Google Search Trends Timeliness Issues

The following Google Trends data is presently 3 weeks stale. I’m somewhat confused as to this gap between the daily Google Hot Trends and Google Trends data not being in real time.

I first noticed this comparison of Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in this blog post - Top Google Search Trends in Iowa.

Does anyone understand why this time gap exists in Google or plans for resolving it?

Potential Chicago Cab Strike July 31 - How to Get to adtech(ad:tech) via CTA

With today’s possible cab strike in Chicago, I thought it would be a good idea to post CTA bus options to arrive at the west end of Navy Pier. Please note that even with these bus options, it is a10 minute walk to the east end of Navy Pier where the Festival Hall is located. I highly suggest taking the bus instead of walking the entire distance and wish the actually CTA stopped at Navy Pier East Entrance #2. Please check out my current question on Yahoo! Answers regarding Navy Pier.

Here are some tips on how to navigate via CTA to Navy Pier. Cash fare on the CTA is currently $2. This is a pdf map of the areas described below.

From the Sheraton: the #29, #65 and #124 buses stop in front of the Sheraton on Illinois and terminate and 600 East Grand Avenue, this will save you three blocks of walking.

The number#124 bus starts in the West Loop at Union Station, Ogilvie Transportation Center and terminates at 600 East Grand Avenue.

If traveling from Midway Airport, take the Orange line to Roosevelt, walk down the stairs and travel one block west to State Street. Take the#29 State bus northbound to 600 East Grand Avenue.

If traveling from O’hare Airport, take the blue line to Monroe, walk up the stairs, then walk one block east to State Street. Take the#29 State bus northbound to 600 East Grand Avenue.

For those staying at a hotel a bit further north, the #66 bus travels east on Chicago Avenue, then south on Fairbanks to Grand to 600 East Grand Avenue.

For those of you attending ad:tech, I have the following high level networking objectives and look forward to speaking with you (please drop me an email contained on my Bio page):

1) I’m seeking anyone with senior contacts at major search engines

2) Anyone with ideas or connections to publishers, advertisers or investors regarding mobile search and mobile advertising.

Have a great show!

Blogher 2007 is Happening Now!

I’m here at Blogher (blogher07) in Chicago to network with the awesome people, I’m especially interested meeting people working in the mobile search marketing start ups and traditional search engines like Ask, MSN/Live and Yahoo!

I’ve already met some fun and compassionate people! This conference is unique to me in that it’s not so much about me learning about new online marketing or blogging techniques. It’s about learning about different points of view of looking at the world. There are about 800 people here and it’s a bit overwhelming in terms of effective and targeted networking. But everyone is very open - I wish women everywhere communicated to me in the frank straightforward manner that I’m experiencing here.

I’m sitting in a session on branding. Many of the people I know in the room are IM’ing me. Here is a nice summary of the session from Felicia Sullivan.

Blogher 2007 is in Chicago July 27, 28 & 29

I can’t wait to attend and learn about the wonderful people attending Blogher 2007 next weekend. There is going to be so much fun and energy and positive learning at Blogher 2007. The Blogher 2007 agenda. Want to join everyone? There is still a few seats left here - the deadline to sign up is Monday at 9PM. See you soon!

Chicago Tribune Redesign

Many people have never visited a blog much less a blog search engine. The mainstream media, in this case the Chicago Tribune, is trying to maintain relevancy by creating things that look like blogs but truly aren’t. They don’t have trackbacks, links to relevant articles, are cold, sterile, have no outbound links and as we’ve seen from Boing Boing. Some national newspapers plagerize and recycle content that started on blogs. It’s a sad state of affairs.

But why pay people to frequently repurpose content as their own? Why not remove these middlemen entirely? If you really want to have a network of blogs, why not give local bloggers revenue to post their content directly as a blog hub?

Aaron Wall discusses the link and arbitrage issues in this unique post. Scott Karp also raises interesting questions.

Social Media Bookmark Request

If you have a del.icio.us  account - please email me  at  david_dalka4gsb  at  yahoo.com - I need a favor. Thank you in advance!

Wordcamp 2007 Future State Wishlist for WordPress 2.3

The 2nd annual Wordcamp, a gathering of WordPress users, will take place this weekend in San Francisco! The agenda looks quite interesting and I wish I could be there amongst some of the speakers which I count as friends, not blithering idiot blog readers. It’s awesome that every speaker is a WordPress user! I hope some folks will come here and post live stream URL’s Saturday morning so folks can tune in.

