As of December 28, 2006, Google Blog Search is used by 0.0025% of US Internet users, and this number keeps rising (weblogs.hitwise.com/leeann-prescott/2006/12/google_blog_search_surpasses_t.html). It surpasses Technorati which is used by 0.0023% of US Internet users. The population of US Internet users itself is 232,057,067 as of January 11, 2007 (www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm). Translated into number, Google Blog Search is used by 5,801 US Internet users.

While this statistic only counts US Internet usage, if we can assume that it holds true for the world Internet usage which is 861,472,625 users (www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm), Google Blog Search is used by 21,537 Internet users! Imagine how many people can find your blog using Google Blog Search.

This is very good news for bloggers and small business market that blogs are in the rage now. Aggregators are getting more powerful and more usable, and the number of people bookmarking their favorite sites and topics via readers is growing. The growth of blog-specific search sites like Technorati and Sphere shows that people not only want to read blogs, they quite often want to look for specific topics on them. Google's introduction of a blog search engine will help triggering the other engines to offer similar features and will help boosting the growth of blog readership.

As Google puts it, "Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you're looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice."

How to find Google Blog Search:

• blogsearch.google.com,
• search.blogger.com,
• The Blogger Dashboard,
• Or from the navigation bar on any Blogspot blog

How to get your blog listed:

• If your blog publishes a site feed and automatically pings an updating service, it will be found and listed by Google Blog Search.
• You can manually ping Google Blog Search at blogsearch.google.com/ping. However this is a one time notification service so every time your blog changes you must submit your blog again.

What are you waiting for? Submit your blog to Google Blog Search now to be found by more than 21,000 people at once!