Thing 3: Searching Blogs

I've spent some time comparing Technorati with Google Blog Search. I really thought I was going to like Technorati more; but that is not the case. I searched for "library 2.0" in both as a phrase. Google Blog Search resulted in more hits and it was easier to sort the results chronologically. I looks like Technorati sorted the blog entries from newest to oldest automatically. However, Technorati retrieved far fewer results and newest entry was not as new as what Google found. Recency is not super important to me with this particular topic; but I did like seeing the greater number of results in Google's search. I actually found a NEFLIN 23 Things participant's blog on the first page of the Google results, so that was interesting.
For a second round of searching, I tried out various keywords related to libraries and the utilization of chat/IM tools for reference interaction, etc. Google retrieved better results - they were much more on-target. Technorati seemed to sort results differently. Perhaps they look the popularity of blogs and weigh that when displaying the results because a lot of the first results where not on the topic of chat/IM tools in libraries but simply mentioned both the word library and some chat/IM technology. Of course, this is what a search should do: look for instances of keywords together; but it is strange that many of the results in Technorati where, overall, off-topic.
In the end, though, I don't think I would use blog search tools that often. Why? Because I would simply use Google or Yahoo to search everything, not just blogs. I am after the best information when performing a search. I don't know if I would ever want to limit my searching to blogs - maybe if the source for my information explicitly had to be a blog. I don't know if that would ever happen. Perhaps these blog searching tools are for individuals interested in blogs on another level than just information retrievel. You know, something like "fun" and "spare time" - whatever those are!!!