Google Launches Tool to Search for Blog Updates

A new Google Inc. specialty search engine sifts through the Internet’s millions of frequently updated personal journals, a long-anticipated development expected to help propel “blogging” into the cultural mainstream.

The new tool, unveiled Wednesday at www.google.com/blogsearchfocuses exclusively on the material contained in the journals known as weblogs, or blogs.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, the Internet’s general search engine leader, first set its sights on blogs with its 2003 acquisition of a small start-up called Blogger that makes software to publish and manage the journals.

Since that deal, Google had been expected to build a blogging-focused search engine -- a mission finally accomplished by a group of developers in the company’s New York office.

“There really has been a need for a world-class search product to expose this dynamic content to a worldwide audience,” said Jason Goldman, who came to Google in the Blogger deal and is now the company’s product manager for blogging search.

Over the last two years, blogs have become an increasingly popular vehicle for sharing opinions and information, sometimes breaking news and more often prodding the mainstream media into reconsidering how it has handled some big stories.

First word of Google’s new searching tool was, in fact, disseminated by a blog.

A few people have been able to make a living largely off their blogs, or parlay them into book deals. Blogs also have been a source of embarrassment and angst, resulting in the firings of several workers, including a Google product manager, who angered their employers with revelations posted on their sites.

No one knows for certain how big the so-called blogosphere has become. Technorati, the niche’s top search engine, says it indexes 17.1 million sites spanning about 1.5 billion links.

Goldman declined to disclose the size of Google’s blogging index.

The appearance of the new Google tool makes it more likely that rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. will develop a similar feature.