Google recently added new interesting features in the English version of it Blog Search tool, with the same changes reportedly reaching its international counterparts in the next few days. Features include grouping by topic and indicating the number of blogs featuring similar news, adopting a technology very similar to that of the more popular Google News. Even better, the search tool now also features a graph plotting the number of blog posts on any given topic during the last few hours.

The homepage of the service now features the most discussed news ordered by number of submissions, a feature that to many will recall the Digg.com homepage. Google engineers are therefore taking their chances in what could be regarded as a special approach to social bookmarking, while highlighting the essential similarities between News and Blog Search: while the News service features content from mainstream media and authoritative websites, Blog Search is all about the users with their personal views and insights.

Google employee Michael Cohen announced the recent changes on Google's official blog. According to him, up to now the best option before the launch of this new version was to use Reader or another RSS feed to get updates on a specific blog: this solution, however, lacked in flexibility, as it wasn't possible to browse other similar posts on the same topic in the same way Google News readers are allowed to do.

What Cohen omitted in his short post is that, with these new features, Blog Search hopes to become a competitor of Techmeme.com, the current market leader in the so-called "memetracker" business, which is about creating tools enabling users to keep track of recent discussions and hot topics featured on the entire World Wide Web.

Other popular tools such as Yahoo Buzz and Technorati are also described as memetrackers and, now that the search engine giant has entered this market as well, many predict that it won't take long for Blog Search to become the leading product.

Not everyone agrees, though. ITWorld.com critiques the service, stating that despite their uncontrasted leadership in the WWW search, a proper indexing of blogs covers aspects and parameters that the current algorithm doesn't seem to address at all:

"The secondary results and sort-by-date search results are filled with scraper blogs, wrapped in AdSense and affiliate ad blocks. In other words, spam. You don't have to dig hard to find it. [...] Techmeme occasionally indexes people reprinting press releases or merely repeating news without any commentary, but the top-level items are usually interesting and relevant."

The problem of "scrapers", or bloggers that create content based on the hottest keywords of the moment merely to get more visitors to their ad-filled websites, is a well-known one, and a search for some of the hottest search terms reveals how Blog Search is currently not immune from this problem, not even in its very first results.

Another secondary problem that Blogsearch is facing is that, according to some reports, it doesn't index new content as quickly as its main competitors. While speed may not be a crucial issue, there is no doubt that Google engineers will have to work on this aspect too if they are to "steal" readers from other respected and well-known services such as Yahoo! Buzz or Technorati.

Of course, though, Google has solid traffic figures to back up its service: ultimately, a much better exposure — featuring on some of the many company's official blogs, along with a possible integration with the Google News service itself and a much larger audience than their specialized competitors — is the key that has the potential to make Blog Search one of the top memetrackers on the market.