Bloglines/Ask Roll Unimpressive Blog Search

Ask.com finally did something with its acquisition of Bloglines and rolled out a new blog search tool. The product leaves me largely cold. The new search site utilizes subscription data from Bloglines users to rank posts by popularity, but they did nothing to create a product that comes anywhere close to rivaling T'Rati's authority ranking features. Plus  it doesn't work. Try this search for iPod. The number one result is Apple's product site. That's not very bloggy.

Alternatives to Technorati are helpful, but blog search has a long way to go and no one has come close to tackling the biggest nuts of all - comment mining, localization, concordance, etc.

Bloglines still feels like a largely stagnant, but important player an industry that's moving too quickly for them. All of their competitors - from Google to Newsgator to Technorati and Rojo - are doing more to innovate in the search/RSS arena. Just look at T'Rati's experiments in the microformats arena or what RawSugar is doing with guided blog search. It's too bad because Bloglines was the leader until IAC bought them. It's the classic case of a small player losing steam once they are acquired by a larger one. File this under too little, too late.

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Ask.com

Comments

[Steven Cohen]

The first link you see is to the Apple iPod site, but it is a link from what seems to be a Japanese blog. One quick look at the impressive binocular feature proves it.

[Thad]

Steve, it looks like you ran your search using the "popularity" sort. From what I'm reading elsewhere, this is purely a subscriber ranking. I tried "ipod" using both the "relevance" sort and the "most recent" sort and both seem to me to be much better than t'rati.

[Matt]

Seems that you are slightly biased in favor of Technorati.

From your site:

"With this in mind, the me2revolution team at Edelman, which I am part of, has formed a relationship with Technorati to fast-track the development of localized versions of their offering in German, Korean, Italian, French and Chinese."

[Steve Rubel]

Matt, sure I understand why you would say that. However, I am partial to the tools that give me the best results and right now I think that's T'Rati. If this changes, I will not be afraid to say so. Nor will I be afraid to point out where T'Rati fails.

[Oscar]

So far, the results I've found on Ask Feed and Blog Search have been excellent. Much along the same lines as what Thad had to say (above) in his comment.

I also like that they've added search to Bloglines already useful mobile interface and with both interfaces (one on Ask, the other on Bloglines) offers a variety of services. Allow the user to decide which one works best for them. Remember, not everyone has the search skills or needs. Most aren't.

I also think it's cool that Ask is confident enough in their service to offer users to the chance to subscribe to feeds and clip posts using one of several services (not only Bloglines).

In terms of time to database, I checked a few posts and they were searchable within minutes of the time published.

Also, ability to search only my Bloglines feeds is useful along with the inline previews or binoculars.

+ Yes, guided search/faceted search is VERY cool but without a close control of the tags and fields, it could easily turn into a mess (let alone spam).
I did some searching on Raw Sugar today and found facets like "blog stuff" and "front page" make retrieval any easier

Btw, here in Seattle, Siderean has been doing impressive work with guided search for years. You can find demos

here

http://www.thegateway.org/

here

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/

and here

http://resource.smartdesktop.org/rescon/

[Cathy Thompson]

To be fair, you should do the same "iPod" test on Technorati before being so dismissive.

I just did a side by side comparison on the same term, and Ask.com blog search turned up much better results. Top on Ask.com, sorted by relevance, were posts from Gizmodo. (good) Top on Technorati, based on "authority" (and below a group of Apple sponsored listings) was someone rehashing their break-up with Ryan. (r-i-g-h-t)

[Jeremy Pepper]

In the past, you would have applauded this as another tool. Now you attack.

Anything we can add to our bag of tricks as PR people is a good thing. You loved Icerocket for so long - or, you loved Cuban's Icerocket for so long - and its results were fair at best.

I played around last night with Bloglines search. It did a good enough job for me that I am adding it to my collection of tools. And still keeping Technorati on that list, despite its recent failings.

[Ryan Massie]

Steve,

Thanks for testing our new Blog and Feed Search. In looking at your post, I think I know why you had a negative experience: you tried your "ipod" test search on our "popularity" sort. Our search relevance is best measured when doing a search under the "relevance" sort, which is the default.

We built the “popularity” sort so that people could see the most cited and subscribed to posts, regardless of relevance. This unique perspective on a topic or name can be very helpful (as can other sorts depending on a searcher's need), but only “relevance” is intended to be a relevance ranking.

Actually, our “relevance” sort is a blend of multiple measures of relevance: freshness, link popularity, subscription data, and other ingredients of our ExpertRank algorithm. We blend in order to avoid the spam that gets into other blog search engines that rely on just link popularity.

Try out a search on this sort and I think you’ll find we do a pretty good job. (Try a search for your name and this blog is the top result, for example.)

One other trick on Ask.com I'll pass on: try a search for your name on the regular web search. See how we are using RSS in regular web results? You gotta love it!

Ryan Massie
Ask.com Blog & Feed Search