Google launched what appears to be an early beta of it’s Blog Search today. It has one Killer feature, and some noteworthy mentionables.

Metadata Search

Google aren’t exactly clear what constitutes a ‘blog, but based on the current search results it appears to be any content that is supported by an RSS feed (or any metadata for that matter).

Whilst there is bound to be some beard stroking about what should and shouldn’t be included in the search results from this particular portal, it’s obvious that as the web continues to mature, metadata will become more common.

Google’s Blog Search is, fundamentally, a metadata search that has the benefit of being integrated with the rest of the Google empire.

With this in mind and because the underlying operators have a general applicability we must really consider the capabilities of this service in relation to the main Google search, for that is where they will end up.

New Advanced Operators

The most obvious additions to the interface therefore are three new “advanced operators” which enable specific aspects of the search to be focused on. These are:

• inBlogTitle:<keyword>
• inPostTitle:<keyword>
• inPostAuthor:<name>

So for example, to find all posts that I’ve written with “slashdot” in the title, one might use this search. Or conversely, to find blogs that mention my name, other than my own blog the negative operator works too.

Date Sensitive Search

A potentially useful addition is the ability to restrict the search to a specific range of dates – however this is only possible in the advanced interface and selecting the date range uses a pretty poor and slow selection of pull-down boxes: something which a little time and imagination will solve I hope. No advanced operators are available for setting the date range either.

The current Google advanced search only uses the generalised date criteria of “Anytime, past 3 months, past 6 months, past year”. Being able to tie document searches to a specific period is useful, and may even go some way to providing part of an eternal Domesday Book, as discussed here.

Saved Searches

The killer feature of Blog Search is the fact that search results can be output using RSS and Atom formats (in addition to the familiar web page).

This makes it possible to add google searches to any software that is capable of reading RSS. For example, using Firefox, RSS search results appear as bookmarks.

It is this feature in particular that puts Blog Search in a position to compete with existing blog discovery services such as Technorati and Blogdigger.

Summary

Blog Search is a very good indicator of future improvements to Google’s main search service, and provides some useful functions today.

Overall this (once again) reflects the standard Google operating practice of getting the barest functionality to work, scaling it, and releasing it early. Google has effectively put a big enough stake in the ground that we will surely witness the erosion of any emotional ties that users might have with existing blog discovery services.