Top 3 Features missing from Google Blog Search?
Douglas Karr
I don’t utilize Google Blog Search. The reason is because Google Blog Search is an afterthought, not a tool for preparation. In other words, I have to decide on what I want to research before I can search for it. For bloggers that are looking for inspiration, you won’t find it here! With that in mind, here are the top 3 features missing from Google Blog Search:
- Keyword analysis. What’s being talked about in the last minute, hour, day, week, etcetera?
- Search analysis. What’s being searched for in the last minute, hour, day, week, etcetera?
- Geographic analysis. What’s being searched for and where?
When I visited Google a couple of years ago, they had some cool screens at each entry point into the campus that provided real-time queries being executed. They also had a high-def screen with the globe with representations of the number of queries by language around the world. It was fascinating to look at (my theory was that it wasn’t really plugged in anywhere but it was shiny and cool, and 3d so it caught every visitors’ eyes with ‘oohs’ and aahs’).
If you could really capture all those stats in a cool HDTV, then you can surely put an application out there for us to look at. It would be absolutely fascinating to see what people are writing and searching on and where.
I love Google. I know Google. But Google, you’re no Technorati. 
PS: Someone from Technorati please let me know what the “Daily Allotment of API Calls” is? You guys are killing me and it’s no where on your site! I have to develop an entire application around caching the request server-side so I don’t hit the allotment… whatever that allotment may be… argh!
API calls are limited to 500 day. I tried your widget code, that’s really cool! The usage I would recommend is to run it out of cron(1) once per day and publish it to a static javascript file you can include. For instance, an example setup I’d imagine is one where the widget gets published everyday at 1 a.m. like so:
0 1 * * * /usr/local/bin/php /home/dkarr/web/rank_widget.php > /usr/local/apache/htdocs/js/rank_widget.js
(specific paths are made up but hopefully that provides a good starting point)
In general, scaling the your API usage and scaling your website traffic should be decoupled
Hope that helps,
-Ian
Yes, I’m already developing version 2 where the user can cache the output and set an expiration… perhaps 4 hours = 5 calls per day… instead of 500
As well, I’m building it into a WordPress widget. I may also expand it into different formats… like a tag, badget, etc.
You folks should really put the API call threshold out on your Developer Community so folks know about it.
Appreciate the guidance,
Doug