By Dawn Kawamoto
Thursday, September 15 2005 11:10 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,39254740,00.htm

Google has launched a blog search feature, as it seeks to go head-to-head with archrival Yahoo in the booming blog market.

Google's tool is designed to find listings beyond those published through its own Blogger service by searching blogs that publish feeds via RSS or Atom. The feeds are checked frequently for new content, Google said on its Web site.

An upcoming feature will allow bloggers who publish site feeds to request inclusion in Google's search index.

The tool is designed to find blogs posted in multiple languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish, among others.

The tool can be accessed at blogsearch.google.com, at search.blogger.com or through the Blogger Dashboard, as well as through the "Navbar" of any Blog*Spot blog, Google said on its site. The service is the same in all locations, though the Navbar method features two buttons, one that allows people to search for text in the blog they are currently viewing, and another that requests a search of all blogs indexed.

Advanced-search options let searchers specify a particular language, title or author's name.

This latest move puts Google into a market that Yahoo has been dabbling in.

Last month, Yahoo launched an ad-network for bloggers and other small publishers and began quietly testing blog search technology in South Korea.

Microsoft's MSN has yet to enter the blog-search market, but the software giant has stated it is taking aim at rival Google with plans to entice developers to build applications that rely on MSN properties.

Additionally, according to SearchEngineWatch, Microsoft is testing a tool for searching RSS feeds.