Google is the first of the major web search tools to launch a dedicated
Blog Search. It doesn't search the full text of the postings, only the
RSS and Atom feeds generated by the blog. Older posts that were
generated before Blog Search started crawling or are not in a current
feed are not included. Google says that it covers "every blog that
publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom)." When I ran my test
searches, it picked up several pages that are not blogs but do have RSS
or Atom feeds.
The indexing is fast. Blog Search picked up one of my postings just 22
minutes after I had published it, but then I am using Google's own
Blogger.com. Bloggers using other services have reported lengthier
delays. Results can be sorted by date or relevance.
The Advanced Search has the usual 'all the words', phrase, 'at least one
of the words', and 'without the words'. Additional options include
'words in the post title', 'words in the blog title', 'at this URL',
'blogs and posts written by', limit by date and language.
You can also set up alerts. Go to the bottom of your results page and
you can ask to have 10 or 100 results as an Atom or an RSS feed.
You can access Google Blog Search at http://www.google.com/blogsearch
for the standard Google look and feel, or at http://search.blogger.com/
if you prefer the Blogger style.
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Karen Blakeman, UKeiG Management Committee
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Tel: 0118 947 2256 Int. +44 118 947 2256
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