Blogging Tip : How to Find the Next Great Blog
You’ve likely heard that popular statistic by now that thousands of new blogs are created each day and that only a few will receive visitors or last more than a few posts. If you have ever searched for any of these blogs, you probably didn’t have any luck discovering them – they are generally not indexed by search engines unless the creator had a clear purpose (he/she wasn’t creating it to place links to other sites or promote products). For this reason, it may be difficult to discover new, great blogs created recently.
In this guide, I’ll present a few ways that you can effectively find blogs that may interest you on the web. However, it isn’t for people who are new to blogs – you have to have an active feed reader application (whether online or offline) and some experience finding great sites.
Web Search
Starting from scratch, you should probably start with a simple web search for topics that you enjoy. Blogs will appear as sites that have a date inserted near the front of the site, which indicates a general period that the site was last updated, or crawled by search engines (although it is often off by a few days). Blogs will also have links below the site, if it is popular, to pages such as “Contact,” “Archives,” and any other popular areas of the blog.
Keyword Tool
After you have tried the general approach above, it is time to begin using some keyword tools. Using nearly any search engine with the “Suggest” feature, you can find blogs in similar topic, but not fully related to what you were originally searching for. This allows you to branch out to various topics, without being constricted to a single topic, which might bore you in the long run.
Blogger Blog Search
Google Blog Search is also ideal for finding recently published posts, including those of news stories, which might reveal a style of writing that you enjoy reading.
Finding great blogs takes time. You probably visit a large number of blogs if you are online frequently, but don’t find a great majority of them appealing. It’s all about how we perceive these sites. Hundreds of hours have been put into creating the blogs, yet it is difficult to find the ones that don’t fit into the “popular” crowd and still have the attributes and characteristics that we look for in new blogs …
Do you have other methods of searching new great blogs? Share with us!
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Yes, i agree with you. There are so many blogs that, i think, is almost impossible to search them and find good ones easily. That is the reason i usually find great blogs by recommendations on blogs that i visit regularly.
THis is what Seth Godin talked about when he said that blogs are already saturated in a sense.
You are absolutely right. Unless you are very lucky, what you are looking for is unlikely to be what you get.
Yes Beach Design. These days people are blogging not for interest but for making huge money. They are simply creating blogs and spamming here and there to get some visitors. But it should be done for the sake of visitors not for the sake of money.
With millions of blogs out there, finding the best is one of the hardest part as more bloggers utilize SEO to get their blog in top search results.
yeah, my point exactly
Yeah, mark A
That means that owners of great blogs should learn SEO
how about the power of word of mouth?
I am a firm believer in utilizing SEO…it’s a huge part of our business. But truthfully I don’t think that most new bloggers really try to do that. They seem to focus mainly on “social media”.
I also trust the word of mouth aspect, and following commenters links back to their offerings when it comes to identifying new blogs, rather than search engines. All the false blogs that are there purely to game the system and make money is a pet irritant of mine.
Yeah the word of mouth thing is usually a great way to find great blogs. But you have to find at least one great blog first. Then follow the links or friends…
yes it is annoying yet, when there is a need and someone can figure out a way around a brick wall why not exploit it.
And I guess a good way is by scouting forums to discover new active bloggers. They usually try to find their audience on these forums and are actively involved.
Hey, isn’t that how you found my blog
Yup, you are right
What forums to look?
http://forums.entrecard.com/ for example
I have had lots of success on forums promoting my blog and i have found it a great place to find and connect with new bloggers.
Digg upcoming is also a good way to notice new blogs.
Yeah, I get my traffic from there
How about StumbleUpon?
So is Technorati…..
The comments sections are great ways to discover new blogs.
I visit a high number of blogs on a daily basis. When I find a blog a like I always add it to my rss reader. I usually try to come back to it the next day to reply to comments and/or decide if I am going to keep it in my reader.
So what do you think about my blog? Is it a great one?
Yes. I have found some great ones from comment pages.
You could go to Technorati and look at the top related blogs there.
Technorati, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious. From these sites you can browse for interesting stuff at the post level. So you don’t need to loof for good blogs, just good blog posts.
Speaking from experience it is hard to get traffic to a new blog but I am hopeful that the quality of my content will attract more readers. I started my blog a couple of months ago, I don’t know much about marketing but I hope that some people with find value in my posts.
I am open to suggestions!
)
I wish you luck with your new blogging adventure! I suggest posting to sites like stumbleupon and digg. I saw your blog and the quality is good. The blog is well written. I think as long as your bog makes you happy then it is a success.
Thanks so much for the encouragement. This blog is a labor of love and as long as a few people find value in it, I’m happy
My son is helping me with some of the networking, I’ve been submitting to Digg and Stumbleupon, also reddit, facebook, and twitter. I’m getting about 50 visitors per day on average, which I think is pretty good for a new blog. Most of that traffic is from people who already know me but its a start!
thanks again!
That is a good start! Your friends are your worst critics so they say. Ask for feedback so you can learn and improve.
Oh yeah there is a cool tool that used to cost, but now is free called “search automator”. It’s a pretty cool free tool for helping you to find blogs, sites, news articles, and all other kinds of searches online.
I like to use google blog search, google news and google trends to find new blogs that I may like – I have already managed to find a few
Google really makes it easy for us to search. Whether it is for new blogs or anything in the internet.
How can we not mention Google Alert? It helps me to find related blogs based on my chosen keywords – straight to my email.
Speaking of great blogs, just a quick note to say that you made it on my top dropper post for February
Check out http://prague.today.com/2009/02/28/entrecard-top-droppers-blog-news/ and enjoy the back link and blog review 
I try to use every possible and known opportunities in finding interesting and great blogs.Though I trust the bloggers personal experience more and often check out the lists of blogs laid out in the net.
Good call. You value what other bloggers find as interesting.
Blogging provides great communication when you are in business, interfacing with your customers in important and this is the perfect platform to do it.
Getting your passion out and putting on the web is what a blog is all about.
I use Google trends for the most part, but word of mouth is always good. Most of the blogs I read daily someone told me about.
One way to find a good blog is to see which blogs the super blogs (like Smashingmagazine.com) recommend because it is very hard for an ordinary blog to be featured on the super blog.
Links and referrals from trusted blogs is all that can be effective. There are just too many out there, though your advise here, given sufficient time, will be beneficial.
Very nice post. I looking forward to reading more here?
Thanks again!
I believe if you write exclusive content..people will surely tell others about your work…and you will get better traffic
i find some blogs then sort them by PR and read the most popular. in the interests blogs always there are many friends…
u shud use keyword tool… i use it before posting a new blog post..just to check which post is most popular in that category
Most are striken with the field of dreams effect – if you build it they will not come. They do not actively promote the site enough. These new blogs are probably terrible – i know my blog was bad when i started and it has slowly gotten better with practice and experience.
I think there are some blogs out there with alexa rankings from 900 – 1000 alexa rankings, well im not sure, but to find that particular popular blog is enormous, great post man.
Learning something from it
indeed many popular blogs, but not easy to find them one by one, and this article provides a simple way and quite interesting to follow.
thanks for sharing it
It does take a while for things to get indexed and move up in the search engine results which is probably a reason for the high failure rate of newer, start-up blogs.