In their typical, low key fashion, Google has launched the beta version of their Blog Search. No major press releases, no huge developer conference, not even a mention on their main search page. But, if you click "more", there it is under Google Services.
It's exactly what you'd expect from Google. The same clean interface as their web search engine, an advanced search option, plus the accurate results you'd expect to see. In fact, when I tested a few phrases and keywords, I found the results were much closer to what I expected to see than those of other Blog search engines such as IceRocket or BlogDigger.
I think users will find that Advanced Search is more important when searching blogs than when searching websites. The Google link-based algorithms for relevancy work very well in web search, but seem less so in my initial blog search tests. The ability to search by Blog Name, by words in the title of the blog or anywhere in the text is much more critical in searching blogs than looking, for example, for a corporate website. Narrowing the search by date range and author make it even more compelling. An interesting feature is the ability to receive results of your search via RSS.
Google waited a while before dipping its toe into the world of blogging, but now they are here and will be here in a big way. The independents (Technorati, IceRocket, etc.) will have to continue to focus on providing analytics and feedback to bloggers as I believe Google will own the end-user blog search space.
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