Blogs have grown in popularity along with the Internet and Internet services. Blogs are a way to express yourself on any topic and share it with the world, anonymously, professionally, etc. Unless you’re familiar with great blogging sites and communities, it can be difficult to find a blog that interests you.
Fortunately, Google has made it easy with Google Blogs. Basically, it’s all the greatness of Google dedicated to blogging! Here’s how to get started!
First, from the Google home page, click the “more” link at the top of the page, then click “Blogs.” You will be redirected to Google Blogs, where you can search for blogs or blog topics.
Of course, to start a blog search, you can simply type the keywords of your choice into the main search bar and click “Search Blogs”. You can also search the Featured Stories section for popular blog posts (directly below the search bar). There are several other features that you may be interested in.
The left sidebar contains popular categories to choose from. Click on any of these categories, such as Politics, Movies, or Sports, to see lists of Featured Stories in that category. To the right is a list of “Frequently Asked Questions” to see what others are searching for or talking about, and “Recent Posts” to see what’s just been posted.
When you do a search on Google Blogs, you’ll be redirected to a list of related blogs that typically post on that topic. Below is a list of actual blog posts that mention your particular topic. If you want a blog that you can subscribe to and read often, you probably want to check out related blogs. If you just want to read current blog posts on one topic this time, you should probably look at the list below related blogs.
If you want to find something more specific, you can click the “Advanced Blog Search” link to the right of the search bar. This will allow you to specify which blog title or author you are looking for. You can also specify the post date to display only posts within a certain range or from a certain day.
If you find a blog you’d like to subscribe to, you can often set up a subscription or email alerts with that individual blog site. However, you can set an RSS feed. This is a feature of your browser that allows you to view websites of your choice in plain text. They show only recent changes or addition to the site. This is great for blogs, because usually the only changes are a new blog post. RSS feeds are stored in your browser and you can easily check your favorite blogs from here. It doesn’t load bandwidth-hungry backgrounds, colors, images, and music, making RSS feeds ideal for those with dial-up and other slow Internet connections.
At the bottom of the results page, you’ll see some additional resources, provided by Google, if you want to stay up to date on various blog posts on a given topic:
*Email Alerts – Every time a keyword or keyword phrase appears in a blog post, you’ll receive an alert from Google notifying you of the post and providing you with a link.
*Google News: a great companion for blogs. If you can’t find a blog post about it, news articles are the next best thing. Click this link to search for the same keywords in Google News.
*Blog Search Gadget: If you have iGoogle as your home page, you can add a blog search gadget to that page. This is just one of many ways to customize your Google home page.
* Google Reader Feed – If you want to see a feed of blog posts on your favorite topic, simply add a blog search feed for those keywords to your Google Reader. Google Reader is a great way to access news and information quickly and easily without having to navigate and load dozens of different sites. It’s like a personalized and customizable internet magazine!
Thanks to the Internet service and the many tools and features available on websites like Google, finding and reading your favorite blogs is quick and easy.