx of new feeds!
Rating: A

Numbers:
the good news for the competition is that the links count sucks. It’s delivered very, very quickly, but depth of numbers just isn’t their. The Blog Herald came in at 1,322 links where as on Feedster its over 3,000 now. Other blogs I’ve tested aren’t much better. I can only guess that perhaps its because its new and their might not be the history there, or because they are indexing RSS feeds as opposed to the blogs themselves that they are not getting a full picture.
Rating: C-

Size
The size of the index is disappointing as well. Only 8,708,843 blogs compared to over 17 million at some of the competition.
Rating: D

Overall: initial thoughts are that I’m really disappointed with it. Sure, its in beta, and if any company has got the ability to play catch up its the amazing people at Google, but you’d expect something really good from Google. This is about as useful as…..Technorati, with half as many results but without the error messages.

Update: Scoble has just posted a review. Similar thoughts, but he notes the speed is amazing and he’s right. Its very, very quick.

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  • http://www.blogherald.com/2005/09/14/google-to-launch-blog-search/ » Google to launch Blog Search The Blog Herald: more blog news more often

    [...] Pingomatic. The new service is also said to have a comprehensive link function. Update: my review here. Its now live.

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  • http://www.bloglogic.net Paul Short

    Oh. My. God. Wait til the blog and ping and blog submitter guys get ahold of this news.

    This is opening up the floodgates for an entire industry and a whole slew of new spam blogs.

    You wanna get in Google? Start a blog! LOL

  • http://www.bladam.com/ Adam

    I trust that Google has good intentions with this, but given the spam issue noted in the comment above and a lot of other reasons, I am pretty unoptimistic about this new move. In particular, I’m troubled by the increasing balkanization of content by esoteric structure rather than by content or message. What next, a wiki search? forum search? Not a good slope to be headed down…

  • http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/09/14/google-to-launch-blog-search/ Google To Launch Blog Search: Blog Tips – ProBlogger

    [...] ch.google.com/ This is pretty significant news. Update: Duncan has a first impression review of the new Google Blogsearch.

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  • http://www.sichelputzer.de/2005/09/14/google-blogsearch/ Telagon Sichelputzer » Google Blogsearch

    [...] ders to follow to this blog instead of disabling all of it. After all, Duncan published a first review of the service, and my own overall experience from [...]

  • http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/09/14/google-blog-search-first-look-review/ Google Blog Search – First Look Review: Blog Tips – ProBlogger

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  • http://www.homeofficevoice.com martin

    It’s okay for a Beta – I’m sure they’ll be tweaking it for some time yet. Don’t know how they’ll deal with the spam that’s gonna coming a knocking.

    One issue though: My latest post is a preview of FileMakler Pro 8. I do a search on that term and yep it’s number one. What I don’t quite get is how they get the description to go with it … for a fairly longish post they use the last few lines only and don’t go even near the top of the post – l;ike the opening sentence would be that much better … What’s up with that.

  • http://www.copywritingsolutions.com Mike Sansone

    If they can clean up the splog, this will be a great way to search for a business. Even though their own FAQ is focused on personal blogs, I’d rather find a tax attorney this way than through the yellow pages or on a stodgy website (although a stodgy blogsite won’t help, will it?).

    So how long before they can clean up the splog – if ever?

  • http://www.tcampbell.net T Campbell

    I don’t know if it’s really sound to complain about splog and search index size in the same breath. Wouldn’t a more splog-free search have a *smaller* index?

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  • http://www.cancer-news-watch.com/ Cary

    Wow, talk about BETA…try clicking on the Google “preference” link on the blog search page. Someone screwed that up, for sure : )

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