Sphere, Local & Problems with Blog Search
As you remember from where we last left our story, the number of blogs was doubling every six months and we now have over 35 million blogs out there (per Technorati). Sphere, a new blog search engine, formally launched today. It’s getting positive reviews (see Om Malik for more detail, TechCrunch and Loren’s update here at Search Engine Journal).
Right now blogs appear in search results but the major engines have separate destinations for “real” blog search. But I as a consumer am interested in information, from whatever source. I don’t want to go to search engine A for “regular” results and search engine B for blog results. I don’t know that the results might be different or care frankly.
Blog content/search presents a special problem for Local. There’s tons and tons of valuable local information in the so-called blogosphere (hence the name “Sphere”) that is buried and effectively invisible to most consumers. Blog content is akin to word of mouth. Where can I find the best auto mechanic, best landscape contractor, best pizza restaurant?
For example, here’s a Sphere search for “San Francisco restaurants.” There’s a lot that’s irrelevant here, including a link to this blog halfway down the page, but you also see the potential to capture the information daily being published by the millions and millions of people out there who are talking about local businesses, local culture and so on, in their area (on a global basis). This is what “microformats” are supposed to be about — structuring blog content to make it more easily searched/indexed.
Mining that local information and getting it integrated into local search results or making it accessible at any level to consumers would be tremendously valuable. In fact, a really effective blog search engine is going to be a better Local Search tool than the best IYP site or Local Search destination – because of this word of mouth content.
What we fundamentally need to see is integration of blog content with general search results so that consumers can obtain, in one results set, the entire range of relevant information. And because of this lack of integration, blog search is definitely an area of opportunity for someone — maybe Sphere.
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Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm focused on online consumer and advertiser behavior and the relationship between the Internet and traditional media, with an emphasis on the local marketplace.
Greg, Sphere has a bit to go before redefining the blog search market.
In terms of local, I really enjoy what BlogDigger is doing with their Local Blog Search.
For example, this result for a search for “Orioles” in the Baltimore area are pretty much on the mark and what I’m looking for in regards to local blog search – unedited journaling of local opinons, rumors, and experiences:
http://local.blogdigger.com/search.jsp?q=orioles&near=baltimore
However, the local index seems to be a bit limited and there are not very many “local niche blogs” being served for local results, only those who use the following tags for BlogDigger to pick up their blog as being local:
“Blogdigger uses a number of methods to identify a site’s location. The best way is to support the ICBM or geoPosition meta data specification which defines your site’s latitude/longitude as an HTML metatag.”
Topix.net is another Local News service which is picking up a lot of local blogs. I also do not think they should be overlooked in this arena.
For instance, if I do a search for the Chester, MD (small Maryland community outside of Annapolis/DC) area in Topix.net; my own local blog is shown before the other area news sources:
http://www.topix.net/city/chester-md
Don’t be surprised if Topix and Yahoo develop very relevant and useful Local Blog search tools. There is a reason that Yahoo has not gone all out with its Blog Search and is burrying it in News Search.
In many cases, General Blog Search is a high maintenance time crunching activity, more niche services will take the pain out of searching for blogs.
A great concept you outlined in this post, I thought, was “What we fundamentally need to see is integration of blog content with general search results so that consumers can obtain, in one results set, the entire range of relevant information…”. I’m a big believer that we have to start integrating all types of relevant search results together for users, including blog posts, video, audio, graphics, etc. to give searchers all the relevant information available in one SERP. I’d also include User Shared Search Results in that mix (USSR’s). Blog search will get better and better as the challenges that are being identified more clearly are addressed.