If you are looking for a new blog to follow or want to know what people are chatting about in cyberspace, then Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ BlogPulse can help you to get started in your search. BlogPulse operates not only as a blog search engine, but also tracks blog subject matter to determine what, if any, trends exist in blog entries.
According to BlogPulse, there are almost 40 million blogs, with over 1.3 million blog entries on a typical day. That would be a lot of information for the internet searcher to comb through, so luckily BlogPulse does the work for you. Let’s say that you’re looking to find someone who is blogging about the TV show Grey’s Anatomy. You simply type in the show’s name on BlogPulse’s “Search the Blogosphere” feature and you’ll see all of the recent blogs posted on the topic, with the most recent blogs shown first. You’ll get to see some of the blog content, so you can determine whether or not this is a blog that you would want to read further, and you’ll also get a link to the blog itself, so you can visit it immediately if you want. This is an easy way for you to find people who are talking about the topics that you want to talk about. If you want to find blogs over a specific time period, then you can complete an “Advanced Search,” specifying the dates that you are looking for. You can also search to see which blogs are linked to a particular website by completing a “Link Search,” which can be helpful to those curious about how far their reach is on the internet.
If you’re more interested in finding current blog topic trends, then you can use BlogPulse’s “Trend Search” tool. You can type in up to three topics at once and look at trends over a 1 to 6 month time period. Interestingly, over the two month period that I looked at, more people were talking about Iraq than Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson combined. (Are bloggers more sophisticated than the general population? We’ll have leave that question to the experts.)
For those who are looking for an overall picture of the blogosphere, BlogPulse also provides lists regarding the most popular blogs and blog postings, as well as the most mentioned people and phrases contained in blogs. There is also a beta tool which allows you to see a profile on a specific blog, which can help bloggers to determine how popular their blog is in comparison with others. Overall, BlogPulse is a useful tool for those looking to find information about what is going on in the blogosphere.
For more information about BlogPulse, you can visit their website at:
http://www.blogpulse.com/index
