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Show HN: a blog search engine

sotosearch.com

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Re: Show HN: a blog search engine

#2

Post by micheljansen »

Nice! As much as I like the minimalistic approach, I feel this need a bit more explanation. What does "blog search" mean? Does it search for blogs or within blogs? What is the definition of a blog? Which blogs does it search? How does it determine whether something is a blog or not (my blog does not seem to be included) Why would I want to specifically search blogs and not just use Google? These questions matter and should be explained by the product itself :)

Re: Show HN: a blog search engine

#3

Post by chris_l »

micheljansen wrote: post #2

Nice! As much as I like the minimalistic approach, I feel this need a bit more explanation. What does "blog search" mean? Does it search for blogs or within blogs? What is the definition of a blog? Which blogs does it search? How does it determine whether something is a blog or not (my blog does not seem to be included) Why would I want to specifically search blogs and not just use Google? These questions matter and…

Thanks for the feedback. To answer some of your questions, soto searches within blogs, using the existence of syndication feeds as the criterion. We are currently still growing the base of blogs so naturally not all are included. I'll make sure to add some documentation.

Re: Show HN: a blog search engine

#5

Post by chris_l »

solarflair wrote: post #4

What advantages does Soto Search offer over Google Blogsearch ( http://www.google.com/blogsearch ) or Icerocket ( http://www.icerocket.com/ )?

Well to be honest we currently lack distinctive features, we're hoping to learn what users want and add that in the coming weeks...

Re: Show HN: a blog search engine

#7

Post by chris_l »

hotdox wrote: post #6

some critics: http://sotosearch.com/search?query=android&ordering=best - results page is a mess of many languages, it would be better to detect language of page and user (by browser language) and use it for ranking

ok, that results page really is messy. The crawler does actually do language detection, but it isn't perfect. Soto currently only offers search in English actually.

Re: Show HN: a blog search engine

#8

Post by tannerc »

Nice start! It's great to see small initiatives like this grow.

Question: how are results being ranked? I did a search for "creativity" and got a slew of outdated (~22 days) results. Not quite what I was expecting.

Re: Show HN: a blog search engine

#9

Post by chris_l »

tannerc wrote: post #8

Nice start! It's great to see small initiatives like this grow. Question: how are results being ranked? I did a search for "creativity" and got a slew of outdated (~22 days) results. Not quite what I was expecting.

The "best match" ranking does not take time into account, but if you choose "newest first" that is the main criterion.
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