The IT news service ZDnet reports that yesterday Google relaunched their Blog Search service, and claims “now it’s useful”.
I disagree. In fact Google Blog Search seems to have stopped working. Up to 22nd September I was receiving almost daily alerts about other blogs which were linking to this one. But these alerts stopped suddenly on that day. The WordPress dashboard and statistics page also rely on Google Blog Search and so have not detected any new incoming links for more than a week. I have also checked with a direct search and this has failed to find any new links.
I don’t know how many links to this blog Google Blog Search should have found, because I don’t know about them. But it should at least have found the link at Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIV, and for the last few months there have been at least three links a week. My blog may have been sent trackbacks from other blogs linking here, but I have received 4,545 of these in the last 15 days which have been caught by Akismet as spam, and I don’t have time to look through these which are mostly drug adverts for the occasional genuine link.
Here is another post which linked to me which Google did not find: More on the weevils of Todd Bentley. I just found this with a blog search for “gentle wisdom”, but this works only because Kathi included my blog name as well as a URL.
If you have linked to my blog (not with spam!) but I have not acknowledged this in any way, I am sorry. This is probably because I have not even seen the link. You are welcome to point out to me any link in a comment here, or by e-mail to peter AT qaya DOT org.
The WordPress dashboard and statistics page also rely on Google Blog Search and so have not detected any new incoming links for more than a week.
Oh, is that what’s going on? I noticed that the entire stats module has been wonky for several weeks now – my post and page traffic stats are seriously weird. Posts from way back are getting the majority of hit reports and new posts aren’t even showing up, even as I get multiple comments… I have Google Analytics working in the background, but haven’t had the time to plumb all that’s there.
Interesting, ElShaddai. Apart from the incoming links my general WordPress statistics seem to be OK, less hits than in early September but that’s probably because people are forgetting about Todd Bentley. Indeed this post is already showing up quite well, partly thanks to hits from my comment at ZDnet. Perhaps Google Analytics is causing your problem. Perhaps Google is deliberately not supporting WordPress. I do wonder if they have a new anti-spam policy which is over-aggressive at filtering out links, but if so they should have documented it.
Hmmm… it could be Analytics, or more specifically a WP plug-in that I added to handle the Analytics code. I’ll go back to manually putting it in the footer and see if the stats “normalize”.
This evening Google Blog Search has come up with one link to another blog post, from yesterday. So perhaps it will gradually start working again.
This morning I thought that Google Blog Search was now working again, having picked up several new posts linking to me. This evening, as reported by WordPress statistics, it has suddenly started picking up every post from anyone who has my blog in their blogroll, which is not at all what I intended! Those Google guys need to get their act together.
Hi, I have noticed exactly the same problems and have described them in this blogpost: Incorrect Google Incoming Links? The odd thing is that the incoming links are sometimes o.k. in WordPress, but may show different links (indeed from any blog which has you on its blogroll) upon refreshing (F5). Google Blog Search always shows the “wrong” links.
But although I miss some links and not all links show up, new links do appear and I did get an alert today.
Coincidentally my Technorati-rank has dropped from 46 to 5 in ONE night appr 2-3 weeks ago (see here). But this seems to be due to an anti-spam action. Many spam-blogs have linked to me, so now they take me along in their fall.
I didn’t know that Google had relaunched their Blog Search service. This may indeed relate to the problems. So thanks for the info.
Laika, thanks for your comment. From what I have seen, over the last few weeks (but only intermittently, so I think they are working on a known problem) Google Blog Search has been showing all posts on blogs which have a link in their sidebar e.g. their blog roll, not just those which have a link in the post text.