Tips for (Better) Blog Searching on Google Blog Search

Here are a few tips for searching blog contents
and refining search results on Google Blog Search.

1. The easiest way to access Google Blog Search is from
the Google search screen. Click on 'more' at the
top of the Google drop down menu.

2. From the menu, select 'Blogs.'

3. From the search screen, select 'Advanced Blog Search.'
(Trust me, you'll be glad you took this extra step)

4. Complete the search template, which allows you
to search for specific terms, phrases, authors, titles, dates
and languages.

5. Depending on your research goals, you might chose
to narrow your search results to blogs authored by
persons or groups at educational institutions.

To do this, enter .edu in the form labelled 'In Blogs..at this URL.'
(This will limit search results to blogs with URL's containing .edu
as part of the domain name).

Example: When I ran a search under the terms
'Palin library wasilla,' and limited results to '.edu' URL's,
I retrieved blog posts from The Leonard E. Greenberg Center
for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College,
from the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education
at Case Western Reserve, and from the Santa Clara Law Library Blog.

The same search without the '.edu' domain restriction resulted
in numerous hits from personal, commercial and organizational
blogs of varying degrees of credibility. Of course, you may want to
look at some of these other sources, depending on your needs and
preferences for a given search.