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September 18, 2007
Searchable Feed Databases
Blogdigger’s layout looks similar to Altavista’s homepage. Search results are shown in a Google-like format. Each search result has a title, brief section of the page, and a place that says Feed, Focus, and Exclude. Feed gives you the RSS feed for the page, Focus gives you all posts from the feed, and Exclude gets rid of all the posts from this source from the current search results. It allows you to search by date or relevance. You can also subscribe to the whole search on the right-hand side of the screen via My Yahoo, Google, myAOL, Bloglines, or NewsGator.
Google Blog Search looks very similar to Google’s normal search engine. You can either search blogs or search the web. On the left-hand side of the screen, you can select which results you want to see in terms of when it was published and you can also subscribe to blogs via RSS or Atom. Search results include the title, brief section of the page, and References which doesn’t seem to do much at the moment. It is a slight hassle to visit the page to subscribe to the RSS feed. Google Blog Search also lists related blogs to your search at the top of the results. Furthermore, you can do an Advanced Blog Search where you specify what query you want, what to exclude, authors, date written, etc.
Technorati’s web page did not seem to load at 7:30 PM on September 18, 2007. When attempting to access their webpage later at 8:00 PM, it said “Doh! The Technorati Monster escaped again.” and “We're scouring the blogosphere attempting to find it. Back in a flash!”
BlogPulse has many components on its home page. On the left-hand side, there are top blog posts, top videos, top news stories, and RSS feeds. On the right-hand side, there is a graph showing percentage of posts by topic, web site statistics, and an informational section. Down the center of the page, there is a search query box and a section with updated information on recent activity in the blog universe. Search results have a title, brief section of the page, posting date, and time discovered. There is also a place where you can view the blog profile to see the blog title, blog URL, and rank. Search results are also constantly changing and updated by the minute. You can get a feed for the search. Like Google Blog Search, it is a slight hassle to visit the page to subscribe to the RSS feed. The advanced search on BlogPulse lets you specify a specific query, or you can create a Boolean query using the operators AND, OR, and NOT. You can also select the date range and sort the results by date or relevance.
Rojo’s home page is unique. There is a category section on the left-hand side and keyboard shortcuts on the right-hand side. Also, the most popular or recent blogs seem to be listed at the center of the page. In order to use Rojo at its full potential, you would need to create an account. Each search result has its own title, summary, and buttons where you can flag, e-mail, Rojolink, or tag it. Even if you are not a registered member of Rojo, you can still subscribe to its feeds.
IceRocket’s layout is relatively simple. You can search for blogs, the web, MySpace (which I thought was pretty interesting), news, or images. There is a link for the most blogged-about movies and also competitions about who has more blog buzz. On the search results page, hot topics are listed across the top. Each search result has a title, brief section of the page, word count, and the ability to subscribe, share, focus, or exclude. Focus lets you see all the posts from the blog and exclude gets rid of all the posts from that source from the current results. There are sponsored links on the top and right-hand side of the page. The advanced search options are very similar to Google Blog Search’s advanced search. Furthermore, you can subscribe to the search results.
If I had to choose one of these blog search engines, I would choose none of them. In my opinion, they all have their respective cons which due to repeated use, will begin to irritate me. For example, Blogdigger and IceRocket’s web sites are not visually appealing. You must travel to the actual blog site to get an RSS feed with Google Blog Search and BlogPulse’s search results. Technorati’s web site did not load at all. Lastly, in order to get the most out of Rojo, you must subscribe to their web site. Currently, if I wanted to search a topic and subscribe to some RSS feeds, I would use Bloglines. The layout of that web site is straightforward and relatively easy to use. So far, Bloglines is my top choice.
Posted by mjiao at September 18, 2007 08:41 PM