Google Launches New Blog Search
Google has taken the wraps off its new Blog Search, a full-blown search engine that catalogs blog content.This is great news for bloggers because it opens up another publicity channel. If you publish a blog, your material may already be included in the system. Here's a quick way to check.
- Go to www.google.com/blogsearch.
- In the search field, type in your domain name (example: www.theindependentpublisher.com or just theindependentpublisher.com). Your stories will appear if Google Blog Search has indexed your blog. You can also search for your blog's name -- I ran a query for "indiepub blog" and was able to find my stories.
From the Google Blog Search Help Page:
"If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it."The Help Page notes that a manual submission tool is forthcoming.
An excellent article at Search Engine Watch pops the hood on Blog Search and reveals a few key points:
- Sites indexed in Google News will not show up in Google Blog Search "except in rare cases." This explains why two of my sites are MIA from Blog Search (whew!).
- The "Link:" command reveals a detailed list of sites linking to your blog. Be warned: this list will probably contain a slew of spam results. Nonetheless, this is a great way to get a quick view of other sites that are linking to your blog.
"Google's blog search indexes all of the content it finds in feeds, but does not attempt to access and index the full content available on a publisher's web server."The "feeds" noted in the Search Engine Watch piece are RSS feeds -- a form of syndication that is quickly achieving widespread adoption. Blogging software packages such as Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type include automatic RSS tools, so there's really no reason why you shouldn't be using RSS feeds.
RSS offers two options for syndicating content: you can provide the full text of your blog posts or you can offer a short description. Many bloggers have opted for the short description route because they want to encourage readers to visit their blogs for the full stories (and for the increased traffic and potential ad revenue). Since Google Blog Search is only indexing the information contained within feeds, the importance of headlines and short descriptions (often referred to as "decks") increases. You'll want to make sure the small amount of content Google Blog Search does gather is relevant and click-worthy.
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