Google Blogsearch Relaunches as Techmeme Killer, Across 11 Categories
In its first major upgrade ever, Google Blogsearch just relaunched and looks radically different. Instead of the blank page look of Google.com, Blogsearch now looks like Google News (but uglier) - with the hottest topics …
Context & Ripple Effects
Blog aggregation has been a contested space for years: back in 2005 the blog news services were already fighting it out for who would be the front page of the blogosphere, and Technorati's hot-lists became the reference point for what was trending. In 2007 the pressure intensified when Techmeme launched its Leaderboard, explicitly targeting Technorati's last stronghold, while the Technorati 100 still defined blogosphere prestige. Google's relaunch of Blogsearch into a News-style, topic-driven front page across 11 categories marks the moment a search giant steps directly into that curation game.
First-order effects
- Techmeme and Technorati now compete head-to-head with Google on their core product — automated surfacing of the hottest blog conversations — with Google bringing vastly greater crawl scale and default distribution.
- Bloggers gain a new high-traffic discovery surface overnight: inclusion in Blogsearch's hot-topic modules becomes an immediate referral channel alongside Techmeme's leaderboard.
Second-order effects
- Independent aggregators are pushed to differentiate on editorial voice, speed, or community features they can own, since raw algorithmic 'what's hot' is a game Google can win on resources alone.
- Coverage across 11 vertical categories pressures niche trackers to either expand horizontally or cede general tech/news aggregation entirely.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, curation layers built by startups get progressively absorbed into platform defaults — the same dynamic later visible when Google overhauled Product Search and shut down Boutiques.com rather than sustaining standalone experiences.
- The long-run question is whether any independent aggregator can remain the industry's shared memory of 'what mattered' when the dominant search engine owns both the index and the front page.
The trend: Platform companies steadily absorb third-party discovery and curation products into their own default interfaces, squeezing standalone aggregators out of the middle layer.