Google used to have a great feature called Blog Search that allowed you to limit your search results to just blog posts. Unfortunately, Google discontinued it in May, 2014.
The good news is that although it’s completely hidden, you can still do a blog post search by following this link:
https://www.google.com/?tbm=blg
You may want to bookmark that — you won’t find a way to activate it anywhere on Google’s search results pages.
While searches from the link above will show the most “relevant” results from all dates first, I prefer to use this modified version that sorts the results by date:
https://www.google.com/?tbm=blg&tbs=sbd:1
I won’t speculate why Google chose to eliminate the ability to easily filter search results to just blog posts, but I will say that it can be an incredibly useful tool for bloggers, podcasters and other content marketers.
I run a popular hobby-related website. I always monitor my social media feeds for interesting content to share with my followers, but sometimes it feels like I’m stuck in a bubble seeing the same stuff from the same people. Using a Google blog search gives me a chance to scan through the latest posts to see if I’m missing anything important in my niche — or discover something that I can share with others that they haven’t seen a dozen times already.
I also like to reach out and introduce myself to new bloggers who are creating good content in my niche. Sometimes I invite them to guest post and they often accept in order to gain more exposure. They’re usually quite appreciative that I’ve taken the time to contact them.
To help discover new content from people that I don’t regularly follow, I’ve created a custom search bookmark that I visit every few days.
So, let’s say your niche is fly fishing:
You can create a link that will always give you the latest blog posts that contain the term “fly fishing” by bookmarking this link:
https://www.google.com/search?q=”fly+fishing”&tbm=blg&tbs=sbd:1
When I want to see the latest results, I just click the bookmark in my browser and there they are.
To create your own custom link, just replace “fly+fishing” for “basket+weaving” or whatever your niche may be.
So even though Blog Search has been discontinued, you don’t need to search for alternatives. Just use this little trick!
Matt Thomas
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Thanks Matt for sharing with us. I will definitely follow the above steps which you have mentioned Blog Search . But it is sad that google stopped it in 20014.
This is an awesome trick! Thank so much for sharing!
This no longer seems to work. I tried your Fly Fishing search and it comes up with:
Your search – “fly fishing” – could not be completed with the requested search options. Reset search tools
Hi Matt, I think this will not work for most the cases nowadays. I have tried with prefix How to. It shows most of the non-blog results.
Alternatively, we have to search with footprints. For example, keyword + “Powered by WordPress”.
Thanks
Hey Just want to let you know that the links and the trick doesn’t work in 2019
This no longer seems to work. I tried your Fly Fishing search and it comes up with