Most bloggers have their software set up to automatically “ping” blog monitoring sites when they publish a new post. The most common and simplest ping service is Pingomatic, which will notify 27 different blog monitoring sites that you’ve updated your site.
However, I just noticed that the very slowly-evolving Google Blog Search has added a ping service of its own. If you want to inform Google instantly when you update your blog, simply add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 to the list of services you ping.
Dave Taylor has a most excellent guide to adding the Google Blog Search ping for bloggers who use Movable Type. (I suspect that the process would be very similar if you’re using TypePad, which is made by the same company: Six Apart.)
If you’re using WordPress, however, you’ll need to jump into your Admin interface, click on Options, then on Writing, and paste the boldface URL above into this box:
Now you’re telling Google who to spider, and spider now. But does it work? Yes it does, and fast. Extremely fast.
In fact, when I checked Google Blog Search within minutes of publishing an early version of this post, here’s what I found:
Notice that “2 minutes ago” under the title? That’s Google speed – wow. It’s amazing what you can do with virtually unlimited bandwidth, half a million servers, and gobs of human talent.
I still wish they’d buy Technorati.
[tags] google, blog search, ping, pingomatic, movable type, six apart, typepad, wordpress, john koetsier [/tags]