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October 14, 2005
Yahoo's Blogging Dilemma
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
Yahoo has begun offering some blogging results on its News search page. This, they think, puts them a step ahead of Google, which isolates blog results caught in the RSS net to a separate blogsearch page. (Both sites are in beta.)
Yahoo thinks this puts them ahead of Google in an important functionality. I think the folks at Yahoo would actually use a word like functionality.
But it does them little good (or this is barely alpha software):
- Most blogs aren't indexed. This blog isn't indexed in Yahoo News.
- No more than the first page of results are really available in any search that comes up with blogs. I got timed-out repeatedly trying to get past the first page of results today.
- Blog results are segregated to the right of the news results. I think this will continue.
When Yahoo first got into offering a news page (following Google), one of the things they did was to tie-up "alliances" with major media. I don't know how much money is changing hands, but any agreement with, say, the New York Times would be sure to isolate the blogosphere.
Except, that is, for blogs owned by major media. My other blog (well one of them) is clearly available at Yahoo News, when you do a news search under my name. (Corante itself draws no hits, and I can't get behind the first page of results to see if, say, this item will be listed there.)
This is the problem for search engines in treating with big media. Big media's first demand will be to isolate, demean, or ignore little media. And you can't do that as a search engine. You do that and you're discriminating. Internet users route around discrimination, by ignoring you.
Which I'll go back to doing now, in the case of Yahoo News.
Comments (3)
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Alex Moskalyuk on October 15, 2005 03:17 AM writes...
Mmm, I lost your train of thought right here - "I don't know how much money is changing hands, but any agreement with, say, the New York Times would be sure to isolate the blogosphere."
So if Yahoo! News strikes a deal to publish NYT, that would suddenly make blog search unavailable? But they already republish AP, Reuters, USA Today and others, and still have blog entries up and running.
Notice that (a) News and Search are run by two completely different divisions and (b) it's News Search with Blogs added for context.
By excluding link-blogs with nothing but one-sentence links back to NYT is Yahoo! discriminating "the little media" or is it doing a better service to its readers, who could care less about "Bush sucks" type of post and would prefer better analytical reading?
Permalink to Comment2. kob on October 15, 2005 10:38 AM writes...
You can find a better big media blog integration example at the Washington Post. On stories it generates the newspaper will link - with the help of Technorati -- blogs commenting on that story.
This adds real value to its local readership and local bloggers in particular
All it takes is a quick scan of the Post to find local blogs -- or national blogs -- commenting on a story in that newspaper.
Unlike Yahoo, The Post doesn't appear to exclude blogs with limited readership. The linking is by time of publishing, not link rank. That's really nice if you're a new local blog with maybe 20-40 unique visitors a day. All of a sudden, your blog is appearing in a Major Metro newspaper and potentially seen by new readers.
Yahoo is just too big. Its linking system favors well established blogs, which, by their own right are becoming the main stream media of the blogging world, with dreams of Weblogs-like cash outs.
The future of blogging is on the local level. It's there where will you find the new and interesting voices, fresh perspectives and expirementation. The big blogs have started selling out.
Permalink to Comment3. Russell Shaw on October 17, 2005 02:38 AM writes...
Here's the quick answer.
Yahoo's blog search and news tools are all about alliances. Searchability is second.
Google's blog search is too unrefined and "preemie" to be comprehensive. Plus, as I have been told, as with ZDnet, they don't allow for double-dipping of News sites in their blog search. Shortsighted, but that is their policy.
The dedicated blog search utilities are more comprehensive. I would go with Feedster and Ice Rocket. Technorati, on the other hand, seems to have problems differentiating accurate results with those pulled from "splogs" spam blogs that bot legitimate blogs in order to generate phantom topic-specific "blogs" with Google AdWords income capability.
Another key issue: pinging tools in blog authoring utilities are not as syncopated with blog search engines as one would hope to believe.
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