Google can't find it

elearnspace pointed this one out to me today. Google's Blog search has finally come online (previously it seemed to be only on the Blogger pages). elearnspace, in their post mentioned that Technorati wasn't cutting it for them to search blogs. But I'm thinking that for me, Technorati, and to some extent, Icerocket are doing a pretty good job of pulling out relevant searches. I tried similar searches in each engine, and found different results. Not a big surprise there. Both engines are relying on keywords that are in the page. Technorati came out on top with blogs that had a longer history - some of the top hits on Google were just starting out. Note that these searches were performed using the default search box, Technorati also has a blog search, but it is up to the blogger to tag their blog to fit a category. Technorati shine when you search using tags, the posts are relevant, but ranked by how new they are (and have ads by Google). This may not help get the most pertinent posts on a topic, but it's likely going to be a bit better off than a keyword search. Afterall, the tag represents the human idea of what the post is about, and even though the post hasn't got the keywords in the post, it is still commenting on that topic. Of course, with time Google will assimilate (ahem... index) those as well. So why rant on about this? It seems that many people will automatically trust results from Google (before it was Yahoo! or Altavista) without looking into what they are looking for themselves. I'm not saying that this is what elearnspace did however. It was however this post, remembering a Get Fuzzy cartoon (remember one where the dog, Satchel, is talking to another character about the existence of a higher "all knowing" power, and Satchel responds "Like Google?") and a class that I helped out in this morning that put this bug in my ear that trusting an information source without really understanding what we are asking of it can be dangerous. Technorati Tags: Google, Technorati, tags, folksonomy