Google Blog Search Adds Date Searching

Th' Google people have announced that Google's blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com/.) Before I get into this and a couple of other things I must note that even though Google has recognized that date search is very very important when searching blogs, GOOGLE BLOG SEARCH'S DEFAULT REMAINS TO RANK SEARCH RESULTS BY RELEVANCE.

Rrrghhhugh.

ANYWAY, go to Google's blog search and run a search for something interesting, like "tile roofs". Oh look, the first result you get with a relevance ranking is for what looks like a spam blog. (And I don't want to go look lest I have millions of popup ads shoved down my snorkel. Hey Google, here amidst all the splog junk (Splog = "Spam blog") we could really go for some nice cached page options.) On the left side of the results page you'll see the ability to narrow down results by page with several static options (Last Hour, Last 12 Hours, Last Day, etc.) and a place down at the bottom that enables you to create custom date ranges. I can't find earliest or latest dates to use. (Maybe there aren't any. Are there timeshifted bloggers out there who are blogging Victorian England or the 2024 Olympics?)

Google also mentioned in the blog post that the blog search universe is doubling every six months, which I'm crazy enough to think sounds a little slow; maybe we're not cool anymore. Also that splogs exist and that Google Blog Search is fighting them. I will say that in some of the test searches I ran I found blog entries on Google Blog Search that I did not find anywhere else -- as I recall most of them were Livejournals.

I'm a little surprised that Google Blog Search hasn't integrated more of Google's Web search into it. For example, maybe I want to get a full list of available pages from a particular domain or subdomain, or I want to look at cached pages when available. Maybe there's a Greasemonkey script out there somewhere that would add this stuff...

Posted to Search Engines-Google