Okay, I admit I am still relatively new (started in May) to this whole blogging thing. I will also admit, I never gave much thought to a Blog Search Engine until I came across these articles; The State of Blog Search Engines: Depressing as well as Google Blog Search Surpasses Technorati.
So this got me thinking, “What is the difference between a normal and a blog search engine”. Okay other than the obvious, a blog search engine only searches blogs. But doesn’t a normal search engine search blogs as well? Further how does a blog search engine only search blogs?
The first article (The State of Blog Search Engines: Depressing) mentions a couple blog search engines, IceRocket Blog Search as well as BlogDigger. The second article (Google Blog Search Surpasses Technorati) mentioned Google Blog Search and Technorati. Up until tonight I had never looked (much less heard) of these search engines. Now I took a very comprehensive look at these four Blog search engines.
Overview: The basics, what it looks like and what it can do.
BlogDigger
- Will also search Links, Media, Groups and offers a Local feature
- Does not have an advanced search feature
- Contains Ads By Google (at top of results and on side)
- Does not allow you to refine by date
- Sort results by date (or relevance) then by post time
Goggle Blog Search
- Will also search everything else Google Searches (web, images, news, groups, etc.)
- Search by author, title, URL (but not tags) in Advanced Search
- Does NOT contains ads (ironic)
- Allows you to search within date range via Advanced Search
- Narrow search by published time from 1 hour, 12 hours, past day, past week, past month or Choose Dates (via results screen)
- Search for post written in a particular (one) language
- Sort by relevance or by date (via results screen)
IceRocket Blog Search
- Will also search Web, MySpace, News and Images
- Search by author, title or tag in Advanced Search
- No ads
- Allows you to refine search to today, past week, past month or custom
- Sort results by date only (no relevance option) then by number of words
- Results displayed under date header
Technorati
- Will search Blogs, Tags and Blog Directories
- Limited Advanced Search
- Annoying animated ads and one Ad By Google at top of results
- No option to search within date range
- Refine results by a particular (one) language (via results screen)
- Sorts by date only
The Test: To try these blog search engines out, I did basic search for my handle, ffextensionguru:
- BlogDigger: Found nothing!
- IceRocket: Only found references to my handle (mainly CyberNet articles).
- Goggle Blog Search: Found references to my handle, an article from my blog, ping-back to my blog and my defunked blog on blogger. Also listed my blog on the results screen as Related Blogs.
- Technorati: Found references to my handle and tons of articles from my blog
The Verdicts: Here is how the search sites ranked based on search results, site design as well as search options:
BlogDigger was a major disappointment and not just because it could not find any results but the lack of an advanced search as well as the abundance of Ads by Google. Also would not allow search results (not that I had any) to be narrowed by date.
Google Blog Search gave good results allbeit limited. Did like that the results could be narrowed within a time range. No ads on the search site was nice too. Offers a lot of options under advanced search.
IceRocket was very fast and has a nice clean looking site (design and no ads). Liked how the results were shown below date headers. However, did not find any of my blog posts.
Technorati did find the most results, but the site itself offered limited search options and I really didn’t care for the animated ads. Further the site seemed a bit sluggish when I was trying to go to the next page of results. Also didn’t like that I could not narrow the results within a date range.
Now if I could just find something that combined the search power and options of Google with the layout, design and speed of IceRocket, I would really be happy. š
News Source: Google ahead, Technorati behind
1) I appreciate the comparison; I hope that you will do more
2) I just spent a *whole lot* of time researching and compiling my Top 100 Search Engines for 2006. If you would like a copy, please tell me your email address and I will send it to you as an Excel attachment – it even got a favorable review from the CEO of my #1 Search Engine of the Year – you’ll see…
3) I am subscribing to your site for my netvibes home page which usually means someone else will get knocked off – high praise!
4) My website sucks, please don’t judge me by it’s appearance!
Have a Happy New Year! Charles Knight
“Now if I could just find something that combined the search power and options of Google with the layout, design and speed of IceRocket, I would really be happy.”
I couldn’t agree more!
It’s actually quite annoying that the best features of THE blog search engine is spread out on various search engines.
What I use blog searches for, and I don’t think you’ve included this in your otherwise great comparison, is to subscribe to search results using RSS.
For instance a search for “ffextensionguru” at Technorati has the following feed URL/URI:
http://feeds.technorati.com/search/ffextensionguru
I know that Technorati and Google Blogsearch supports RSS for searches, I’m not sure who else offers this
And thanks for the link! š
// Lars
Good work!
There actually are a fairly large number of blog search engines, and they don’t always return the same results (as you find in your own analysis).
A useful tool for quickly scanning results from all the major blog search engines is blog search at Zuula, the free search tool we’ve been developing.
Hope you and your readers find it useful!
hmm… thanks.