Online Marketing Blog

I received my login to the beta version of the new blog search engine Sphere this morning. Founded by Tony Conrad, Martin Remy, and Steve Nieker, Sphere is a true blog search engine and not a RSS feed search engine, like Google Blog Search.

From the invite email:

“The primary focus of our product is relevance. We want to make sure the most relevant blog posts make it to the top of our results. We’re also working hard to ensure that our results are as fresh and comprehensive as possible.”

Search results look pretty good with post title, blog title, snippet, and how long ago the post was made. Each result also has a link to a “profile” which may be something blog owners can “claim” ala Technorati in the future.

John Battelle has a good post about Sphere company details and TechCrunch did a very nice review earlier in October. That’s where/when I first heard of Sphere and signed up for an invite to the beta.

In the spirit of “beta” I made a screen shot of Sphere using the beta web browser, Flock:

Click the image to see a much larger version.

The Sphere team are working hard to avoid duplicate entries and filter out blog spam, which is a welcome effort. It would be interesting for blog owner interaction of some sort, such as with the profile or to provide additional validation of a blog. Nice search tool, one I’ll be watching (and using).

If you want to try Sphere beta blog search, you’ll need to sign up for an invite.

Tags: Sphere, blog search engine, Sphere Beta