Ask.com Debuts Blog Search

Posted on June 1, 2006

Ask.com has launched its long-awaited blog search tool. The new search tool has some features that were well worth the wait. You can find the new blog search tool on the menu bar at Ask.com. Ask.com has also added new search features to Bloglines.com.

Ask.com's blog search has two tabs for blog searches. The "posts" tab lets you search through all the blog posts and the "feeds" tab searches for individual blogs or feeds. The blog posts search can be sorted by time, relevance and popularity. One of Ask.com's blog search features is a binocular roll-over that lets you preview a post without leaving the Ask.com search engine. There are also pull-down subscribe and post buttons next to each post in the search.

Bloglines has also added some new features. The Bloglines citations search gives you new options like a "more info" link that tells you how many subscribers a feed has. There is also a new preview feed option. On Bloglines you can also run a limited search that only shows you results from your own Bloglines subscriptions. You can also limit the search to include only feeds that have a "at least 2 Bloglines subscribers" or "many subscribers."

There are some nice write-ups on the new Ask search at Read/Write Web and Search Engine Watch. Technology Evangelist describes how the new Ask.com search makes use of the number of Bloglines subscribes as an authority filter.