6 ms·

Show HN: a blog search engine

27 points by chris_l 14y ago

micheljansen 14y ago
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 :)
- chris_l 14y ago
  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.
solarflair 14y ago
What advantages does Soto Search offer over Google Blogsearch (http://www.google.com/blogsearch http://www.google.com/blogsearch) or Icerocket (http://www.icerocket.com/ http://www.icerocket.com/)?
- chris_l 14y ago
  Well to be honest we currently lack distinctive features, we're hoping to learn what users want and add that in the coming weeks...
- Gormo 14y ago
  Or, for that matter, Technorati (http://www.technorati.com http://www.technorati.com), which I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned so far in this thread.
hotdox 14y ago
some critics: http://sotosearch.com/search?query=android&ordering=best 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
- chris_l 14y ago
  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.
tannerc 14y ago
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 I did a search for "creativity" and got a slew of outdated (~22 days) results.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.
- chris_l 14y ago
  The "best match" ranking does not take time into account, but if you choose "newest first" that is the main criterion.
orangethirty 14y ago
Stack?
sfard 14y ago
Nice. Though, I agree with others that an explanation would kind of be helpful. Also since you're going with the minimalist approach, maybe make everything a bit bigger? Are you just searching within a subset of domains? If so, may I shamelessly recommend adding http://throwww.com http://throwww.com to the list?
dakimov 14y ago
Did not work for me at all. Just keeps showing the spinning search indicator. I suspect Google Blog Search is about 1e+6 times more elaborate, so hardly there are any perspectives. Kudos for doing something anyway.
brador 14y ago
Use cases?
onlyup 14y ago
Honestly, the results are terrible.

27 points by chris_l 14y ago

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 :)

chris_l 14y ago
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.

solarflair 14y ago

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

chris_l 14y ago
Well to be honest we currently lack distinctive features, we're hoping to learn what users want and add that in the coming weeks...
Gormo 14y ago
Or, for that matter, Technorati (http://www.technorati.com http://www.technorati.com), which I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned so far in this thread.

hotdox 14y ago

some critics: http://sotosearch.com/search?query=android&ordering=best 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

chris_l 14y ago
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.

tannerc 14y ago

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.

chris_l 14y ago
The "best match" ranking does not take time into account, but if you choose "newest first" that is the main criterion.

orangethirty 14y ago

Stack?

sfard 14y ago

Nice. Though, I agree with others that an explanation would kind of be helpful. Also since you're going with the minimalist approach, maybe make everything a bit bigger? Are you just searching within a subset of domains? If so, may I shamelessly recommend adding http://throwww.com http://throwww.com to the list?

dakimov 14y ago

Did not work for me at all. Just keeps showing the spinning search indicator. I suspect Google Blog Search is about 1e+6 times more elaborate, so hardly there are any perspectives. Kudos for doing something anyway.

brador 14y ago

Use cases?

onlyup 14y ago

Honestly, the results are terrible.