We will define "works" as: gives me an RSS feed of timely references to or links to my sites; omits links that are months or years old; and is not brimming with spam. (Google Blog Search fails on all three of these.)
Referer snooping
Dear Lazyweb, is there a service like Google Blog Search but that actually works?
Tags: firstperson, lazyweb, meta
16 Responses:
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Have you tried Google Alerts? http://www.google.com/alerts
Probably has some of the (lack of) functionality of the blog searcher, but depending on what you have turned on it does a good job of letting me know when friends are in the news.
The problem is, for this kind of search, it is ridiculously busted.
A) Not an RSS feed, B) requires you to log in first, which is BS, and C) is just an interface to Google Blog Search anyway. So, no, utter fail.
Google Alerts gives me an RSS feed, but I'm alerting on mentions of my name, which I guess isn't what you want.
Really? Wow, the things the internet can do these days. Does Kibo know about this?
C) Really? I use this for alerts on my name and for mentions of Grooveshark.com, and it is always timely, and never randomly alerts with references that are months old.
My Google Alerts are FILLED with spam, but mine is a spammier industry than most...
IceRocket seems much more succesful on those counts; among other things, it lets you specify a "published-on" cutoff. e.g. to see references to "DNA lounge" published in the past week: http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=blog&q=%22dna+lounge%22&rss=1&dr=2
FYI, I had to manually restore the "dr=2" parameter, which means "in the last week", apparently. It was in the search results page's URL, but the RSS link on said page omits it.
The fact that there are only 2 hits there doesn't really recommend it.
Google Blog Search works "okay" if you heavily limit it and force it to order the results properly. The Incoming Links section in your WordPress dashboard is a Google Blog Search.
But without some effort on the search query and so forth, yeah, it's pretty useless.
If you want only major mentions, you could use http://technorati.com.
No. I used to use that years ago, before it morphed into ... whatever ad-saddled nonsense it is today. Type "DNA Lounge" into it and you get one hit and even that's a mismatch. *plonk*
Blekko with /date works okay. At least, it works better than google blogsearch, icerocket, and technorati. Granted, that isn't much of a bar.
And it turns out Topsy is useful too.
http://www.twingly.com