• [Hack #35]
Hack 23 Finding Weblog CommentaryBuilding queries to search only recent commentary appearing in weblogs.Time was when you needed to find current commentary, you didn't turn to a full-text searchengine like Google. You searched Usenet, combed mailing lists, or searched through current newssites like CNN.com and hoped for the best.But as search engines have evolved, they've been able to index pages more quickly than onceevery few weeks. In fact, Google tunes its engine to more readily index sites with a highinformation churn rate. At the same time, a phenomenon called the weblog(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/essblogging/) has arisen, an online site keeps a runningcommentary and associated links, updated daily—and indeed, even more often in many cases.Google indexes many of these sites on an accelerated schedule. If you know how to find them,you can build a query that searches just these sites for recent commentary.23.1 Finding weblogsWhen weblogs first appeared on the Internet, they were generally updated manually or by usinghomemade programs. Thus, there were no standard words you could add to a search engine to findthem. Now, however, many weblogs are created using either specialized software packages (likeMovable Type, http://www.movabletype.org/, or Radio Userland, http://radio.userland.com/) or asweb services (like Blogger, http://www.blogger.com/). These programs and services are moreeasily found online with some clever use of special syntaxes [Section 1.5] or magic words.For hosted weblogs, the site: syntax makes things easy. Blogger weblogs hosted at blog*spot(http://www.blogspot.com/) can be found using site:blogspot.com. Even though RadioUserland is a software program able to post its weblogs to any web server, you can find themajority of Radio Userland weblogs at the Radio Userland community server(http://radio.weblogs.com/) using site:radio.weblogs.com.Finding weblogs powered by weblog software and hosted elsewhere is more problematic;Movable Type weblogs, for example, can be found all over the Internet. However, most of themsport a "powered by movable type" link of some sort; searching for the phrase "powered bymovable type" will, therefore, find many of them.It comes down to magic words typically found on weblog pages, shout-outs, if you will, to thesoftware or hosting sites. The following is a list of some of these packages and services and themagic words used to find them in Google:BloggerBlosxomGreymatter"powered by blogger" or site:blogspot.com"powered by blosxom"