How to Use Google Blog Search

The blogosphere is enormously interconnected because of the proliferation of blogs at free services like blogger.com and wordpress.com.  Further blogs usually allow reader comments and trackbacks (a list of blogs that link to other blogs).  So how do you find something amidst this babble?  Enter Google Blog Search.

You will find Google Blog Search at http://blogsearch.google.com.  Its interface is the same, pleasant, minimalist interface used by all the Google search products. 

Blogs are subscribable, which means you can receive them automatically in any RSS (really simple syndication) aggregator (or "news reader," as they are often called).  Many people use their IE or Firefox browsers as their news readers.  Others use web-based services such as Google Reader.  Others install specialized stand-alone software which does the same thing.  (For more on RSS, click here).  Whatever tool you use, they work the same.  Blog "feeds" are syndicated by means of a simple XML file called the blog's "RSS feed," or "Atom feed."  (RSS and Atom are, confusingly, two different syndication format standards -- it truly doesn't matter which is used and most blogs use both).  When you "subscribe to a blog" (there is no money involved, in spite of the word "subscribe") you start receiving in your news reader a headline and brief summary of the latest blog posting as it is posted.  To read the entire post, simply click on it in your news aggregator.

Google does the same thing.  Instead of sending their spiders out to scour the web for content, as with their web search, they simply subscribe to all blogs.  The text comes to them.  They then index it and allow users to search it using the same sorts of sophisticated algorithms their web search tools use.  It is important to understand that Google Blog Search searches all blogs, not just those created through blogger.com, Google's own blog service provider.  Because of the quicker retrieval of text, blog postings get indexed and show up in search results much more quickly than web page postings, usually within less than an hour.

Let's say we want to investigate further the news article we published above about Linnaeus, polar bears and speciation.  Entering "Linnaeus species polar bear" in the Blog Search search box will return 62 hits sorted by relevance.  The fourth in order is a commentary on the Nature article we referenced in the news story.  There is a link on the search results page to Sort by date (in the upper right), and to filter the display by time published (Last hour, Last 12 hours, Last day, Past week, Past month, Anytime (the default), and a date range selection) in the upper left of the screen.  At the bottom of the search results screen there are links to 1) create an email alert for Linnaeus species polar bear (or whatever search terms you entered--this means you will receive an email informing you each time (they will be grouped if multiple postings occur on the same day) there is a new blog posting on these topics; 2) add a blog search gadget for your search term on your Google home page (it updates automatically each day showing the latest blog postings on your topic); and/or 3) subscribe to a blog search feed for your search term.  That's right.  Google blog search will create an automated blog feed and place all the new blog postings on your topic in it and make it subscribable by you in your news feed reader.  That is what you would call leveraging the technology.

If a basic blog search does not find what you are looking for, there is an Advanced Blog Search, which should look familiar to users of other Google search products.  Advanced

The usual filters are available.  Google also provides a Preferences panel where you can select preferred interface language, search language, language filter, safe search filter, number of results per page, and results window behavior (open in new window is the default).

Pick a topic and try it out.  The results are often amazing.