Is it just me or do blog search engines deliver horrible results? Possibly someone out there can point me to a blog search engine that doesn’t include so many spammy blogs in their database.
Technorati is certainly not there yet. Although, I’m sure they will get their eventually. Clearly, some sort of blog value ranking would help, which I suspect they are working on.
However, that’s not the worst of it. As much as 50% of Technorati’s search results point to foreign language posts! If I wanted results in Spanish I wouldn’t have searched from their english language website. I searched for the term Google Adwords and 10 out of the first 20 search results were from blog posts in a foreign tongue!
Here are a few more search examples:
technorati – 6 of the top 20 results were non-english
france – 9 of the top 20 results were non-english
laptop – 7 of the top 20 results were non-english
php – 13 of the top 20 results were either non-english or giberish
blog – 8 of the top 20 results were non-english
This is a problem you would think could be solved rather easily. It makes zero sense to include non-english blogs in its main database.
Update: Technorati founder David Sifry commented in my blog as follows:
Rich,
You can filter by language on every Technorati search result page, and we offer you the ability to filter to only see posts in 20 different languages, from arabic to vietnamese, and of course to limit results to english-only. Simply use the dropdown right above the first results, and you’re all set!
Dave
>>> My response to Dave’s comment is why doesn’t Technorati make english only results the default when you go to their site. Most major general search engines such as Google and Yahoo don’t require you to change a setting after the first result in order to make the results all english. But, at least Technorati does have a solution to remove those foreign language results!
murdok is the CEO of Murdok, Inc. which publishes over 200 websites and email newsletters.
Rich also publishes his blog WebProBlog which focuses on internet business and marketing trends.
