The Trouble With Google’s Blog Search

Since Google’s Blog Search‘s debut some time ago, I’ve always thought of it as a pretty handy tool for bloggers and the rest of the world. It helps you find timely blog posts on topics you are interested in. And, for bloggers, it can help you find your own posts easily and quickly so you can link back to them as needed.

Or, so I thought.

It turns out, however, that Google’s Blog Search isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. While it is admittedly a small glitch that I’m addressing here, for the user of the advanced Blog Search unfamiliar with all of its features and filters, it could cause you to be shielded from a lot of content that you actually want or are trying to find.

I figured this out the hard way the other day.

While writing a post about the new website Need Over Greed, I decided it would be a good idea to highlight some blog coverage of the health and human services privatization disaster from a couple of Texas blogs–mine and Charles Kuffner’s Off The Kuff.

When trying to find some of my older posts, I often do a regular Google search using the title of my blog, “Capitol Annex,” and a key word or phrase I know is in the post I’m looking for. I tried running this string on Google’s Blog Search and wasn’t finding the posts I wanted for either my blog of Kuff’s. So, I decided to try the advanced search functions.

I ran an advanced search for the term “Accenture,” (which happens to be the name of a notorious HHS contractor used in Texas) with my blog’s URL as the blog URL to which I wanted the search confined (this search string). The result? Zip, zero, nada–nothing. Conservatively, I’ll say I’ve written 50 posts mentioning Accenture since January of 2006. Google’s Advanced Blog Search, confined to my blog’s url, didn’t find a single one! I found that alarming, so I thought I’d see what kind of luck I had running the same string on Kuff’s blog, since I believe he’s blogged about Accenture more than I have and for a longer period of time.

The result? A grand total of one post. ONE POST from a man generally referred to (at least, by me and some of my colleagues in the Lone Star State), as “The Godfather of the Texas Blogosphere.” I figured if Google wasn’t finding Kuff’s posts, I was sunk. So, I started trying to figure out if I did something wrong. I took off the “http://” prefix from the name of the blog and did several other things as well. No luck.

Then, I start looking at all of the other search options. I want to make sure that I’m searching all posts, not just recent ones. Check. I make sure I didn’t inadvertently throw a keystroke in the “exact phrase” box or one of the other search boxes. Check. I scroll down to the bottom of the Google Advanced Blog Search page and what do I find but a “safe search” option.

I never have used “safe search” in my web searching on Google because, quite frankly, I want to see all of the results my query may bring up and am smart enough to filter out on my own if “Texas Capitol Porn” shows up while I’m doing a Google search for the Texas State Capitol.

So, as I wonder “why does Google’s Advanced Blog Search default to “safe search,” I uncheck “Safe Search,” and re-perform the query on my blog. Lo and behold, I get several pages of results (note: last night when I did this, I got four pages of results; tonight I get two–no clue why the change).

Then, I do the same search string for Kuff’s site. Once again, more results (note: again, different results from last night; I got about six pages from Kuff’s blog last night this way, now I get only two).

This begs the question: why is Google censoring and filtering political blog content?

And, it’s not just happening to Progressive blogs. It’s happening to Republican blogs, too.

After having these troubles with my blog and Kuff’s, I decided to see what would happen doing some very simple Google Advanced Blog Searches on Right of Texas, a blog written by fellow Texan Vincent Harris, a Baylor University student and Virginia native. Check out what happens when you search for “election” on Right of Texas with safe search filtering on. No results. How can a political blogger not blog about elections? You’d think Harris and his colleagues at ROT weren’t if you didn’t notice that safe search was checked and turn it off. When you do, you get a more accurate search return.

Why is Google censoring blog content? Sure, polibloggers may use the occasional, “Hell,” “sh*t,” and “f**k,” but by and large, we’re far from pornographic. What, pray tell, about political discourse, is so darned offensive to the masses that Google must censor us?