Blogging Tips

Last week Google updated its Blog Search adding a number of features such as “Hot Queries” and the ability to subscribe to any topic via RSS or Atom.  Features like these have been in other Google services for quite some time which highlights Google’s Blog Search as a minor player in the Google universe.    Following on the heels of Bing’s release without a dedicated blog search, which Jonathan Bailey covered in Bing and the Death/Rebirth of Blog Search, this non-innovative update by Google adds even more fuel to Jonathan’s theory that “blog searching may be dying a slow death.”

Just as Bing launched without a blog search and barely anybody noticed, a search of the term “Google Blog Search” using Google Blog Search itself shows that only about a dozen (and now one more) blogs were written about this latest update.  Compare that to Michael Jackson or even a more reasonable comparison like a change to Google Adwords or Google Analytics.

What’s New in Google Blog Search

The last big update to Google Blog Search was in the Fall of 2008 and this update addresses some items that many folks noted were missing back then.  A key issue was the lack of any way to track breaking stories in real time.   Also there was no way to  to subscribe to a feed of the latest stories via RSS, which considering how many other sites, including Google sites, have this functionality, was an amazing deficiency.

But these features have found a home now.   Each Google Blog Search feed now offers its own RSS/Atom feeds along with the option for an iGoogle gadget that integrates new stories into your personalized Google homepage. It’s interesting to note that a similar feature has been in Google News for quite some time.  There are also sections on the home page for both Hot Queries and Latest Posts. Similarly, these features have been in Google Hot Trends.

Unfortunately neither of these query features are that impressive because they are not category specific.  So when I am looking at the technology section of Google Blog Search the results for Hot Queries and Latest Posts are not filtered to be technology stories.  In fact the top five hot queries as I reviewed the technology section were Michael Jackson on the Simpsons, Casey Kasem,
TMZ Steve McNair, Betty White and Jesse from Hannah Montana.  None of these queries were of much interest to a geek like me, though I have to admit that having grown up in the days when radio was the only way to hear new music, Casey Kasem’s retirement was sad to hear about.

Blogs are the mainstream

While one perspective is to mourn the fact that blogs are no longer getting the special attention that they once were in the search world, I think the more important perspective is that recent events are just proving that blogs are part of the mainstream. 

Yahoo dropped its blog search long ago and as Jonathan Bailey reported neither Microsoft Live nor the new Microsoft Bing bring this to the table.  Of the major search engines, only Google is so flush with money that they can afford to keep investing in areas with limited potential.  But when you look at the innovations with Google Wave and Google Mail compared to the limited enhancements in this update to Google Blog Search, you realize that even Google is showing signs that the end of the line is approaching for blog search.

So for most bloggers it’s time to wrap up any work you were doing monitoring or optimizing for blog search.  Mainstream search, with Bing continuing to show that it will be a strong contender, will continue on the path to be the overwhelmingly dominant traffic source for most blogs.