AOL Launching Blog Search This Week
In a month where Google and Yahoo have both added blog search appetizers to their search menus, AOL is reportedly working to add blog search too. AOL is working with Intelliseek’s BlogPulse to provide the AOL Blog Search tool.
AOL has recently gotten serious about blogs with its recent acquisition of Weblogs, Inc., the blogging network, and may be looking to add more blogging offerings to its network beyond its AOL Journals.
More AOL related news also has Yahoo entering the bidding war against Google and MSN for a piece of Time Warner’s slowly healing Internet behemoth. Greg Sterling of the Kelsey Group feels that AOL has created a win-win situation for themselves with a bidding war between the major search companies :
The reported amount of the Google-Comcast bid, which Parsons has dismissed as rumor, is $5 billion (Yikes!). Whatever the reality, MSN could afford to overpay, given that it has something like $50 or so billion in cash and needs to do something to boost traffic and would love to take that relationship away from Google.
I can’t help but believe that this has all been skillfully calculated by AOL to create a bidding war. But whether that’s true or this series of events is merely serendipitious for the once beleagured portal, there appears in fact to be a bidding war and someone will ultimately buy a stake.
Correction: Nowhere in the Intelliseek/AOL press release does it says that AOL will be adding blog search to its web site. This deal is about Intelliseek’s BlogPulse.com data and analysis being made available to AOL for integration in other AOL user services…but search is not part of this agreement.
The full press release is here for verification:
http://www.intelliseek.com/releases2.asp?id=143
Sue MacDonald
Marketing/Media Relations
Intelliseek Inc.
Cincinnati, OH