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4.26.06
Buzzy Blog Engine Beta Delayed
 By
Jason Lee Miller
The long-awaited blog search engine Sphere was delayed from its scheduled public beta launch citing a demand heavier than anticipated.
Sphere, developed by an all-star team that gave us Oddpost and Wordpress, is expected to re-launch its public beta later this week.
Sphere is already a few months late arriving on the Web. High profile search and e-business commentators like John Battelle, Jeremy Zawodny, Michael Arrington, and Om Malik all prophesied its impressive entry last October.
What makes Sphere different than other blog search engines? Search Engine Watch executive editor Chris Sherman explains:
"Sphere takes a new approach to blog search, looking at three critical variables to understand both individual blog posts and the nature of the blog they appear on…who's linking to whom, and what are the quality of the links…who's starting or leading discussions… who are simply commenting on existing conversations."
Combining algorithms capable of "semantic analysis" and various meta-data, Sphere is generating a lot of buzz for spam filtering, even before its launched, because exactly the right people are talking about it.
"In short, spam falls to the bottom of the rankings, and that's a great thing. Tony forwarded me early research his company has done which shows his results are markedly better than any other blog search engine out there.
From my initial use of the system, I can say it most certainly is. This is not to knock Technorati or Feedster, but I calls em as I sees em," writes John Battelle.
"They have pronoun checker," writes Om Malik. "Too many I's could mean a personal blog, with less focused information. That has an impact on how the results show up on the page."
We'll see what the rest of the world thinks once Sphere (eventually) launches.
About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
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