Well, I saw this one coming (and really, who didn’t?). Google launched its Google Blog Search today (via Steve Rubel, Charlene Li) and it looks impressive. Using a ping server to primarily update its results as opposed to its web crawlers, the Google Blog Search will be competing directly with Technorati, BlogDigger, Feedster, DayPop and the like.
Does the Google Blog Search pose a threat to FeedMiner? Yes and no. I’ve never felt that FeedMiner directly competes with these blog search engines. This is because blogs do not necessarily equal feeds and many people aren’t getting that concept clear yet. Right now the vast majority of feeds are coming from blogs, but this will change. FeedMiner allows our users to search for RSS and Atom feeds from any source, not just blogs. In addition, our search results are tailored to the end user looking to add feeds themselves to their feed reader and not just web browsing. So, this will always be a differentiating factor compared to the other search engines that essentially search feeds indirectly (by using the feed as a method by which to know there has been updated content and thus update the search engine).
As for the Google Blog Search itself, I immediately liked it. As a heavy user of Google (and light user of the other blog search engines), I found it to be intuitive and the results appear very relevant. I performed a search using the main keyword (“climbing”) of my other blog, All Climbing. The results I received when comparing Google vs Technorati were interesting.
Technorati’s default page results are sorted by date while Google’s are sorted by relevance. On some topics, date is not necessarily the most important. Personally, I’ve always felt that a heavier weighting should be on relevance first as most users don’t start their searching with very detailed queries. They typically start broad and then narrow their terms. So a search with Technorati for “climbing” produces an unsuccessful result set since it’s displaying the most recent posts from blogs with the word “climbing” in it. Not exactly what I was looking for. Google’s results, on the other hand, displays the results initially by relevancy and the results are much better for my intended keyword. I do like that Google also displays a list of related blogs above the search results. I’m probably biased though as All Climbing is listed first!
As a first impression, the Google Blog Search looks like a worthy entry into this space. As I use it more I’m sure I’ll find some additional pros and cons, but Google’s inevitable entry to blog searching has arrived.
