An experiment in discovering niche blogospheres: what are the best blogs that focus on pocket cruisers and pocket cruising? Wikipedia says:
A pocket cruiser, microcruiser or pocket yacht is a small, often lightweight sailboat with a cabin, which is intended for recreational cruising (either overnight or for extended periods) of the owner's chosen waterways. Pocket cruisers often can readily be loaded on a trailer and towed by most passenger automobiles. Both commercially made and designs for home built pocket cruisers are readily available.
Firstly, how do the major search engines help us? A search for "pocket cruiser blog" on Google produces, as most relevant, a blog post on German pocket battleships. The blog itself is entitle 'World Association of International Studies' so not really on topic.The rest of the results include
- A link to a blogspot blog that doesn't actually exist
- A page reviewing a dvd on pocket cruiser trailers
- A link to a blog that mentions a pocket cruiser, but doesn't seem to be about pocket cruisers.
Searching for "pocket cruising blog" provides no results, but "pocket cruising" brings up a link to the Wooden Boat Forum as well as BoatDesign.net.
Searching on Google's blog search isn't really much help. "pocket cruising" brings back a mix of stuff about cruising and pockets (pocket computers). Google's blog search defaults to sort by relevance, but I don't really think this feature works in this case.
Searching on Technorati for "pocket cruising" produces no results. So, now, assuming the error is with the user, perhaps the problem is the search term. Perhaps pocket cruising isn't a term used by people who actually go pocket cruising, or who own pocket cruisers.
Searching simply for 'sailing' on Technorati, and displaying the 'blogs about sailing' (i.e. blogs that use the tag 'sailing') provides me with 1, 877 blogs. But here we run in to the problem either with tags, or with Technorati's indexing of them. The first blog 'about sailing' is actually nothing to do with sailing at all and while The Thinking Christian employs some nautical metaphors, I don't see any topgallants there. The third on the list, however, looks more promising: SailBlogs appears to be a blog hosting site for blogs about sailing (Technorati seems to confuse this with an actual blog...). SailBlogs does seem to include a section on cruising, so perhaps this is going to be it. Further down Technorati's results are real sailing blogs - though a mixture of types of sailing.
Going back to Google's blogsearch and searching with 'sailing' does produce better results (including some cross over with Technorati's results). Interestingly, a search for 'sailing blog' on the main Google site also delivers some good results.
Any conclusions? The simple task of finding blogs on a topic seems to be under supported. I was trying to find blogs on a specific sub area of sailing and essentially failed. This may be due to my ignorance on the topic, but I'm surprised - given how many people do this type of sailing and how much money is in it - not to have found more weblogs on the topic.
This was an unexpected place to find the Thinking Christian blog mentioned. I have done quite a bit of sailing in younger days, and I still have a small wet-fanny boat I take out once in a while, but I didn't realize I was using that many sailing metaphors! I guess it never quite leaves you...
Posted by: Tom Gilson | November 13, 2007 at 12:17 PM
In that case, shift focus to blogs about narrowboat cruising. If you do, you should shortly hit upon Granny Buttons (first result on Google's Blog Search). Perhaps Mr. Denny could help with the pocket cruiser search. He makes a regular effort to locate other narrowboat blogs; kind of a one-man search engine.
Posted by: nobdy | November 13, 2007 at 08:50 PM
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this topic is that the query '"pocket cruising" blog' has *this* post as the top hit on Google's blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=%22pocket+cruising%22+blog).
Posted by: Dave | November 14, 2007 at 01:22 AM
As a former sailor and current network engineer and researcher I would have to agree. This type of problem also exists in searches for other terms.
My take on it all. Whats going on, is anonymity. This ex-CIA guy, Kerr, is calling for an end to anonymity. I think he's wrong. I think what we need for the net is a sort of key-system or handle system where you can be known by your handle.
At that point, you can build a database because you will have an indices.
Searching through loose text gives you too many fields to parse
"pocket cruiser" could be for pockets, or cruisers. and you can have typos, and things. The net needs one index. and an identity for each user, but one that doesn't necessarily have to be connected tightly or at any other discretion than the individual.
Maybe DARPA can look into indexing before google does it ?
Whatever the case, searching for stuff can be a sucky proposition.
Posted by: turnerBroadcasting | November 14, 2007 at 09:06 AM
PS. I make this comment, because the blog author usually follows his profile, and so the author might be a better way to get at an index.
and the key system I am talking about is the one that they use in second life, where linden labs basically doesn't let anyone know the key to you (your UUID or unique user identifier) , period. But some agency has to be there to oversee it because corporate america would rape us if they had this kind of setup. its not so far fetched, really.
hackers have been doing this stuff for years. gamers too.
fatal1ty is a good example. everyone knows him by his handle.
the superfriends.
you get it, I hope.
Posted by: turnerBroadcasting | November 14, 2007 at 09:09 AM
Interesting that the page ranking mechanism has picked this up so quickly. The search results are proof that this post is an effective Google Bomb, which means that future searches on 'pocket cruiser' will point here, and hopefully people with information about pocket cruisers will leave comments - possibly accelerating the effect, possibly displacing other, more deserving sites from top position.
Posted by: nobdy | November 14, 2007 at 11:10 AM