There’s a new kid on the block for searching blogs by the name of Sphere.
It sports a clean and simple interface, and from my brief experience, is lightening fast. (Yes, I said it: a fast blog search.)
The default results appear to be relevancy (as opposed to recency) but that can be quickly changed. All search results pages offer an RSS button to subscribe. As a nice feature, when you click on it you have the option of seven different chicklets, including Yahoo and Bloglines among others.
On the search results page you also choose from “Featured Blogs (beta)” or “Related Media.” The featured blogs link takes you to a page of related, featured blogs along with the option of suggesting a resource.
Related media takes you to a page with books, news, photos and podcasts related to your search.
Sphere also offers a few additional tools from their Tools page including a search widget for TypePad.
I think Sphere has potential … but they are going to have to boost their index fast. I’m getting strange results in searches on my domain … Results that don’t link to me … but maybe they are smarter and finding stuff like my site … hmm
Comment by Tris Hussey — May 3, 2006 @ 11:37 am
Cool stuff. I guess that with the coming of blogs, the Intrenet is somehow adapting to these. There are now personalized tools for blogs and like the Sphere; it makes readers search for their own favorite blog in particular.
I have to agree with Tris. They still need to make it working, especially giving searchers more accurate results. Google’s blog search is pretty much okay as their regular search engine. I guess that new search engines as Spere would really have to have a unique way as a SE tool to be in lined with Google’s blog SE.
Comment by Mary — May 23, 2006 @ 2:36 am