It’s also interesting to note that Google blog search shows 583 posts on this while Technorati shows 541. You might want to check out my post on “The Death of Blog Search” and politely encourage Mr. Matt Cutts to put the blog search on the home page of Google. :D

I do think the conference falls short on what is truly needed - a long, heart to heart conversation about he overall health of WordPress platform and it’s future direction and stability, driven more by usability and stability needs than it is at present.

So without further delay I say hello to my fellow WordPress users and present my Wordpress wish list for the era between now and the next Wordcamp in 2008 - I strongly encourage blogosphere discussion of the current state of self-hosted WordPress and desired future state of Wordpress.org.

Current state of self-hosted WordPress:

- Lack of stability/testing of newly released versions - over the past year, see Wordpress (version 2.0.6) and plugins see Podpress (version 7.7) have been released to the user community that broke feedburner feeds.

- Lack of testing of security in new Wordpress versions - See WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2

- Constant changes in Wordpress’ core structure are frequently not backward compatible with old plugins. This often causes immediate and time consuming break downs and make upgrading Wordpress a major chore instead of the low maintenance joy that it should be. (I’m presently running Wordpress 2.1.3 because Podpress apparently has several conflicts with Wordpress version 2.2.1 in an effort to prevent this)

Proposed self-hosted Wordpress User Bill of Rights:

- As a WordPress self-hosted user we both respect and understand your time is valuable and that you deserve to have a low maintenance experience when installing plugins or upgrading versions and that the WordPress open source community should prioritize changes based on user suggestions based on functionality.

- Users have a right to expect fully tested software before release and appreciate those efforts greatly. We realize and hope for less frequent, more stable releases are strongly preferred as more and more WordPress users utilize WordPress for mission critical functions and do not have time to debug these items.

How do I suggest we get to this desired future state and what’s on my wishlist?

- Make releasing stable versions with coordinated releases of all plugins a priority for each new release. Maybe even develop a robust testing checklist?

- Integrate popular plugins into the core functionality of WordPress to prevent the above problem. Ideally, I’d love to be able to post podcasts, videos (especially Youtube) , pictures and other media without reposts and glitches. Plugins I’d like to see integrated include Viper’s Video Tags, Podpress, Trackback Validator 0.7.1 and Feedburner Feed Replacement 2.2

- Make RSS feed compatibility - images, videos and formating an area of focus. I have one friend whose images do not consistently show up and I had a major formating problem for a long period of time due to the Podpress 7.7 feed problem of which I was not aware.

- A Wordpress dashboard allowing people to check if all plugins currently in use are safe for the latest version based on a centralized database of reports of issues.

- Make it so trackbacks are standard in all Wordpress themes.

These are my main areas of concern, I’m sure you can think of others that I may of left out, but I just wanted to post my top few items. Again, I’d like to hear from others on their desires for the future of the customer experience and advancement of Wordpress, so I’ll tag:

Bill Slawski

Cshel

Lee Odden

Aw, heck, let me tag everyone signed up for Wordcamp 2007(using the list on the official site)!!! Have a great conference and I’ll be attending in spirit! I look forward to checking in on your suggestions and conversations of these topics at Wordcamp!

