Once-a-month blogger, occasional web designer and UK based family guy Andy Boyd has posted a screen capture of blog search results appearing on the front page of a regular Google web search. A number of other bloggers have picked this up but no one else has been able to reproduce Boyd’s experience. It’s a believable scenario because Google recently added blog search to Google News last month and to Google Alerts four days later. The UK, where Boyd lives, is frequently a testing ground for new Google features right around the corner.
Obviously real estate even on the very bottom of the first page of Google results would be great for the blogosphere. If Google Blogsearch can’t get rid of all the splogs in its search results though, it could lead to some level of backlash against blogs in general. I don’t know anyone who’s as good at excluding splogs as Ask/Bloglines - they only display blog search results from blogs that at least one Bloglines user has subscribed to and they have algorithms to prevent gaming of that safeguard as well.
If Google really does take the bold step of including blog search on the front page of its web search results, it will be the first major search engine to do so. Blogs are included in general search results (see the search results for gay men social networking for example) and may have such good search engine optimization natively that they don’t need a special place on the page - but it could only help broaden exposure to the medium.
On a different topic but somewhat related. I would use Netvibes as a start page if Google enabled me to widgetize their google blog search and google custom search engine. I can add these widgets to their own google personalized home page but not out to any other domain.
time to eat turkey!
I did happen to visit the google blog search before. If i’m not wrong, it was listed in the google labs. I think it’ll be great if google can include blog search natively.
This would be a boon to blogs as it would increase exposure, but would cause an increase in spam blogs as it would be a quick and easy way for spammers to get sites listed on the first page of results. Don’t forget that the number of splogs increased dramatically around when Google first released their blog search.
Greg, it seems like there are different algorithms for Web Search and Blog Search : I have blog posts that are listed in both Web search and Blog Search and it seems that usually, the following happens.
I blog and within an hour or two, the post hits Google Blog Search..If the post drives enough traffic, then it will go to the Google Web Search in roughly 48 hours or so. From what I’ve observed, traffic plays a part in determining what goes to Web search and what is determined as relevant in Blog Search.
great another lab experiment added to Google.com. The alexa traffic will be increase for http://blogsearch.google.com/.
Enough blogs run AdSense… why not send even more traffic their way? Bloggers win, Google wins!
Kidding, kidding… It’s good to see more experimentation like this.
Yep, I saw this yesterday as well and it is great. Good to have on the bottom of the search page results though as it is just “blog news” as opposed to the somewhat Google vetted results that exist as the rest of the search results.
Google news is up on the pages now so why not blogs too?
How is this relevant to TechCrunch’s beat?
Google has said in interviews that they love to test features out and evaluate user response. It looks like they were testing blog search in their normal SERPs. I can’t wait to see Google evolve their results to be more than just ten ordered results. Differentiating between assets and offering more sophisticated disambiguation would be nice.
Ive added a link to this from my Nichewords blog. Good info! Thanks!
@Jeremy Z.: There aren’t any ads on Andy’s blog, so your comment is confusing. Are you suggesting that no blogs have any advertising whatsover? Or do you just dislike AdSense?
If they’re going to display results ranked by relevance and authority, it would be great. If it’s the same pile of junk you get by searching Google Blog search or Technorati, nobody’s going to use it, they’ll just ignore it after the first time they click through to some wacko blog.
Wow, blog search would be awesome, for some reason I like reading others blogs, its a good way to get down to earth opinions about games/books/music
I think Google Blogsearch still in its beta. I cannot find a blog post about “Long Tail” in Traditional Chinese even when the feed URL is provided.
I saw this on one of my Google searches the other day. I thought it was cool and something they were going to have on all the searches. Now, I haven’t seen it since then. Given their investment into blogger.com, I suspect Google has big plans for the blogsphere
There actually seem to be some bigger changes happening that are blog related that are much less obvious.
Folksonony is actually very similar to LSI, and helpful.
How Google treat tagging, and tag pages is very interesting to monitor.
Name link above goes directly to more on Google, Folksonomy & LSI
Google should definately add the Blog search tool because there are millions of blog having quality, unique and fresh content; many of us are still not aware of those blogs. So, if google adds the blog search tool then it would become easy for all of us to search the blogs.
It seems Google has changed normal SERPs for the Top events queries at last week.
As I see, they know all about all events happened in the world and trying to show the real-time information from Google News and Google Blog Search in the Top search results to make them really alivte. These are ONLY for important events with thousands of news and blog posts about.
I think everyone needs to realize that while bloggers are a loud collective voice on the internet, overall they’re still very small. Most people I know (not in tech but in every other business sector) don’t read blogs at all. They might look once in a while at celebrity gossip or political blogs but in general the population is not reading blogs.
Yes they have big and growing audiences.
Yes they can certainly push news out faster than mainstream media.
But outside Silicon Valley and other tech hubs (say the Midwest where the Chicago and Columbus Ohio papers put the HP “scandal” on page 5 of the paper) blogs are not pervasive.
I get annoyed when my search results yield blog b/c most blogs are crap. Except this one of course
Seems like a good idea. I’d definetly like it.
Great new if Google is encouraging searches of blogs, it can only make bloggers voices louder and help fight inaccuracies in the popular media….but spam is a big worry!
Now I don’t think that spam is a big worry….
Story: Australia’s communications watchdog has warned that internet spammers would face devastating fines after a Perth man and his company were hit with a $5.5 million penalty for sending unsolicited emails in the first prosecution of its kind in Australia.
Link: http://www.thewest.com.au/defa.....ntID=11361
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