Geeky Cat Miusings

Some of my blog readers told me that they don’t know how to search for blogs and this is the purr-fect time for me to inform my dear readers. There are many search services out there and you may want to select one according to your needs because there is not any one service that has all features, and I don’t understand why not. Please don’t tell me to make my own blog search tool (you know who you are). They all have search by keywords (or else what is the point) but some are strangely lacking in the ability to search by boolean expression, a feature I think that is essential for any search on the net. Here are two of my favourite blog search tools and some of their features:

Google Blog Search

• search by boolean expression
• search by words in title
• restricts to author (I haven’t been able to figure out how to add my author name to my blog)
• restricts to date range
• sorts results by date

Technorati

• searches by category and tags
• searches who links to URL, so you can see what people are saying about a website (nobody is talking about my website yet)
• searches by boolean expression
• searches by words in title
• restricts to date range
• sorts results by date
• adult content filter

Some other blog search services are worth looking at, such as IceRocket and Sphere. Some, like Feedster, have advanced search features but not in a handy form page that guides you - instead you need to know the search syntax which can be daunting and time consuming. The choice is yours, research a few and see what you can find out. It was interesting for me to blog search for “Food for the Mood” since it lead me to the blog of another girl who attended the same event, on the same night, at the ROM. I read her notes and got to know her impression of the night. While our physical paths came close but did not quite cross that night, our virtual paths have intertwined. Cool.

I don’t know why my bullets are not showing up in IE, any ideas?