Donncha O Caoimh
Matt Mullenweg
Niall Kennedy
Rachael Kalicun
Patrick Havens
Brian Oberkirch
Kyle Neath
Matthias Zeller
Lori Berkowitz
Beau Lebens
Andrew Grumet
Chris Jara
Bill Humphries
Ray Baxter
Tim Bishop
Jared Kim
Charles Stricklin
Michelle Leder
Josh Hallett
Sarah Jaquith
Joseph Scott
Bill Gram-Reefer
Glenn Kerbein
Jason Hoffman
Eric Amundson
Sara Quale
Robert Ellis
Anthony Cole
Jason Cosper
Andy Sternberg
J.J. Toothman
Hillary Hartley
Kenn Wilson
Ethan Diamond
Jennifer Firlik
Bradley Charbonneau
Debbie Foster
Matthew Batchelder
Casey Bisson
John Biehler
Min Jung Kim
Nick Gernert
Zachary Tirrell
Sally Kuhlman
Enric Teller
Greg Hartnett
jeff ubois
Denis Hiller
Jake Wasserman
Rachel Luxemburg
Eric N.
Carson Black
Kari U.
Jean Bedord
Robert Nelson
sarah browne
Jared Bangs
Debra England
Brooke Kuhlmann
Stormy knight
Abby Zimberg
Paul Stamatiou
Eleanor B
Yohannes Wijaya
Alicia Preston
Paul Bryant
Eric Toledo
Danny Howard
Ronald Heft
Stephanie Booth
Shawn Grunberger
Daniel Nowak
Harry McCracken
Andy Skelton
Mary Kolesnikova
Sean R.
Max La Riviere-Hedrick
Alex Moskalyuk
Shahriar Marachi
Dan Cameron
James Tippins
Robyn Tippins
Deena M
Scott Rosenberg
Brian Ghidinelli
Liz Kao
Susan Tenney
Jerome Chevillat
Ray Hernandez
Thomas Hardjono
Jason Cara
Natalie MacLees
Nicki Dugan
Dimitry Bentsionov
Luciano Zanardo
Anne Hill
Andrew Mager
Kristen Kenedy
Douglas Bell
Phil Freo
Michael Dorausch
Nick Topolos
Ben Wells
Nicole Hamaker
Chris Heuer
Richard Munden
Robert Parker
heather vescent
Robin Patronik
Shabd Vaid
Jason Gohlke
Bob Beaty
Enrique Gutierrez
Liz Henry
Jon Silvers
David Lin
Theo Armour
Declan Fleming
Tom Ballantyne
Judy Larkins
Mike Pilley
Tom Ransom
Mike Melanson
Daniel Brusilovsky
Michael Barbarino
Rickey Yaneza
Rafael Ebron
Bart Szyszka
Betty Walker
Paul Burd
Steven Miyakawa
Jessi Hance
Westianne Haughey
Diana Bolanos
Kevin Barrow
Jessie Stricchiola
Mike Goldman
Eric Olson
Doug Bird
Chuck Soper
Jason Deadrich
Lee White
Kat Markert
Todd Abrams
Michael Tchong
Mark My
Michael Aires
Bill Hopps
Erica OGrady
Ulysses Ronquillo
Joan C
Kathy Lane
Christopher Conlan
Evan Scheingross
Kimo Crossman
Brianna Privett
Josh Wood
Lisa Barone
Arian Haffezi
Antonia Hollander
Balentin Gonzales
Lauren Scime
Jeremy Anderson
jochen siegle erich bonnert
erich bonnert ken kurita
Lionel Mayrand
Tony Perrie
Darin Jensen
Stephan Spencer
Crystal Williams
Marianne Betterly
Jeff Hester
Kristopher Smith
dana stuart
Adam Tow
Garrett Gee
Christopher Hire
Dustin Eichler
Michael Malone
Nat Welch
Knarl Stuart
Rachelle Chase
Jeremy Wright
Aaron Brazell
Mark Jaquith
Marc Lawrence
Heidi Nyburg
Richie Greenberg
Tom Ortega
John Michael Fay
Lindsey Holm
Estelle Weyl
Chase Granberry
Tina Smith
Lisa Brewster
Justin Kelly
Calliope Gazetas
Gary Germano
Tiffany Kosolcharoen
Kay Mackenzie
Adam Helweh
Sarah Liberman
Sherri Schultz
Silver Smith
Catrina Brewton
tim tran
Stewfy Stewf
Jesse Andrews
Holly Hagen
Bob Page
Yohsuke Miki
Kingsley Joseph
Fred Davis
Gregarious Narain
Eric C.
Anthony Nemitz
John Pozadzides
Tony Adam
Maciej Mlynek
Tris Hussey
Andy Ford
Bonnie Young
Marcus Rector
Richard Olson
nicole lopez
Liz Williams
Alvin Cheung
Kevin Lingerfelt
Davide Pasqualato
Naoko McCracken
Shahar Nechmad
Michael Jaret
Mark Smallwood
Cathryn Hrudicka, Chief Imagination Officer
Michael Alderete
Christina Wodtke
Justin Lewis
Rosaline Zoey Setiawan
Scott Beale
Al Billings
Leslie Sumrall
Rochelle McCune
Ryan Sharp
Cary Miller
Craig Smith
David Spark
Mark Ristaino
Dustin Blake
Dave McClure
Christian Cabuay
Liang Jin
Amelia Bellows
Jeffrey McManus
Mark Jones
Jamie Whitaker
Brad Montgomery
Steve Spangler
Jim Meyer
Travis Wellman
David Ulevitch
Dr. David Klein
Jorunn (Jo) Klein
Karen Hanner
Jeremy Zilar
Andy Kaufman
Sean McGilvray
Colin Devroe
Rich Owings
tim habersack
maiki interi
Jason brightman
Michael Kariv
Tom Geller
Ron Johnson
Allen Lew
Gabriel Hernandez
Valli Hilaire
Thomas Roche
Bridgitte Rivers
Joe Rodriguez
Sonia Rodriguez
Byron Woods
George Yang
Philippe Alexis
Tracy Rabold
Bill Dickson
Anthony tureck
Pat Sjoholm
Daniel McKeown
Taylor Horton
Kent F.
Jessica Dryden-Cook
Sudarshan Gaikaiwari
Sharif Naas
Gregory Auld
Jenna Lane
Diego Orjuela
Joel Price
Elea Chang
James D. Cornelius
Alison Bowman
Jen-Mei Wu
Lorna Dietz
Kristopher Tate
Christopher Allen
Kim Komenich
Joyce Guan
CameraGirl
Richard Smith
Sean McBride
Stephen Danko
Brian Shih
Brendan Doms
Brendan McKenna
JP Allen
Brendan Nee
Lorelle VanFossen
Mark Riley
Lidija Davis
Demitrious Kelly
Barry Abrahamson
Nikolay Bachiyski
Matt Thomas
Lloyd Budd
Julia Budd
Liz Danzico
Maya Desai
Edison Guerra
Ryan Boren
Inna Boren
Toni Schneider
Michael Adams
Raanan Bar-Cohen
Ryan Park
Grace Shulner
Orion Star
Erin Wiegand
Dan Tentler
Alex Shiels
Martyn Davis
Michael Cummings
Ben Metcalfe
Derek DeMarco
susan conerly
Matt Nudelman
Elisa M Welch
Randy Stewart
Eddie Kay
Kurt Oeler
yvonne deir
Winson Shuen
aaron wall
Valerie Crowell
John Dunbar
Daniel Ciomek
Seth Blank
J. Key Lim
Sarah Mattern
Brian Shields
Brian Williams
Ryan Kennedy
Julie Nelson
Matt Cutts
Harald Rudell
Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Techcocktail 5 John Barleycorn Wrigleyville Pictures

