Google Blog Search Gets an Update

Google has launched an updated Blog Search, bringing some features that should have come a while ago but also some more innovative ones. Coming after the last update in fall, which made the homepage more like a news aggregator, the new release rounds up the features with RSS/Atom feeds and a “hot news” section.

“Today we're happy to announce the launch of our most requested feature: RSS and Atom feeds. Simply click on the links under "Subscribe" in the left-hand column of the Blog Search front page to subscribe to any topic or story in any feed reader, “ Akshay Patil, software engineer, and Dylan Casey, product manager, wrote on the Official Google Blog. “We've also added two new features to the Blog Search homepage to better help you discover what people are talking about right now on the web: Hot Queries and Latest Posts.”

A new feature that most users requested, and which was also available almost on any similar site and even in Google News, is the possibility to subscribe to any category or specific search terms through an RSS/Atom feed. The feeds can be read in any RSS reader but can also be added to the iGoogle homepage as a widget.

Two new features were also added to the right-hand side of the homepage, a way for Blog Search to try its hand at real-time content, the hottest topic when it comes to search right now. In the top right corner there is the “Hot Queries” section, which lists the trending searches being made at the moment. The other one is “Latest Posts,” which, as the name suggests, lists the latest posts from some of the bigger blogs.

While these features could be very useful Google Blog Search seems to just be content with catching up with everyone else, a strategy not very common with the search giant. But even the new features added aren't perfect and some of the problems seem obvious though easy to fix, like filtering the Hot Queries and the Latest Posts to show only the content from the category the user is currently viewing.