As you may know, there are blog search engines out there (like Technorati) that let you search the content of blogs specifically (as opposed to other web sites).
Why Google isn’t all over this, I don’t know.
Well, I’m looking for a specific blog-search feature that I haven’t found yet, and I was wondering if anyone knows if it exists yet.
Here’s what I’m looking for: A blog search engine that has e-mail notifications (or at least an RSS feed). I’d like to be able to do for blogs what I can do with Google news alerts: Type in a few keywords, give it my e-mail address, and let the system e-mail me links whenever those keywords show up on blogs.
Anybody know where I can find such a critter?
Why Google isn’t all over this, I don’t know.
They are, though it is a fairly recent phenomenon. There’s both a Google.com-hosted version and a Blogger.com-hosted version. They’re basically the same service, though I think the Blogger.com version has a few extra refinements (though it’s been a while since I compared them). N.b., the Blogger version indexes all blogs with RSS/Atom feeds, not just those made by Blogger.
They don’t have email alerts as far as I can tell, but they do have RSS and Atom feeds for the search results that you can subscribe to.
http://blogsearch.google.com/ google has had it for awhile
“Google has had it for a while” and “it is a fairly recent phenomenon” are not necessarily contradictory: the service has been out for a little over two months (see my post when I first noticed it and Google’s announcement of it on the Google Blog).
Yes, sort of, Jimmy! What you’ll get is an RSS feed, instead of E-mail alerts, tho.
Try this.
Go to http://blogsearch.google.com/
Search for something, say, “Benedict”.
You’ll get the first page of results. Scroll way down to the bottom.
See where it has a set of clickable links, reading:
Subscribe: Atom (10 results – 100 results) RSS (10 results – 100 results)
Right-Click and copy the URL of whichever you prefer – 10 or 100 results in Atom format or a 10 or 100 result RSS-format feed of continued and updated search results for your search term.
Now, for me, I just open my RSS reader, choose to add a feed, and paste in the URL of the RSS feed for that chosen link. I’ll pick up to 10 search results, RSS format.
So I would paste this: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?as_q=Benedict&hl=en&c2coff=1&btnG=Search+Blogs&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&bl_pt=&bl_bt=&bl_url=&bl_auth=&as_drrb=q&as_qdr=&as_mind=1&as_minm=3&as_miny=18&as_maxm=11&as_maxy=2005&lr=&safe=off&num=10&output=rss
The RSS reader will update with new search results for Benedict, under that newsfeed, just as if you’d done a new search manually.
I could see that as being a very hard to organize thing (the e-mail notification.) Here you are, getting your one or two hits a day with your search for ‘H5N1’, then BAM! a new type of Viagra comes out labeled, H5N1.
Now, not only is your search going to have to be refined (dang, where did I put that password to change my settings), but your inbox is going to be swamped for the next few days.
Actually, I could see how someone could write a Firefox extension that might be able to do a similar thing, depending what you’re asking and the nature of the blogosphere (or whatever they call it.) Lots of variables though. Depends on what you’re after, how easy it is to accomplish, and how much money you can convince people they can make with it.
After reading the post above from the person with no name, if you do a search for something at google’s blog seach, they have the RSS feed HTML tags behind the scenes (which Firefox picks up and can use.)
Do a search, and in the release candidates for Firefox 1.5, its an icon you click on in the URL bar. For previous versions, I remember it being at the lower right hand corner of the browser window.
I believe technorati offers watchlists for terms you want to look out for.