As blogs become more widely used, so does the idea of a blog search engine. I’m getting asked more often about how to rank high in sites such as Technorati and Google Blog Search. Where as it’s really easy to rank high, it never lasts.

Blog search engines rank blogs on a few different factors including authority, relevance and time. Time is the biggest one. If I post right now about “blog optimization” I’ll be #1 in Technorati for that phrase! However, if someone posts five minutes after me, I’ll be bumped out of first place. As the day goes on, and more people post with the phrase “blog optimization” in their posts, I’ll continue to move down the list. As you can see, it’s really easy to be #1 but you’ll never say there.

Another factor blog search engines can include is authority. They’ll measure the number of inbound links, how many people are subscribed to your blog and different factors based on the blog search engine you are using. They’ll then decide who’s popular and give the user the ability to filer out the less popular blogs and only show results from those with some authority. I kind of wish the main search engines would do this too.

With the recent announcement of the slimmed down version of Technorati, s.technorati.com, my use of the blog search engine is on the increase once again. Now I’ve made it even easier to access by creating sTechnorati.

sTechnorati is a search plugin that works in both IE7 and Firefox 2. It’s actually built with the OpenSerch technology so as browsers adopt to that, they too can install sTechnorati. What it will do is install an option to search from your browsers built in search box and go directly to the s.technorati.com search results page. Just like the Google option that is already there now.

While making sTechnorati I took a few liberties. It’s set to search only English posts and posts with at least a little authority. I felt that would bring back the best results. If you want one with different settings, just ask and I’ll toss a new one together.

Enjoy!

Install sTechnorati

[tags] technorati,firefox,ie7,opensearch[/tags]

So guess what happens when you post to fast and don’t read all the details? You feel like an idiot.

One of my biggest complaints about Technorati is that I love blog search, but don’t need all the social media elements. Photos, audio and video just aren’t want I want to see. I wrote that the new Technorati is nice, but to over done for me. Guess what, they already knew that people felt that way and built a striped own version.

http://s.technorati.com is nothing but blog search. Quick, uncluttered and simple. A big thanks goes out to the Technorati crew for this!

Now the only thing that Google still has is the ability to search by date (past hour, day, week, month, custom) and yet sort by relevance or date. But now I guess I’m just being picky.

I’ve been a big fan of Technorati since the beginning, but once it tried to become the ‘one stop shop’ for social media search, I’ve strayed. I don’t care about videos, pictures and audio. I really want just a good blog search. So I switched to Google Blog Search. With the new design though, my want to use Technorati is coming back.

One big reasons for leaving, other than all the extra social stuff, was that when I subscribed to an RSS feed, it kept telling me the some post was new every time I checked my feeds. I haven’t signed up for any new Technorati feeds lately as Google Blog Search has that down.

My other big issue use to be how slow it was, or how it kept erroring out, during searches. It’s nice to see that with the recent re-launch, the site search speed seems better. However, the search results are still not working correctly.

I did a blog search for toprankblog and came up with 47 blogs and 5 pages of search results. However, when I get to page 2, I get only one result. When I get to page 3, I get “There are no Technorati blogs about toprankblog.” For some reason, Technorati only shows 11 out of 47 blog results.

By default, Wordpress is setup to search every post. What they don’t tell you is that doesn’t include pages. However, with the Search Everything plugin, you can search pages, posts and more.

No only will Search Everything allow you to include pages in your Wordpress search, but also comments, drafts, attachments and custom meta fields. You get to choose what extra fields you want to include which is good as I have no idea why you’d want to include drafts or un-approved comments.

This is really handy for those that use Wordpress as their website content management system. I’ve used Wordpress not as a blogging platform, but as an easy content management source. Some sites have more pages than posts and searching proves problematic.

Even if you use Wordpress for blogging, like most do, there is probably a good chance that you’ve created some pages. Maybe an about page, content, resources or one of many options. And, all those pages deserve to be part of the internal search.

By installing the Search Everything plugin, not only will the search box look though posts, but pages also and give your visitors better results.

[tags]search-everything,search[/tags]

Today marks Technorati’s 3rd birthday and they have come out with a bunch of new updates.

The first thing you’ll notice is an all new design. Less cluttered and much nicer. That was one thing that was really bothering me and I’m glad it’s been updated. Not only that, but you are able to personalize it.

Technorati also has more speedy and accurate results. A quick few searches and it appears to be true. Nice!

Check out the new Technorati and rejoice as you see and use an upgraded blog search engine.

[tags]Technorati[/tags]