Google Blog Search May Spell Trouble For Competitors

Problogger picked up on the breaking news from Searchblog that Google has released a Blog Search Facility. There are two url's http://blogsearch.google.com/ (Google-style interface) and a second blogger version at http://search.blogger.com/ (Blogger-style interface) which is also incorporated into the blogger dashboard. A third interface has been included into the blogspot nav bar.

Personally, I predominantly use Ice Rocket or Technorati depending on the research I am undertaking. There are definitely improvements that could be made to both but on the whole they serve me well. However, with the emergence of Google Blog Search I think they will have to rapidly consolidate their positions or lose market share to the behemouth that is Google.

I had a play around with the new Google facility and was fairly impressed. I have noted some quick thoughts below:

1. Compared to other search facilities it seemed to throw back results at lightening speed.

2. There is quite a nifty option to easily switch your search results by relevance or time.

3. For those using blogger there is a long over due, incorporation of the search faility into the dashboard.

4. Correction to my earlier post - Link references are shown but to be honest they appear to be pretty out of date.

5. Google Blog Search just shot ahead by listing some of my more recent posts within the hour. Pretty damn quick!

6. There are advanced search options for criteria such as authors, titles, languages etc.

7. Every blog that publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom) is to be incorporated into Google Blog Search.

8. Automatic pings from a service such as Weblogs.com should enable your blog to be listed.

I suspect it won't be too long before we see an Adsense for Blog Search facility.

Take a look at About Google Blog Search for further info.