It was great to see everyone last week at Techcocktail 5 in Chicago. Michael Carruth from Digital Bootcamp sent me some really cool pictures of me with Chris Hill from Perkspot (first picture) and Aza Raskin from Humanized so I thought I’d share them with you. Big thanks to Dan Ushman from Midphase Web Hosting for genorously sponsoring both this event and the recent Barcamp Chicago where Matt McCall recently spoke on venture capital tips.

See you around town sometime soon!

Post an MBA Alumni Job or Career Posting

Why post that experienced level Top 10 MBA business school or retained search opportunity to the masses when you could contact already well connected innovative thought leaders in Internet, search engines, mobile commerce, investment management, private equity and venture capital directly via the blogosphere?

My contact info is in the Bio page. Thanks for dropping by via your search engine of choice.

iphone Mash Up

Willitblend.com shows the ultimate iphone mash up!

Oddly the iphone + Blendtec blender on eBay is selling for above retail of both items new. People will buy the strangest things.

My Facebook Inbox is Down

I just got this message on Facebook with this mispelling…

We’re sorry, but your inbox is temporarily unavailible while we do some routine maintenance.
It shouldn’t take long, so please try again in a few minutes.

Notice the spelling, here’s a screen print. Is this what a $6 Billion dollar spelling error looks like? ;)

Mobile Phones Causing Memory Loss?

According to an article in the Telegraph that seems to be the case. It’s thought provoking to ponder these effects on non-usage, much like how some people who have never learned how to do math manually as well. The article stated:

Professor Ian Robertson, a neuropsychology expert based at Trinity College Dublin who carried out the study, said: “People have more to remember these days, and they are relying on technology for their memory.

“But the less you use of your memory, the poorer it becomes. This may be reflected in the survey findings which show that the over 50s who grew up committing more to memory report better performance in many areas than those under 30 who are heavily reliant on technology to act as their day to day aide memoir.”

Professor Roberston, who oversaw the research to mark the launch of Puzzler Brain Trainer Magazine, said that a series of five simple exercises a day can help to increase memory capacity.

