"[B]logs are clogging the results of searches in a way that web-based archives of usenet postings never did. when i search for "galaxie 500 window crank" i don’t want to find me as the number one hit. i don’t think anyone else does either. and here’s the main point – it’s a disservice to the people who are doing the searching."
Everyone is either nervous or excited (or both?) at the idea that Google might take blogs out of its main index/tab. I don’t think that would help Google be a better product. Remember when DirectHit introduced click popularity as a way to leverage human decisions to deliver better results? Well, Google has figured out that blogs are useful pre-surfing resources full of links and context. They don’t necessarily think that your weblog is the best end destination for your query, but it’s probably a good lead to find an actual page or site to answer it. Blogs and their brethren are good at digging the best of the web (where else do you find the kind of stuff there’s on Boing Boing, Memepool or Muxway?) If your blog entry is just one degree of separation from a page that will fulfill a web query, that in itself is valuable. Until Google is able to index posts individually (presumably by looking at permalinks as separators), page archives by posts produced by MovableType will also help provide more focus than the usual weekly or monthly archive template.
What Google might end up doing is put a little less emphasis on how high weblogs appear in the rankings (I think they’ve done that already to some extent), but still take a good look at how they name things and what they point to (though they’re aware of Google bombing dangers too.)
Update: I hadn’t seen Nick had reached the same conclusion. I’m still catching up since I had DSL setup on the LAN only yesterday (and DSL at all just last week.)
Update: Phil Ringnalda: Missing the blog-clot point (GMTA, I’m just late)
05/21/03 update: Eric wraps up and adds good points: "it’s a debatable point that as the number of active bloggers increase that the signal in the presifting will remain high. even more importantly – and i have nothing but anectode to support this claim – i don’t think that most people want to engage in or "get" this presifting search behavior. it’s confusing to them."