I’ve been saying for a long time that the world needs a good blog search engine, and Erich points out that the people who do search engines best have finally stepped up to the plate and come out with one. Google has just released the first beta (I know… Google has everything in beta) of its blog search.
My favorite blog search engines up to this point have been Mnongo and Technorati. Both are quite good, although competing with Google on the search engine front has proven difficult even for the largest and most powerful technology players. After tinkering with Google Blog Search for a bit, I have to say that it seems pretty good. It’s never quite clear how Google gathers their info and ranks their sites, although they do seem to lend quite a bit of weight to tags.
Here is what Google has to say about it:
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.
Blogs are really quite powerful tools, and I’m glad to see that the world is taking them more and more seriously every day.

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[...] I just read about this at my friend Cliff’s blog! It seems Google now provides a Blog Search tool! Yup, a Google search geared towards blog sites. Very groovy. Google states (and yes, I’m ripping off my friend’s story…but who cares I reach a different audience.) 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. [...]