How To Find High Quality Blogs

April 22nd, 2008 by admin

In recent discussions a number of otherwise highly computer-literate people have mentioned how they haven’t got a clue how to find good-quality blogs on topics of interest to them.

This is a real shame because I am a keen blogger and also a keen visitor of other blogs. I enjoy visiting them on a regular basis, I enjoy getting to know the characters who write them and I find I can learn a lot from them to boot.

Finding blogs actually isn’t too hard.

They do, of course, appear in normal search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN though they appear alongside normal web sites, PDF files and so on.

If you’re looking specifically for blogs, we need to use some slightly different tools.

Firstly we can include words in our standard search engines such as “blog” so we search for “gardening blog” rather than just gardening which will likely turn up a few.

But there are numerous search engines designed specifically (and only) for blogs.

Generally the blogs they list have been manually verified at some point in the past so are reasonable quality.

My own two favorite blog search engines of all though are Technorati and Google’s Blog Search.

In my experience both of these bring uo the highest quality results.

Note that Technorati will allow you to search for either individual posts *or* whole blogs. It’s up to you which option you choose. I personally tend to search for blogs if I’m searching for a general word or phrase (”computers”, “cell phones”, “cookery”) and blog posts when I’m doing a more indept search (”best places to stay in Morocco”, “is Windows Vista any good?”).

Lastly, don’t forget that thanks to bloggers, linking is alive and well.

A good number of the dozen or so blogs I visit on a regular basis were found because another blog linked them. Many blogs now have a links section or what is commonly known as a “blogroll” (simply a list of related blogs the blogger themselves like to visit) so follow some links and get exploring