#9 - finding feeds

This excercise was all about finding new feeds using some of the various blog search tools out there. I tried Feedster, Topix, Google Blog search, and Technorati. As an experiment I went to each of the mentioned search sites and searched for "library 2.0" in the default search box. Below are comments on each set of results:

Feedster. The results are presently clearly with a minimum of clutter. Each result includes the title of the post (linked) a block of text containing the search term, the title of the blog (linked), word count, and how long ago it was published. This last piece of information is interesting as that is the way results are sorted. No fancy ranking algorithms here. If you're the last to post on the topic, you're at the top of the list.

Topix. Was also clear and relatively uncluttered. It contained all the same information as feedster with the exception of wordcount. Again, results are sorted by time posted. This says something for the temporal nature of blogs. They are not necessarily meant to be a lasting reference source, but an ongoing commentary. Topix also contained a bar graph with the date on the horizontal axis and relevant posts on the vertical so it is easy to see peaks, troughs and up or down trends in blogging about the topic.

Google blog search. Again, a clear simple set of results presented in the familiar looking Google format. The same information as Topix is presented, again omitting the word count present in feedster results. Again, results are sorted by time. Google has an interesting option in the sidebar that allows a date range to be selected. Google also lists at the top of the results a list of relevant blogs, rather than specific posts. This is limited. For example, my search for "Library 2.0" only returned one blog. Even a search for "library" returned only five blogs. This probably says something for the non existence of metadata on entire blogs (rather than posts) or perhaps on the tendency or percieved value of searching for entire blogs.

Technorati. This was by far the best (or only) of the four to allow effective searching for blogs. Tabs in the results screen allow you to easily look at results that are posts, blogs, videos or photos. The posts results present in a similar way to the three other sites. The blog results page lists the blog title (linked), a small blurb about the blog and Technorati's "authority rating" which at a glance appears to be based on other blogs linking to the blog in question.

All of the search engines returned results that looked appropriate. However, they all returned a number of different results. This perhaps highlights the value in using several of the sites rather than sticking to one. All of the layouts were good with none of the sites standing out drastically from the others. Technorati's blog search could be a handy feature, although I suspect the nature of blog searches is usually to find a blog by finding a particular post, then choosing to follow the blog regularly.