Google is set to launch its own dedicated blog search facility in what will likely be a major competitive threat to existing players including Technorati, IceRocket, Blogpulse and others.
At the time of writting the new service was not live, but in case you’re reading this later the URL is said to be http://blogsearch.google.com.
The FAQ for the service is available though and can be viewed here.
According to the help pages
“Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.
Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you’ll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.”
Given the wide scope of languages it will be interesting to see exactly how many blogs is in the index as well. My guess at this stage is we’ll see a number bigger than any of the existing services. (update I was wrong, it was half)
(via John Battelle)
Update: news breaking everywhere now. Search Engine Watch has an exccellent run down. Interestingly is that the new search service indexes using RSS feeds, so its limited if you’ve not got a full feed. They are also cross-referencing using ping services, and recommending Pingomatic. The new service is also said to have a comprehensive link function.
Update: my review here. Its now live.
