Google Blogsearch Relaunches as Techmeme Killer, Across 11 Categories
In its first major upgrade ever, Google Blogsearch just relaunched and looks radically different. Instead of the blank page look of Google.com, Blogsearch now looks like Google News (but uglier) - with the hottest topics from the blogosphere aggregated on the front page. Readers can drill down in 11 different categories, from technology, business, sports and entertainment. Google says you can use Blogsearch to see what the world is talking about.
The user interface isn't nearly as nice as leading tech blog memetracker Techmeme, but the new Blogsearch has some major advantages.
How it Compares
We're in shock that Google Blogsearch has actually updated. It's cleaner and less spammy than Technorati, it's more transparent than Yahoo Buzz, it's more inclusive than Six Apart's new Blogs.com and to the big question will be whether it's faster than Techmeme. (Techmeme caught this story far faster than the new Google Blogsearch!) That's our concern as a tech site. This has to be entirely new for bloggers who write about television, video games or business. Those sectors have got to be excited.
The science blogosphere has Postgenomic, which is so full featured it probably won't lose any traffic at all to Google Blogsearch Science.
A Techmeme Killer?
Even in tech, though we may love Techmeme - it's audience is more influential than it is large. The new Google Blogsearch has the potential to reach tens of millions of people and drive insane amounts of traffic.
Techmeme indexes a limited number of tech blogs, primarily blogs linked-to by other blogs that are already indexed. Google Blogsearch, on the other hand, indexes all blog posts faster than anyone else on the web.
Techmeme is a great site and founder Gabe Rivera works hard to update its machinery and functionality regularly. The same iteration strategy can't be assumed for the new Google Blogsearch, in fact it appears that the Google News algorithm has just been applied to blogs. All this may or may not be significant. Rivera offered no response when we contacted him asking for one.
We're excited about the new Google Blogsearch. What do you think? Can you imagine yourself visiting it now?
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No mention of technorati?
highly recommend posting direct to friendfeed rather than via twitter when it's important...people hide tweets galore on here :(
Posted by: Zee from WeDoCreative
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October 1, 2008 5:02 PM
@chris Errr. yeah, I mean no, what is Technorati? It hurts to say, but Technorati is so out...
I love the new Google Blogsearch and hope we will soon see this in other languages too.
Wow. Makes me glad I am not in that business anymore. I started and ran a meme tracking company which launched days after Techmeme/Memeorandum (which had already captured the hearts and minds of the digerati). I was fortunate enough to sell the technology behind my company to a VC backed company in 2006. I can only imagine how Gabe feels right about now.
Ben
http://wistia.com
Wistia, Making Video Productive
@Francis
True, but even old can become new again under the right leadership. They're down, but they're not out quite yet. There's still a standing 8 count.
I would be shocked if Google does not reach 80%+ market share in the blog search space. By the end of 2008.
It's certainly going to be interesting to see what they actually achieve with this. Google Blog Search does have the potential to really take blogging even more main stream.
No mention of my site Newte.ch!? Well we only launched a few weeks ago. We take the personal approach to memes. :)
I don't see the advantage here over other feeds. With Google's stock price about half of what it was at it's peak there are two things happening:
1.Users will benefit as the talent of Google will continue to role out robust products and services.
2. Google's profit drivers will continue to feel pressure as the market communities change and provide viable alternatives to AdWords. For example I have one client spending $1200 per month on AdWords with average cost per click being $6.00. Three weeks ago we did a couple videos and I helped him optimize those on his site, etc. On average in about 12 days those videos have been viewed 220 times at $0 cost per click and yesterday a client flew from Germany to Florida to conclude on a deal. Exposure and closure is outstanding.
Steve Pohlit
http://stevepohlit.com
I have to ask, but how many people would ever actually use Google Blog Search over Google's normal search? Even I don't usually bother with it. I'm guessing just the early adopter set and a small percentage of normal people who click the 'more' link on Google's homepage would. So I actually don't think Techmeme is much under threat by this.
Also, why do people (and especially Marshall ;-) keep ragging on Technorati? It's great at what it does, index blogs. I use it far more than Google Blog Search.
Indeed, this is no threat to Techmeme or anyone else. It's a clean, well-engineered site, but it missed a great opportunity to address the particular needs of blog search. Read more at The Noisy Channel.
If I want to search blogs specifically, I'd always use Blog Search. Similarly, News Search for news, Image Search for images. The links are pretty prominent on every search page, surely more people than techie early adopters have explored them? As for Technorati, I think it's their metrics for measuring relative importance that annoy people, rather than the indexing service.
Posted by: Neil Saunders
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October 1, 2008 7:07 PM
Agree with Neil and do the same things but Technorati seems pointless, it's always borked
Posted by: Sally Church
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October 1, 2008 7:12 PM
I really like the blog search on Google. Sometimes I specifically want it.
Posted by: JMS
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October 1, 2008 7:15 PM
I liked the interface and thought it was cleaner looking than Google news, but they need more topics. Tech isn't the only subject out there.
I say it looks cleaner than TechMeme actually. But the real fun part will come when like TechMeme, it integrates google news search with blog search in one interface.
Neil: "The links are pretty prominent on every search page, surely more people than techie early adopters have explored them?"
I dunno, the link on google main page is one of the ones in the 'more' drop down list. Admittedly even that would get more links than most of us could dream of, being on google.com. But still I don't think it's something most people think to use when searching.
