Google Blog Search has just added a few features that users of other Google services are likely familiar with. First, you can now subscribe to any topic via RSS or Atom, like you already can do in Google News. This means every time there’s a new story in the “Technology” category, or more specifically a search term like“social media” you can get that update pushed to your RSS reader. There’s also a new iGoogle gadget if you’d rather access the topic or search term via iGoogle. The Google Blog Search homepage now also features a “Hot Queries,” which, is similar to Google Hot Trends . This shows what searches are currently hot in Blog Search, as opposed to Google Trends, which shows what’s hot in the broader search engine. That said, both lists appear to be fairly similar, though Blog Search only shows a top ten

at this point. There’s also a new “Latest Posts” feature on the homepage that simply lists new posts that Blog Search has picked up. It’s a nice update, but one that makes me wonder how much utility separate blog search really has at this point. Google News already includes plenty of blogs in its database (there are now more than 25,000 sources in total), and as evidenced by the similarities in Google’s two different trend lists, users are generally searching for the same things at any given point in time. In other words, blog search might be filling a need that no longer exists. Are you still using blog search engines regularly? Share your thoughts in the comments. Reviews: Google Tags: blogging , Google , google blog search , Search

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Google Blog Search Gets More Like Other Google Search Tools