louisgray.com - Latest Comments in louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Steve Lacy — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:19:53 -0000

I just want searching inside Google Reader to search the entire blogosphere (i.e. what I get when I search on blogsearch.google.com) but with weights and indications for the things that I'm subscribed to and have read previously.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Sebastian Wain — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:41:08 -0000

I agree, in the past I played with http://blogshares.com/ and http://www.blogscope.net/ (slow, but in the right direction) but I finally use friendfeed for a quick replacement.... since important blogs are indexed there.

The problem with current blog searchsphere is the lack of tools to discover new blogs, using technorati ranking only returns quick to find blogs. This is an open space for future Google competitors.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Craig — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:17:44 -0000

Is there a way to blog search for international blogs? Specifically blogs coming from South America, possibly only in Spanish? Been having a lot of South American users sign up for my site recently and want to track where they may be coming from. Analytics has been down.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:36:00 -0000

Clearly, I'm not a geek :) Both, actually. I get information on who links (and who mentions without linking) from Google Alerts. Technorati does not really keep up with it. I find it useful to build on what other people have been writing about, esp. when they expand on ideas I threw out there (by link back). There does not seem to be a frequent use of trackbacks anymore...

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Rob Diana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:33:00 -0000

Valeria, you are thinking in terms of searching on a topic. Blog search (at least what Technorati and Google Blog Search have done) seems to focus on what blogs link to each other. I am not sure that they really focused on topics except for tagging. If I am researching a topic, I tend to use regular search engines.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:06:00 -0000

right you are on competing for dying space. Not even Technorati is working to compete with itself. The engineers at Six Apart are trying to help me figure out why Technorati has not been indexing my blog for months. I also agree with you that we need to learn how to listen to where the conversation is taking place. BUT, whenever I research stories, I'd love to link to other blogs... I'm limited to my ability to track what I (and the friends of friends) see for that.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Rob Diana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:00:00 -0000

Aad (my apologies if I got the name wrong), quality is even harder to determine than "authority", even with the semantic web information. If the semantic web people can get a simple way to determine the "topic" of a blog post, combining it with authority (meaning this blogger is an authority on a particular topic) can be a powerful measure.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Aad 't Hart — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 12:50:00 -0000

When researching I want recent top quality posts... Who cares about authority.. It's about quality... I guess some semantic search geeks need to figure this out..

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Anton — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:48:26 -0000

Nice to hear that you like us! Regarding spam in the spam-free results is that we know there's some spam there. But we promise that we continuous looking on new ways to detect spam. Our approach of white-list instead of black-list is actually working fine overall but as you have noticed there's some work to do so splogs doesn't been whitelisted :)

/Anton, twingly.com

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

robdiana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:42:06 -0000

I have not looked at Twingly yet. From a quick glance it does look interesting, and I am curious where it will go from here. I will definitely keep an eye on it.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

robdiana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:32:47 -0000

Mike

That is really what I was trying to say towards the end of this post. Blog search by itself is too narrow a focus. There is much more information and functionality that could be added to something like Technorati, and blog search is really just a feature.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

robdiana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:30:37 -0000

Personally, I think blog search by itself is not worth pursuing. It is a very limited feature. I do not use Google Blog Search directly because of the link issue at this point, but Technorati has additional features as well. I think for these products need to expand into more things in order to really improve their offerings. I do like the idea that GBS is asking for feedback. It definitely promotes the product and ensures that it is not stagnant.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

robdiana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:27:47 -0000

Ian,

Thanks for stopping by, and I think it is fantastic that you are replying to posts like this. I still use Technorati sometimes, and I do not like Google Blog Search. As you say, Technorati does have more than just pure blog search. Keep on working at it, because as we know, the internet is a fickle beast. One day you are the whipping boy, but the next you could be the darling again. Good luck with your new development.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

robdiana — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:23:22 -0000

Ken,

I was really trying to avoid the "where do I find conversations" side of this as I have heavy interest in it. I developed YackTrack, then there is also BackType, SocialMention and others. They are all attacking the problem from different angles, so I recommend you give them a try.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Dave White — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 07:41:48 -0000

