Google launches blog search tool

Google announced a site for searching blogs, a move many people expect the other major search engines to follow.

The BBC reported that Google only started indexing blog entries made from June 2005. But now it is looking at ways of indexing older posts.

SearchEngineWatch wrote that Google defines blogs as sites that use RSS and other structured feeds and update content on a regular basis.

In the case of myriad media Web sites, InfoWorld included, it is commonplace to push out several different story types via RSS and, of course, to update content regularly. For instance, we deliver both blogs and news stories via RSS. But there is an important distinction between the two story types, and a blog search engine that fails to interpret the difference simply won’t work.

To give the engine a test lap, I plugged in my own name, since I both blog and write news stories for InfoWorld. The returns were pretty reasonable, until the second page of results when I came upon a news story that we posted on August 29, 2005. True, it had my byline on it, but the article was not a blog. I kept sorting through the results and all was well until page 6, and then they became less relevant, though I did not come across any more news stories or non-blog items.

I gave up on page 8. But in any given search I rarely make it even that far. Bearing that in mind, and considering I encountered only one misplaced search result, I’d say that bodes well for Google’s ability to narrow its search to blogs — which is ultimately what will make or break this tool.

Remember that Google calls this a beta and, even though Gmail is technically still in beta, Google Blog Search is, after all, brand new.

There are different ways to access the engine: blogsearch.google.com (Google-style interface), search.blogger.com (Blogger-style interface), The Blogger Dashboard, or The Navbar on any Blog*Spot blog.

Google has a page of FAQs on the new tool.