Finding Nemo in the Blogosphere--Tools for Social Media Search

So you want to know what bloggers have to say about Taylor Hicks or The Omen? Here are the tools to take you beyond Google without the need for a lengthy swim across the Pacific Ocean of traditional search.


Editor’s note: This is not yet another Google bashing diatribe.

Let’s imagine for a moment you’re a National Spelling Bee fan interested in finding out more about the word ‘ursprache’ than just its definition. Let’s also imagine you’re more interested in seeing what the blogosphere alone has to say about it rather than wading through the almost 336,000 search results that a saunter along the Google shoreline yields.

Instead of general search gear like Google, Yahoo and MSN, there are some really good tools that make my ‘ranked short list’ for viewing what the blog/social media ecosystem has to say.

These include:

IceRocket
Google Blog Search
Gada.be
Technorati

These vertical search tools for the blogosphere each offer their own advantages in terms of speed, freshness, quality of results, and ability to filter splog. IceRocket is very fast (Google Blog Search takes a close second), Gada.be has a great interface (try typing http://rss.pundit.gada.be to take it for a test drive), and Technorati’s blog profiles and tags are quite helpful.

While vertical search isn’t all that new--the fact is most vertical search tools will not survive the harsh realities of digital natural selection—there are some very cool seashells in the Internet Ocean to make your syndication life easier when it comes to search.

Give them a try; or, perhaps you could just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…