As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes.

Medio Systems Names Robert P Lilleness Chief Operating Officer

As per this press release, Medio Systems named Robert P. Lilleness Chief Operating Officer this month.

It’s notable to me  in that he has no previous direct search or advertising experience.

His ownership of Smarthome is certainly an interesting wrinkle. Perhaps Medio sees a potential revenue model in providing services to control devices in your home from the mobile phone someday?

Jason Spero of Admob Interviewed

Saw this brief interview of Jason Spero of Admob here.

It would be interesting to interview Admob CEO Omar Hamoui sometime soon on the state of mobile advertising and mobile ad networks.

Marc Freedman’s Linkedin Question

Wow. Marc really lays out what he thinks about the current state of Linkedin:

1) NO SERVICE.

2) BUSINESS MEMBER? – STILL NO SERVICE.

3) BAD DESIGN.

4) RELEVANCY.

A little bit too harsh perhaps, but I’ll I’d add some constructive suggestions to his list:

A) Data cleansing - Linkedin should make it a priority to combine duplicate accounts as they are disrespectful to a user when they are forced to view and interact with dead accounts. They should also make the last login date viewable for the same reason.

B) Explain and put focus on the value of endorsements and competencies over company brands and job titles and prioritize them accordingly. I was at a dinner party recently and overheard a woman say “those endorsements don’t mean anything who knows who wrote that stuff.” Linkedin has failed to promote what I thought was it’s most valuable asset and make it a driver of usage, this is unfortunate.

Linkedin needs to take drastic action to improve it’s customer service and data quality. They should also leverage it’s most valuable assets like endorsements of former co-workers more wisely amongst users who do not currently utilize them.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Files Lawsuit Against Google

There was an interesting story in Friday’s Financial Times about a lawsuit against Google in Australia by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The case, brought in federal court in Sydney, was prompted by adverts that were placed on Google by Trading Post Australia, an automotive dealer also named in the suit.

The regulatory body said that, among other things, it was seeking an order “restraining Google from publishing search results that do not expressly distinguish advertisements from organic search results”.

The issue of advertisements being unclear from organic results has been passionately debated from time to time. This is the last study I’ve seen on the issue.

Time will tell how this turns out.

Thank You For Your Comments on Marketing and Search News

Drew McLellan recently reached a comment milestone and linked out to those participants in a post thanking them for making his blog a success. Comments are the lifeblood of a blog. It’s why I have the recent comments prominently displayed in the top right corner of this blog now. Since I just reached 500 comments and trackbacks (the number of links below is less due to the frequent comment leavers!!!), I’m celebrating your contributions! Thank you to all!!!

