Google Blog Search Goes Live
Google Blog Search went live in the wee hours of the morning today and though at first glance it seems a bit basic when comparing with other Blog Search services, the new offering from Google is receiving decent reviews. Given that Google has been active with blogs since acquiring Blogger years ago, it’s asurprise to many that it took them so long to come out with Google Blog Search. Although, with blogs steadily becoming more popular than ever now may be as good of a time as any.
Duncan Riley, who is a regular contributor to the Search Engine Journal and the Editor of the Blog Herald put together a nice review this morning looking at search quality, index size, and speed. Enjoy.
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
Feeds : 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..