I've been using Google Blog Search for ages. I like the granularity options (last week, 12 months, etc)
Posted by: Deepak
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October 1, 2008 8:23 PM
Due to the fact that it is Google will take it a long way, but I do not like the cluttered look. I prefer the all white background!
http://jwojdylo.wordpress.com
Somebody had suggested this feature on google news group on Nov-2007 http://groups.google.com/group/news-Suggestions/browse_thread/thread/a438c138161a33cc/f27160eeebe77f64
I think this will hurt services like technorati more than techmeme. And techmeme definitely started the trend and google's entry will probably create more sites like these instead of killing them.
And here are some similar sites we are working on
http://www.techofy.com
http://www.blogofy.com
http://www.zoppr.com
It's no competition to techmeme (for me anyway) until it adds RSS feeds. You'd think that a blog search engine would figure that out...
I love TechMeme,it's the great service.But there isn't social component.I need the discussions about TechMeme's tech discussions. Probably,like FriendFeed's comments/likes.
most of this is habit related. example. i still go to drudge. i don't need to, but i do. it's a habit.
i have the same habit for memeorandum and techmeme.
i won't change.
gabe should keep a unique voice and experience. which i think it still has
I always thought Techmeme was running an "acquire me" strategy, or something - by staking out a niche and sitting on it. Otherwise, it didn't seem to make any sense - Gabe obviously has an awesome technology which he never seemed to take to its logical conclusion. Deploying it in a few silos as he did and then just tweaking it meant that eventually it was going to get passed by someone with more reach/resources/marketing.
I'd say Techmeme needed to take funding and expand into a proper network about 24 months ago. Or, he needed to have gotten acquired somewhere along the way like blogdigger and the others. It will be interesting to see if the memeorandum family will drop off sharply, stagnate, or find a way to muster growth. Just my $0.02, from someone that dabbled in the memetracking space before giving up in frustration (all respect due to gabe for crafting a great product).
I guess maybe this will finally spur tailrank to shut down. Just checked out tailrank and its down for a "db upgrade." Hmmm.
This could prove to be relevant for any niche who does not have a good working memetracker like we do have with Techmeme.
The reason why I am looking forward to Googles approach? They are one of the few services in the world to get internationalization right. I am sorry, but I could care less about the daily blantering of US Politics and if I had a snooze button on every time somebody on a tech blog goes politics I'd be happy to use it.
Techmeme has 'my' niche, so it will stay my first choice because it provides somethings others dont - a big fast visual clue. For the rest of the topics - most of them will never be done in a Techmeme way - it will be good news until the spammers get into it even more.
Some checks shows that spammers are highly in it already and I assume google takes this as a natural approach to Websites / News and now blogs.
This sounds like a good thing with Open Access day coming - how many hundred blog posts will it take to get to the top?
Posted by: Cameron Neylon
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October 2, 2008 5:11 AM
Although I do like it, clustering memes has always been good for me.
Posted by: dan
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October 2, 2008 5:25 AM
The two tools strike me as doing different things. Google's is still primarily a search tool; Techmeme strikes me as a better tool in dealing with the need for current awareness.
Posted by: Jill O'Neill
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October 2, 2008 6:11 AM
Techmeme killer? Are you kidding me?
For me, Techmeme is the closest thing to an online newspaper. It's not just the information there or the feeds it aggregates - it's the interface. Techmeme organizes stories so well, and it's design of varying sizes and nested links is easy to scan.
Then there's the new Google Blogsearch. It's one big list of stories, each with a list of links underneath, each of which include of whole string of words from the individual headlines. This may be great for doing a search (hence the name), but not for everyday browsing of tech stories, imho.
I leave Techmeme open as my first tab in Opera all day, and check it periodically as it autorefreshes. It's one of my favorite sites, and I've never been able to keep up with tech news more easily. In my opinion, Techmeme's organized design beats any newsreader or list of lists when it comes to tracking the news overall.
Looks like a FAIL to me.
Google found only 14 to 17 found posts as of 10/2/2008 about the "Amazon EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server" topic and mine wasn’t one of them, although it appeared on Techmeme. What’s really strange is no entry for Werner Vogels’ "Expanding the Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server on Amazon EC2" post of 9/30/2008 or Jeff Barr’s "Coming Soon: Amazon EC2 With Windows Amazon Web Services" blog post of 10/1/2008, which are the authoritative posts for the topic.
For more details, see the end of http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/amazon-adds-sql-server-to-oracle-and.html.
--rj
I like it a lot but then again I hate that it points out only single websites for individual keywords. What about others?
A big value of Techmeme (for me, anyway) is that it picks the blogs so well - I always find something good everyday and tends to reliably cover all the hot areas.
I.e., it's not an algorithm or popularity based listing, which is hit or miss. In that sense, Google Blog Search is more like Technorati (and in some ways Digg, Delicious, etc.). GBS might be better for searching blogs than regular Google search, but I wouldn't call it direct competition to Techmeme.
I have compiled keyboard shortcuts with the excellent Google Chrome. You may find it useful.
http://snsays.com/924/keyboard-shortcuts/
I'll use it, like I do now, but I hope it doesn't do something "evil."
Don't kill Techmeme!
Really good article. I have been following your blog for last 3 months. You have good knowledge
on Mobile(cell phone) Industry and happenings. Please continue the good work. Thank you.
I like Google BolgSearch too.