Google Cuddles Up to Bloggers with New Search Engine

Google Cuddles Up to Bloggers

By Robert • Oct. 25, 2006

Blogging is moving more and more mainstream nicely pushed along by Google [[GOOG]]. Three recent moves by Google demonstrate their interest in this medium.

First is the addition of Blog Search to the Google News page. This change was first noticed by Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion. Since then, Google has gone one step further and added Blog Search to the top of the related links shown at the end of search results.

Second is the release of Google Custom Search Engine. Google says, “Harness the power of Google search to create a free Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests. Specify the websites that you want searched – and integrate the search box and results into your own website”. This is very cool and you can even integrate Adsense with the search results!

Third is the announcement of Google’s Blog Ping Service. What is a bit confusing about this service is that they are indexing the blog’s feed (read the FAQs). This also true for Technorati. In Technorati’s case, if your don’t put your entire post in the feed – they won’t find your all your tags. Putting an entire post in the feed puts a blogger at risk of getting scraped by sploggers. Hopefully, Google can index a blog from a feed excerpt.

Note: This blog uses several Google services including AdSense to monetize the site, Sitemaps to insure good indexing, and AdWords to promote branding and generate traffic. Sign-up links are on the sidebar.

Tags: Google, Technorati