I use Twingly quite a bit and I love it. I find the results relevant and useful, though the "spam-free" search sometimes comes back with some spam.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Joakim Jardenberg — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:44:53 -0000

Have you looked at the Swedish alternative? twingly.com is really picking up speed, in Europe at least. Would be great if you did some armchairing on them;)

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

mikepk — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:27:30 -0000

We've built our own blog search engine so I've been particularly aware of the state of the blog search space lately. Google is not only spidering links and blogrolls in the whole page, but also content in sidebars, polluting what we've come to expect as blog search results.

We built our own search engine partly because we ran into the same problem you highlight, what is the purpose of these other engines? Our use is very specific, and none of the other engines either satisfied our need, had good enough quality results, or gave third party API or feed access to results to build on.

People are complaining about the state of blog search, but there's yet to be a clear business model for general blog search. With ads on the decline I think highly targeted and application specific search will be where innovation in this space occurs.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

mikepk — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:18:03 -0000

I'm curious if they really are working on it. I have this suspicion that Google is unifying their search technology to use their main web search for blog results. I think the drop in traffic you point out, and likely the low ad impression rates (I don't think blog search ranks in the top 10 or 20 google properties in terms of page views) are making blog search one of the casualties of the leaner, meaner Google we're likely to see in the coming years.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Louis Gray — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:07:58 -0000

Google's Blog Search is very good. The issues with pulling in the blog roll are "annoying", but I know the team is working on it. Interestingly, the Technorati Reactions search has recently been finding a number of external links that blog search is missing, and I still need both services.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Louis Gray — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:06:37 -0000

At one point, I was hopeful that BlogPulse could supplant or even replace Technorati. But it seems so broken, that I don't even get the feeling anybody is working on it.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:39:39 -0000

All of the recent complaints that I've seen are because Google Blog Search is now pulling in the entire page (not just the partial feed), so some blogroll links are being included. As you mentioned, Google is actively looking for feedback where people still see that. But once that issue is addressed--and I expect it to be--I think that Google's blog search will be better than before.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Ian Kallen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:36:17 -0000

Rob,
A number of things have changed since your post on Mashable. Our data quality is improving considerably as we've eliminated a lot of the spam that had infiltrated the index. The index entry barrier is a higher, which is a mixed blessing; less spam is good, missing some legit blogs is bad but we're continuously improving the index quality as well as the coverage. The tag pages rolled out in last month's site update have restored the separation between tag aggregation and keyword search. The changes the year prior that mingled the two were mistaken but we're adapting; the tag pages are once again topical pivots through the blogosphere. Additionally, the crawler we're rolling out makes blogroll and post link distinctions much more reliably. Finally, service response times and availability levels have been greatly improved.

The focus on helping bloggers and brands find who is talking about them, the topics they care about and the markets they serve continues to provide value. However as you've noted, blog search isn't enough, we're focused also on discovery applications, publisher services and ad services. We're also considering ways to bring in more social media to provide a broader 360 degree lens, we'd love to hear from folks about what they would find valuable in that regard. If you haven't explored the blogosphere through Technorati lately, give it a try and let us know what you think, we're listening!
thanks,
-Ian

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

ChangeForge | Ken Stewart — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:13:39 -0000

Rob, could agree more that conversations are happening everywhere. I saw a post in FriendFeed today that was begging someone to link all 20-30 postings with multiple likes and comments together. Even though FriendFeed is attempting this, the larger issue is still afoot.

With comments happening all over the place, how do beginners find meaningful conversations where they will be accepted in?

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

ChangeForge | Ken Stewart — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:15:00 -0000

Some good observations, Rob.

Re: louisgray.com: Blog Search May Suck, But What Do We Really Want?

Louis Gray — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:04:00 -0000

Post by Rob Diana: http://www.friendfeed.com/r...