Google put out their blog search function today and while it looks to be a great tool, where does this leave existing blog search engines like Technorati? This has been a topic of conversation on a number of blogs today and it’s something that needs to be considered.
While most are discussing the joys of the new search and MSN and Yahoo will probably come out with their versions very soon, where does this leave Technorati, Feedster and the others, especially since they’ve had issues recently anyway. Bloggers have been questioning the validity of both for weeks now. This only gives Google more fuel as the hordes of Googlites quickly drop the other two in favor of Google.
Charlene Li over at Forrester Research mentioned it. She said on her own blog, “This is a big difference from most of the other blog search engines like Technorati and Feedster, which default to a date-based sort. This relevancy ranking is what I think will be the secret sauce to Google’s blog search success – that it can bring to bear its deep experience on extracting relevance to blog posts”
The Inside Google blog had this to say, “So, the final word: There are quite a few blog search engines out there, none of them from Yahoo or MSN, and for the most part, they all have massive flaws that render them near-useless. Google blog search, while very green and less fun, just works’, and that could mean stealing a lot of people away from the other services.”
How this will do versus the others is still up in the air. One thing Inside Google pointed out was the features and tools available through other blog search engines and that could play a major role in the way things go. Google may have to add some toys to their blog search. Also, as others have pointed out, it’s only a matter of time before the other big two, MSN and Yahoo come out with their own version and who knows AOL might get one too.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