Without further delay here are the comments that left URL addresses or made pingbacks - I think I removed the duplicates:
:: jozjozjoz ::
365questions.org
Aaron Brazell
Abe Olandres
Adam Hertz
Adam Lasnik
adrian
Agerhart
Alan Wilensky
Alexandre
An ongoing Press Release
anatol
Andrew
Andy Beal
Angela Vargo
annieo
Atari
Cartoon Barry Blog
Barry Schwartz - Search Engine Roundtable
Bill Hanekamp
Bill Slawski
Blogging Pro
BlogSchmog
Blueheart Blossip
blyberg
Brian
Brian Ray
Brian’s Business Blog
Brown Baron
Bryan Eisenberg
BusinessBlogWire
byron
Carl Bromley
Carolyn Shelby
Chaespot
Charlotte Web Design
Chris Garrett
Chris Messina
chris williams
Comcasticed
Craig Smith
Dakars
Dan
Dan Schawbel
Dana Todd
Daniel Sitter
Dave Pasternack
Dave Van de Walle
Me in Chicago
David Sifry
China Search Marketing Tour
David Temple
Dawn Douglass
Digged Stories
discreet_chaos
Don MacAskill
dwlt
e5k
Easton Ellsworth
Ed French
Ed Kohler
Ed Kohler
El Cable
Elaine Vigneault
Eli Sand
EveryDigg
Famous Quotes - Famous Sayings
Florchakh
For once and for all!
Forever Geek
Frank Gruber
Garrett French
Geeky Housewife
gl hoffman
Glenn Sheiner
guahaha!
Guy
Henri Duong
Hiten Shah
Ian Kennedy
Bill Slawski
Inside the Mind of an Internet Marketer
Internet Marketing Monitor
Internetno
Ivan Minic
Jakob
Jason Alba
Jason Bartholme
Jason Jacobsohn
Jeff Barson
jennifer jones
Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremy Zawodny
Jim Santo
Joe C
Joel Lemieux
John
John
John Carcutt
johno
Jonathan-C. Phillips
Joost
JR
K T Cat
Karl Long
Kathie Thomas
Kathy Sierra
Kevin Dugan
Kevin Lee
Kevin Makice
Kris Kolodziej
Kyle Korleski
Kyle Libra
Lake Neuron
Lawrence Lugar
Lee Odden
Life Rocks ! 2.0
Liz Strauss
Lorelle
Loren Baker
lucas josh
Manataseosolutions
Marketing Strategy Innovation Blog
Mathpoints
Matt Keegan
Mexico501
Michael Arrington
Michael’s Views
michaelzimmer.org
Mike Maddaloni
Mikerochip
ModernMagellans
Nancy
Nashville SEO
Nate Koechley
Neil Patel
Netpaths
News Doggy
Newstons
Next Google CEO
Nice
Nick Chandler
Nicki Dugan
Not So Relevant
Nunsuni
Office-Ninja.net
OFlaherty
Ordinary Folk
paisley
Pamela
parks »
Pascal Van Hecke
Pat Phelan
Patrick Schaber
Perfect Blogger
Pete Cashmore
Pete Prestipino
Peter Harkins
Philip Tadros
pigduck.com
PR meets the WWW
Problogger
ProfitPapers
Project Syndicate
Ranking Konzept
Reality Me » Today’s Political Video
RichardatDELL
Robyn Tippins
rod/techfold.com
Ryan M
Robert Scoble
SEA Expert NL
Sean
Search Engine Land
Search Engine People
Sebastian Moser
SELaplana
Senior Citizen Gets Comcasticed!
SensibleWords
shel israel
Shoemoney
Showeb2.0
SirNuke
SMSWorld.
spacecowboy ian
Steven
Sumit Chachra
Takuya
TechCrunch en francais
TechFold
Technology Evangelist
TechTxt.Org
The Article Writer
Chris Dinges
The Wannabe Venture Capitalist
TheBizofKnowledge
thespaceopera
TheVanBlog
Tilak
Tom Shelley
tom sherman
Toma e Embrulha
University Update
Vidize.com
Weblog Tools Collection
WebProNews
Website Magazine
Wendy Piersall
Whoisandrewwee
Wiglaf
WildBlueSkies
William C. Spaulding
WindyBits
techtagg.com
Xbil
Year Zero at (((withoutsound)))
ymarketing
Zeppelin Media Blog

Unethical Hiring Practices: Job Search Sites Serve Up Ads With No Intent to Hire US Workers

James Carlini wrote an article on Hiring Practices: More Talent Often on the Street Than at Many Companies outlining the sleazy practices of these lawyers he mentions in the article and on the Youtube video he mentions on his site. A good reform would bring transparency to this process and the real harm it brings to people and our economy as a whole. It’s time to start considering how to stop this type of nonsense and go back to conversation about hiring the most qualified worker with quality as a priority.

Chicago’s Michael Carruth Launches What If List Blog…

Michael Carruth, owner of Chicago-based Digital Bootcamp, launched a new blog today.

It’s called the What If List and I must say I’m quite jealous of the broadness of the subject with the right amount of specificity to make a theme.

Good luck Michael!!!

The Death of Blog Search

Death of the A-list blogger? Not exactly. Is blog search currently on life support? Yes. Does this affect blog traffic? Yes. Is anyone analyzing this situation holistically? Uncertain.

Over the past several months:

1) Technorati has “redesigned” in such a way that other content, especially mainstream media content has become more prominent.

2) Sphere has done much the same thing and it’s widgets seem to favor mainstream media content.

3) Live.com and Yahoo! don’t currently have blog search at all.

4) Ask.com blog search is on the homepage but few know about it.

5) As written previously, Google has a decent blog search but has not yet put blog search on the home page.

Based on the increase in traffic when Google moved Video to the front page, I firmly believe that a change to Google’s home page to include blog search would yield an immediate increase in blog traffic - regardless of social network sites.

Is Google on the side of the mainstream media or the average blogger? Time will tell by their action or lack thereof. Can we revive blog search?

keep looking »