Are Blogs going to Sap traffic from Search Engines?

Is the trust-network search engine coming?

[blaze]

Assuming that we like and buy the things our friends like and buy .. are blogs going to be another way to find the things we want to know about?

As we spend more time reading blogs and using aggregators, will we be spending less time on search engines and more time on blogs?

[chrisgarrett]

My favourite blogs are like a cross between gossip column, industry journal and modern equivelant of the old "whats new"/"whats cool"/"cool site of the day" sites we used to rely on in the mid-90s. I think blogs serve a different and complimentary purpose to SEs.

[caveman]

I agree with chrisgarrett. just another form of community site, albeit a cool one.

check out the newest thing too: tag sites. Love 'em already.

[HughMungus]

Isn't that how it works already? People reading blogs see the poster say, "I bough a iWidget, it's so cool, blah blah blah" and they think, "Hmm...maybe I should get an iWidget" (as opposed to just seeing an ad for an iWidget somewhere).

I know someone who runs a small blog system and my suggestion to him was to use the ad space he has on their blogs to have contextual ads related to what's in the posts. If someone mentions an iWidget, ads for iWidgets appear. If the blog has an overall theme revealed by its content, ads based on that theme appear. I was thinking an internal contextual derivation scheme but third-party contextual ads would also work.

[blaze]

RSS kinda changes the rules a bit from typical community sites, I think. I have over 200 blogs on my aggregator, which updates every 15 minutes.

Do you read 200 community websites every single day?

Blogs are also run by individuals. Community sites, which anyone posts to, are run by groups.

I trust individuals more than I trust groups.

[baze22]

check out the newest thing too: tag sites. Love 'em already.

Got me curious enough to post. ;) What's a tag site?

baze

[digitalghost]

[technorati.com...]

[blaze]

Isn't this just another meta tag thing which will soon be manipulated for purposes of greed?

[caveman]

Nah the smarter ones already do noindex on all their pages.

These will survive and thrive, or not, based on inbound links and word of mouth, not who their posters link to.

It's like having access to everyone's bookmark page, or fav photos, etc, all in one place, with a kw search. Brilliant.

[blaze]

Yeah but what if people set up 100 blogs and then tag on some popular keyword and have links to their affiliates?

[twist]

I trust individuals more than I trust groups.

Until companies figure this out and hire groups of individuals to secretly push their products through blogs. I would have to admit that if I ran a sucessful honest blog that made little or no money and a company came along and offered me $10,000 to push their new iProduct and say it was the best thing since canned bread I would happily take the money.

[blaze]

Somehow I don't think Mitch Kapor is going to fall victim to that (he's on my blog list)