Beyond blog search
It seems Internet search market is structuring bits by bits. As Internet users become more and more aware they notice the Big general-interest search engines do not bring more a totally satisfying search experience.
Thus, according to the feedback we get everyday the Big 5 are criticized for the:
- plethora (excess) of information slowing down the search process,
- mixing of all kind of sources within the same results page (static web pages, expired pages, commercial results),
- ranking based on popularity or authority which promotes only the best known and influential sources at the expense of the information topicality,
- massive inclusion of trusted feeds among the organic or natural results. Trusted feeds are commercial links provided by online merchants,
- the need to jump to to hidden or not clearly visible parts of the website in order to access search modules on targeted content,
- not to mention privacy issues related to the fact that some Big search engines tend to store their users’ personal data and maybe exploit them for commercial purpose.
Of course, Big search engines have a financial and marketing power which allow them to keep their leadership. They can be ubiquitous and over-exposed to media. However, it becomes now clear that the users express new needs and wants. Some Internet users do not hesitate now to use several seach engines to get a complete and less narrow-minded vision of their search operations.
This new generation of specialized search engines proposes a real alternative to the users or at least a synergy with leading brands.
There are loads of new services which you can easily find in Web 2.0 business information sites like TechCrunch or AltSearchEngines, for example.
Some search engines specialize themselves exclusively in blogs. Technorati, Icerocket, Sphere, etc. are among them. There are many others.
Hence, the question arising now is:
Is it sufficient to specialize exclusively on blog search?
Blogdimension.com asked itself such a question ever since the service was launched in “alpha” mode in October 2005. Initially the service was focused on the French speaking blogosphere. But, this positioning appeared to be too restrictive.
In a global economy one can not build a business model based solely on a language or a country. Most of search engines get their revenues from online advertising. In order the service to be profitable it needs to develop an extensive audience and a huge trafic volume (at least from one to three million pageviews per month for a small company).
The only option to create such a volume except for hyper popular topics (like real estate, listings, travel, IT, etc.) is to go international. To think global right from the beginning. Challenges are enormous. It is not only a matter of translation into other languages but also of adapting the service to the local culture and usage. Therefore, it requires a real or virtual marketing presence.
The other important aspect to bear in mind is that blogs are just part of a bigger web called Web 2.0. Yet, the notion of Web 2.0 is still unclear to most of the public at large. Web 2.0 comprises all dynamic and high updating rate content among which we can list the blogs, forums and online news feeds but also new types of user-generated content or commented upon by the users: microblogs (Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr and now the trendy FriendFeed), tagged images, audio files and podcasts and of course hundreds of million of online videos published by the users directly via online video sharing services.
Blogdimension understood quite early it must go well beyond pure blog search. That’s why we designed a service allowing to search directly into the heart of this new web called Web 2.0 in general.
Actually, inspired by a concept that pervades more and more in North America we prefer to talk about “live web” instead of the arcane “Web 2.0″.
So, beyond blog search, Blogdimension proposes its users a set of tools allowing them to find a wide variety of new generation content originating from “live web” which is not yet or not so much delivered by the big incumbent search systems. Live web is characterized by the following aspects:
- high frequency update,
- subjective, reflecting viewpoints and opinion,
- multimedia (images, podcasts, videos),
- available for consultation on mobile devices.
All this kind of content is made available thanks to the magic of a technique called RSS and symbolized by the 
logo.
Your are invited to test Blogdimension and carry out a true 360° and panoramic search experience… To search the huge Web not only on the surface but also in depth.
Welcome to Blogdimension and get ready to discover the web in its fourth dimension.
Blogdimension is growing fast. We are still at the beginning. New cool functions and features will be released soon. “BD” has already versions in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and the new 2.5 currently in progress will also be available in Portuguese, Russian and Arab.
Stay tuned!
Thanks for you support.
The Team
