A big debate on blogging is often on which platform to use, Blogger or WordPress.

I've built up a successful business using Blogger blogs, one of which is the blog you're reading now. They're really easy to set up, free to use, and they seem to get indexed faster into Google.

Let me clarify that again, they get indexed faster, I didn't say they get a PageRank boost.

Google owns Blogger. There has been much discussion in SEO circles on whether or not Google gives Blogger blogs any extra weight in PageRank. I don't believe so. But does Google give Blogger blogs any other kind of advantage?

I think they do, in the form of speedier indexing.

Blogger is tied into Google Blog Search

Google has its own dedicated blog search engine, "Google Blog Search", and Blogger has a pipeline into it.

Blogger provides its publishers with a control setting called, "Let search engines find your blog"...


This setting allows you to get your blog indexed by Google Blog Search. By default, it's set to "Yes".

This tells me that a Blogger blog and its articles will automatically get into Google Blog Search, instanteously, within seconds. And once in Google Blog Search, it's sure to get into Google Web Search.

But the truth is that WordPress blogs can get into Google Blog Search too. It's just that it's not joined at the hip to it. Instead, WordPress blogs have to ping Google Blog Search to get in there.

So the question is, how fast is Google's ping service? I don't have the answers to that. But I have done my own tests to get some circustantial evidence.

One such peculiarity I often find is that certain extremely popular blogs, such as Gizmodo for example, will have their articles syndicated on other blogs, in full. Many times, Google Blog Search will index the articles on those other blogs, before it indexes the same articles on Gizmodo. Assuming that Gizmodo is pinging Google Blog Search, how is it that its content doesn't show up there before the syndicated content?

Bottom Line

What all this means is that when people run searches on Google Blog Search, they're more likely to find Blogger content before they find WordPress content.

And while this does provide Blogger blogs with a small advantage, it's not a significant advantage by any means. The fact is that many WordPress blogs have become very popular blogs. But so have Blogger blogs.

I'd wish that more SEO consultants would start a discussion on the connection between Google Web Search and Google Blog Search, to see how the two influence each other.

Labels: Google Blog Search, Real Estate Blogging