THE REGISTER -- Andrew Orlowski is annoyed by "blog noise" on Google so he welcomes anything that will subordinate blogs in search engine results. He believes Google will make a tab for blogs, relegating all blogs from the search engines. At least 150 people have linked to the article by Orlowski, indicating that this is a popular topic. Among the gaggle, Dave Winer wonders how Google will know it's dealing with a blog. If you port your content to a self-standing URL (not to a community blog zone like Radio Weblogs, Google will be hard pressed to know if you're a blog. And Google won't be able to parse out XML or RSS feeds because they're valuable bits of technology used by the mainstream journo sites.
There's an undercurrent running in Orlowski's narky reporting of blogging--some in mainstream journalism view their reportage as pre-eminent. They reserve a special standing for the Fourth Estate and expect Google to do the same. So they want higher placement for content they generate, subordinating the mere punter to a lower placed result in a search engine query. This is self-centred and it often skews results away from first-hand evidence of technology, trends and predictions often made on blogs. So if someone is searching for the origins of an idea, once the idea is reported in the mainstream press, Orlowski would expect the search engines to suppress the first evidence.
Blogs often discuss mainstream events--like the cause of the space shuttle disaster, government reaction to American troop deploymeht and first-hand reaction to racism--that later become front page news. It is not in the public interest to remove those first-hand reports from public view. If Google needs to segregate information, it wouldn't hurt to put blog entries into a tabbed search area, It will be interesting to see how Google determines whether a URL is actually a blog, because a rising number of marketing sites and e-commerce sites are using blog architecture as their content management system.
Andrew Orlowski: Google to fix blog noise problem
Dave Winer wonders how Google will tell the difference.
Evan Williams: "Orlowski is full of crap. Again."
Metafilter commentators are concerned about "semantic apartheid."
Ole Eichhorn: Google and Blogs
Paul Szynol: Google, Blogs and Information
Dave Aiello: Some bloggers suspect that Google will segregate their sites.
Doc Searls: Enough already. "Google will not cull blogs out of its searches."
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