As Technorati – the pioneer in blog search – expands to focus on being an advertising network, Google is focusing on improving its blog search. Google this week launched a new blog home page so people can “browse and discover the most interesting stories in the blogosphere… Grouping them in clusters lets you see the best posts on a story or get a variety of perspectives,” according to Google Blogs.
In this interview, prior to Google’s new blog destination site, I asked Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra if Technorati was better than Google Blogs, and why. “We’re quite different,” he said, adding that Technorati has improved its search significantly in the last year. Technorati completely overhauled the search infrastructure, making the search speed time 2.5 times faster than last year, he said.
Additionally, “search will be more prominent than it’s ever been,” he said, hinting at technology changes this fall that will dramatically enhance the search experience. “We’ve re-dedicated ourselves to search.” Technorati is also trying to do a better job highlighting the voices of authority across the blogosphere. Recently, Technorati launched its “State of the Blogosphere” report.
What about Twitter as a search engine? Do you see it as a competitor? I asked.
“I’m a big fan,” he said, suggesting that people will want to be able to search for Tweets and 500-word essays on blog posts.
Richard and I spent much of the conversation also discussing Technorati’s two-pronged strategy of building out an ad network under Technorati Media and pursuing an improved blog search platform with an automated ad platform under Technorati.com. The automated ad platform is not designed to compete with Google. “I would never want to compete with Google,” he said. “We’re not going to do keyword advertising.”
Richard also talks about the business model behind the ad network, which already includes 30 to 40 sites.
Richard shares a lot in this third-part interview. So, I won’t give it all away.
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