New Search Engines Help Users Find Blogs

The race is on to become the Google of blogs.

Web logs, online diaries written and published by everyone from college students to big media companies, are being created and updated at an astonishing rate — and established search companies such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. don’t always catch them fast enough. Now, a handful of closely held upstarts such as Technorati Inc., Feedster Inc. and IceRocket.com LLC see an opportunity: Build a search engine that can track the information zipping through blogs, nearly in real time.

The new sites are gaining traction with users looking to sample what people are talking about online, from the fallout from Hurricane Katrina to silly celebrity gossip. As free tools make it easier for even the most technophobic to publish online, there’s a growing demand for services to sift through the clutter.

The new services, some of which are less than a year old, aren’t without their glitches. The technology is still evolving and companies are still looking for the best way to track and sort blogs. Some services miss large numbers of blogs, while others pull up irrelevant sites.

By VAUHINI VARA
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.

From The Wall Street Journal Online

Technorati http://www.technorati.com/

Feedster http://www.feedster.com/

IceRocket http://www.icerocket.com/

BlogPulse http://www.blogpulse.com/

Daypop http://www.daypop.com

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