Blogdimension Blog

As you know Blogdimension is preparing its new 2.5 release. We don’t want to let off the pressure on innovation. So we keep on imagining and designing new useful ideas for our ever demanding users. We owe them innovation!

So, here are three new features in preview of the next major upgrade of Blogdimension.com, the now Web 2.5 Search Engine… in a certain way.

Example of query on AltSearchEngine

• 206 link(s) to this blog
• See more from this blog
• Cached

“206 link(s) to this blog”

This feature displays the number of times let’s say ReadWriteWeb is linked to (or cited) by some other blogs. This is a very useful utility to measure your popularity within the blogosphere, of course through the prism of Blogdimension’s index! Other systems will probably give different results. So you can compare between various search engines.

Blogdimension’s “Link To” feature indicates two things:
1) How many other blogs link to your blog,
2) Who they are.

This way you can find your allies but also your ennemies… A true social and relational feature!

“See more from this blog”

This one is a bit different. It displays all the posts or articles from a same blog available in Blogdimension’s index at a given moment.

So you can have the whole history of a source at a glance within Blogdimension’s results page. Of course we deliver only the post or article title, date, author and a short summary. You are then invited to clic on the link to access directly the original article for full reading.

“Cached”

Blogdimension caches some raw text content. We usually deliver only the links. But our technology makes it possible to show some limited content of a post or article. So this is the way to read a post entirely within Blogdimension. But it is strongly recommended you read a content directly where it derives from, we mean on the original blog. A direct link to the source is provided.

We will tell you later why this “cache” function is interesting either for the bloggers (content producers) and their readers. Typically, if the distant blog is down or unaccessible, a cached version of articles or posts can provide satisfaction to the bloggers and their readers by delivering a minimalistic content (like a “spare part” content). But the key idea is that this feature will in fact boost bloggers traffic. We’ll tell you why next time.

So, if you are a bit curious about your blog network or you like to spy upon others then try these new features. May be you will learn something about yourself or the others.

PS : when using these features you might encounter some slowness. It is because such actions require more computation and resources. Just be patient (few seconds in general).

Thanks for your support.

The Team

The bloggers and their readers usually do know what are “tags clouds”. This feature visible on some websites displays a selection of the most frequently used keywords tagged (that’s why they are called “tags”) in blog posts or articles. Tags can also be the most searched for words. In general, the most popular tags appear either in the form of characters set in a bigger size, in bold or in a special color whereas less popular tags tend to appear with no particular emphasis. The more the tag is prominent, the more it is popular.

Tags can be compared to a form of website categorization. In the Web 1, Internet content was sorted in predetermined categories (or topics). Formerly, in order to appear in one or another category a website had to be referenced in a web directory or a vertical portal and linked to an existing category. If one of the categories was missing the website could not be sorted out, or the website editor had to ask to the directory’s administrator to create a new category. Yahoo built its early succes on this idea that the web should be organized in a centralized way.

However, this approach revealed to be finally inaccurate with reference to the dramatic explosion of content published on Internet. Often, the webmaster submitting a website had to face the “misc.” or “unclassifiable” category syndrome since the limited space of a web directory could not propose an unlimited number of categories or sub-categories that would harm to its ergonomics or usability. It’s the eternal problem of the never ending branching trees.

The popping out of the “tags” concept represents a real paradigm shift! Tags are not defined in a central way (by an administrator of a directory) but by the websites editors themselves.

Indeed, it is the blogger who defines the categories related to the content to be published (blog post, note or article) in this new approach. A dedicated field in the edition form allows him/her to connect a series of keywords related to the content of the note. These words are chosen ‘ad hoc‘ by the editor according to the topics developped in his/her article.

We are definitely in a Web 2.0 and contributive logic with the tags system.

With this decentralized system of categorization, we introduce the idea of a vast ecosystem of keywords on a global linguistic scale which can be potentially “captured” (indexed) by the search engines, provided their technology allows it. Blogdimension.com. is now one of these systems indexing the tags.

Instead of getting sucked into designing categories artificially and centrally which is a pure non-sense if we consider the Web is live, we, at Blogdimension, chose to implement a technology allowing to recognize and to index not only the links of the articles and blog posts but the tags as well. The retrieved tags are stored into a special database and counted. The more often a tag appears, the more it is listed at the top!

So, we get a long list of tags sorted in decreasing order of frequency.

The “tags cloud” represents a limited selection of the most popular keywords assigned by the bloggers to their articles or postings and found in our index!

The “tags clouds” can vary from a search system to an other since each brand has its own sorting formulas which are often an industry secret. Some search engines propose a “hit parade”-type of listing, some other do not propose anything.

One can clearly perceive the semantic power of these “tags clouds” and their statistical role since they allow to carry out trend analysis of the content published. It makes it possible to know the topics most favored by the bloggers. Moreover, on the other side, one can imagine to collect and analyse the most clicked through or searched for tags in order to get the reading tendencies. There’s just one step to be able to follow up the consumer trends!

“Tags clouds” are valuable tools for all those who need to take some sense out of the Web and the blogosphere: communication, advertising, intelligence agencies, marketing departments, political parties… In short, it is a function essential to all kinds of trend setters.

A “tags cloud” is a momentary snapshot of the blogosphere. The clouds can even be compared following various criteria: in the timeline, according to a profile of users, with regard to particular events, sociological criteria or seasons.

As a start, Blogdimension has implemented the tags cloud feature on its English, French and Spanish versions. But, this feature will be soon extended to other Blogdimension linguistic versions like the Chinese or Japanese ones.

It is at the same time funny and curious to compare the “tags clouds” between several linguistic spheres. For example, English speaking users are much interested in topics related to technology, business and entertainment. The French speaking ones like to write and post about society, Christmas (now) and political questions. The Spanish speaking ones tend to be attracted by downloading, computers and of course the picturesque… Hugo Chavez!

If you are a professional and are interested in trend analysis, watch or intelligence activities do not hesitate to get in touch with us. We perhaps can propose you our services and (anonymous) data. Our index is rich of thousands of millions of links and tags pointing to blogs, microblogs, images, podcasts, videos and opinions from the blogosphere.

Blogdimension’s “tags cloud” is a smart way to feel the pulse of the Web 2.0 and listen to its heart beat!

Thanks for your support,

The Team

“Nuage de tags”: French version

“Tags cloud”: English version

“Nube de tags”: Spanish version

It’s by a wink to this famous Ricky Martin’s song meaning “A step forward!” that Blogdimension.com announces the release of the Spanish version of its Web 2.0 Search Engine!

The Spanish version is the third to be launched after the French and the English ones. Thus, Blogdimension.com gives the possibility to a community strong of around 350 million speakers to access and search Web 2.0 content such as blogs & microblogs, forums, news, podcasts, online videos published in Spanish.

Of course, the “advanced search” function enables the Spanish speaking users to zoom in content published in the different countries composing the Hispanic world. These sources can be located as well in Spain, Latin America, the United States than in other places of the world.

We are conscious that a powerful ‘blogosfera’ is now emerging in these linguistic areas. It would not have been very wise not to do something for such a vast and influent community in terms of Web 2.0 content search. So we didn’t ask ourselves too many questions whether we should release or not a Spanish version of Blogdimension.com! We released this version naturally.

We will let you know about our further developments. New top languages are already in progress and will be launched very soon

Thanks for your support and bienvenidos!

The Team