Great Google Technique for Searching Blogs & To Locate Blogs

Since I have been getting into blogs for a little over 1 year, I was wondering if there was a way to locate other blogs and contributors on topics that interest me.

At the top of every Blogger page, there is a search box that is available.

This box may work well either with the single blog or other blogs located on Google's network of databases (remember that Google owns Blogger).

But what if you wanted to search for blogs all over the internet?

You can find blogs worldwide by putting the following line into the Google search box:

"my blog"

or use either the following lines:

"this blog"

"our blog"

I remembered a tip from a book entitled Google Hacks that I bought several months ago and have been using it with successful results.

Imagine that the following line is what you are going to enter into the search box on Google's home page:

"whatever phrase I am looking for" site:blogspot.com

or

For example, to find any blog entries that I have created or have been mentioned on Blogger.com, just put the following line into the Google search box:

"roney smith" site:blogspot.com

Put any phrases that may be most often used within quotation marks.

The following would work as well, but it will have additional blogs that have both words roney and smith included:

roney smith site:blogspot.com

The ending part of the search entry (site:blogspot.com) restricts the search to blogs using Blogger.com.

The ending part can be changed to any other domain that has blogs stored there.

For example, MSN has a service for blogs entitled MSN Spaces and they are using the folder directory naming system like:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/member_name

To search MSN Spaces, you would put the following line within the Google search box:

"whatever phrase I am looking for" site:spaces.msn.com

Another good way is to eliminate any words that may get thrown into the search results with the minus sign before the word.

For example, the following search would locate blogs talking about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Blogger.com:

"peanut butter" jelly, (sandwich OR sandwiches) site:blogger.com

But if I wanted to find blogs that only mentioned peanut butter, I would use the following search entry:

"peanut butter" -jelly, (sandwich OR sandwiches) site:blogger.com

or

"peanut butter" -jelly site:blogger.com

Searching without peanut butter being placed in quotes would turn up many more search results but without the specific focus on the item being searched for.

Once you locate a blog of interest, you can search throughout the blog itself for any past blog entries that may interest you.

For example, to locate blog entries that I have mentioned my own daughters and/or wife on this blog you are reading (remember that I do have several blogs based around different topics and interests), one could use the search entries:

(daughter* OR wife), site:roneysmith.blogspot.com

The part daughter* searches for the words both daughter and daughters.

The part site:roneysmith.blogspot.com searches only this current blog.

Using the search techniques above, you can quickly locate and monitor the internet on topics that interests you.

It is definitely one way to quickly find out any developing news, current events, gossip, rumors, or tips possibly being shared within a small internet audience.

You will indeed find some interesting people online as well as people sharing thoughts about things that you would have never imagined or found otherwise.

Peace!