Google doing away with blogs :)

Not sure if posted yet but anyway

[xcandyman]

[theregister.co.uk...]

Looks like no more blogs in main index anymore YAY!

What does everyone else think? Sorry if posted before

Steve

[europeforvisitors]

What I'd like to see is a series of radio buttons on the Google search page that would offer search choices to the user. For example...

INCLUDE IN SEARCH:

( ) Everything in Google's index

( ) Only the following:

- ( ) Information pages

- ( ) E-commerce pages

- ( ) Message boards and newsgroups

- ( ) Blogs

This would be more convenient than the current method (which has separate indexes for Google Groups and Froogle) for users who want everything on a given topic, and it would provide filtering for users who want to include or exclude various types of content.

[Brett_Tabke]

It will be intresting to see how the register reacts when Google classifies it as a Blog ;)

[chiyo]

funny brett! In that case, you are right, it actually reads like a blog...

I suspect that the index of the new blogs.google.com will be nothing more than all the blogger blogs perhaps under the new name of "google blogs". I expect the model to be very similar to say blogs.salon. People can sign up for a google blog, use the blogger software, be hosted on some goole server or third-party one, have a few terms and conditions, and will have Adwords in them in return. They may also have auto acess to clever things from labs.google or API thingos. The model may be slightly different or extended but that will be the basis.

The author of the previous article was simply putting 2 and 2 together, adding a generous helping of imagination, and getting -6.

[Oaf357]

Some VERY interesting things being said at Slashdot on this topic as well.

[slashdot.org...]

[g1smd]

>> will be nothing more than all the blogger blogs perhaps under the new name of "google blogs". <<

bloogle?

bloggle?

[g1smd]

Hmm, did anyone notice this before?

I did a couple of searches on www that bring up some blogs in the top few positions. Repeating then search on -sj those blogs are nowhere to be seen.

Someone else want to try it?

[Nikke]

Sure. That is true if you search for a recently blogged item (such as for example "The Beauty in CSS Design". This shows 91 found pages on www and zip on www-sj.

But this can be written of as www-sj acting up lately.

Take a heavily blogged text from February and the differences aren't that big. (Except in the case of numerous new blogs or sites picking up on the subject)

Searching for "Anti war posters"
www: 3850 pages
www-sj: 2920 pages
There aren't very big differences between the top 20.

Nikke

[Brett_Tabke]

With all the noise about this throughout the blogs, I find the Online Journalism Review story to be by far the best article about the situation:

[ojr.org...]

[feeder]

It will be intresting to see how the register reacts when Google classifies it as a Blog

Not to mention that man Sullivan ;)

News sites haven't been removed. Neither have forums. Neither will blogs. Andrew O has an axe to grind, nothing more.

[chiyo]

yep.. as far as usless non-significant content goes, forums and discussion archives already delivered by email are just as bad overall. WebmasterWorld has mega listings in google, but that is great and relevant content; so too do certain email discussion list archives - the ones im thinking of are fairly useless - someone asked a question 3 years ago, a couple of months later someone says ther want to know too, and no "answer" or serious discussion ensues that would give a saiisfactory return for the searcher.

Im not really sure, but i think im seeing news home pages well and truly still in the sERPS, but less individual items.

I really do think that google's other algos are continually improving in being able to pinpoint relevant unique content without having to apply an artificial very rough definition of what consitutues a blog, a forum, an email-newsletter archive, and a news item. These definitions would have to be highly complex and always imperfect in terms of getting avoiding unacceptable levels of false-negative and false-positive classifications. Ask any librarian, information professional or database expert.

[pgsbs]

I wonder if it would be smart for google to drop weblogs from the main index. In The Netherlands some blogs are reporting faster about the news than some acual newssites do. And lately more and more newspapers and magazines are quoting directly from weblogs and naming weblogs as a source for certain facts.
This shows how important weblogs are nowadays.

For me personally, I have a blog with mainly personal or fiction-stories content, this move from Google would cost me some visitors. But I don't get most visitors from Google. I get most visitors from other blogs linking to my website. It won't keep me from my nightly sleep.