Blog Search Tools
Hey Everybody,
Whether you are actively tracking a recent campaign or just interested in what the chatter online is today, searching the world of blogs and micro-blogs is becoming increasingly important. But with so many different outlets and so many different searches, what is the best. Well, I don’t know if there is a best. But here are a few that I use, I hope that they are helpful to you as well
1. The nine-hundred lb. gorilla, Google. Google tends to find almost everything, big and small. I use it’s blog search function a lot more than its news search function. Google Blogsearch seems to be the most thorough. It’s downfall is in its sorting and ranking. You can only search by post, not by blog-theme and you can only sort by relevance or date. Not a real ranking system. But overall, if you need a lot of hits, this is the first place to shop.
2. The sorting king, Technorati. Technorati is a blog search engine. It is pretty nice. Sometimes, Google will find a few hits that Technorati misses. It also takes Technorati longer to index then Google and sometimes will be a little slower on the uptake. But, Technorati is my favorite, because it allows you to evaluate blogs by their authority ranking and by who has made this post or this blog their favorite. Technorati also allows you to search blogs (not just posts) search for blogs devoted entirely to a subject.
3. IceRocket, is a pretty nice little blog search engine. It returns pretty solid results including a strong images and video search. It also allows you to search by cloud. Another cool feature is that allows you to enter a Blog’s URL and you can see its usage stats, they call this BlogTracker. Another feature is that you can search MySpace. This sounds pretty great, but as anyone who tries to search MySpace on their own knows, it is pretty unsearchable. This feature suffers the same fate. IceRocket has some great bells and whistles, but it is not a thorough as the two big boys above.
4. BlogCatalog, is a very large social network for bloggers that allows you to search posts, blogs and other info that bloggers offer up (their other social accounts). It is pretty nice, but it is a social network, not a powerhouse of search. It is a lot of fun though and I really enjoy how it aggregates all of your presences. If this were a post about social networks, I would definitely recommend it. It is a lot of fun. But for blog searches, it is only okay.
5. Twitter, this microblogging site is often the pulse of the hot issue of the moment (literally the second). But you can go back and search what has been said by keyword. Do this by visiting www.search.twitter.com. Again these posts are limited to 140 characters, but they often provide links with in depth information. And it is an easy way to get a quick reading on whether the world hates, loves, or doesn’t care about you at the moment.
Two others of note are Blogsearch.com, which offers a good starting point by listing a variety of searches and what they provide, and Yahoo! blog search.
Hope you enjoy and if you have any others that you like, please let me know.
Thanks,
Will Flavell
