Dear Google: Fix Your Blog Search Page! (GOOG)

Jun 26, 2009

Sorry, but it's rant time.

From time to time, we hop on over to Google Blog Search in order to see which sites are linking to BusinessInsider.com, a function for which it does okay, though it's hardly spectacular.

The service has been around for awhile, though last October it relaunched as something of an aggregator (or a "Techmeme killer", blech), automatically showing which blog posts were the hottest must-reads around.

Problem is, they do a terrible job at this. Unlike Techmeme or Google's own News site, Google (GOOG) Blog Search always prominently features stale, day-old posts. Of all the times we've gone there, we've never seen a story that was fresh or relevant.

Today, if you go there, at least they have the Michael Jackson stuff featured prominently, but take a look.

The top story is way stale, and it's from film blog Cinematical (why?), and even that's only citing a TMZ report -- so before it was confirmed by other sources. The next three below it only have the story when he was rushed to the hospital, and the next one links to an angry conservative blog, which makes some kind of meta point about "Michael Jackson Farrah Iran", while calling Obama our "jihad US President." Now, what algorithm are they using that came up with these blogs as the ones that they're featuring? And again, this is on a good day, cause at least they're hitting on the Michael Jackson stuff.

There must be someone at Google whose job it is to work on this page, and if so, what are they thinking every day when they see what it has? Either do it (vaguely) right, or just go back to fixing the old search, cause the current blog aggregator is an embarrassment.