Meanwhile on Barista

The latest History Carnival is online at Barista where David Tiley has taken slices of the last two weeks of the history blogosphere and put them in the toaster of judgment to see what comes out golden. It’s deceptively difficult to pull together something coherent from the great variety you’re confronted with and I think this is one of the better carnivals. Then again, like the Skeptics’ Circle the History Carnival does tend to read well.

It’s also well worth reading his ruminations on search. It tackles a problem which sooner or later many bloggers feel they run into – blogs are largely a closed network. I think he makes some good points that Google isn’t tackling blogs very well. Hopefully the new Blogger is a change of strategy, but it’s questionable. I’m not sure if I agree with his comments on Scienceblogs, which he says hasn’t helped Deltoid become more visible in searches for Global Warming. Bloggers there tend to say their readership has doubled, so I think there’s some benefit being in it. Fortunately I don’t think that its hugely divisive between those in and out, and that’s down to Seed Magazine choosing some good people to blog for them. I think that Deltoid’s problem there is one that many blogs share.

If I want to link to Deltoid on global warming or A Blog Around The Clock on science blogging, then I’ll link using words like Deltoid or A Blog Around The Clock. A search on Google for these terms will put the blogs on the front page, but in Deltoid’s case the people searching on that term might well be looking for anatomical information. This is why I think the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference has a very good name, even though it’s quite long. In my case this blog was originally Alun, and now I’m front page for that search term when I look, it’s now Archaeoastronomy. I’m happy to do that, but many bloggers aren’t happy to reduce themselves to one dimension. Barista is an excellent example with history, politics, science and media. It’s many things but it is not a blog about bartending despite everyone linking to it as Barista. From Google’s position that’s a headache, rather like unintentional google-bombing.

He also has a very good analogy about the nucleation of blogs, but again nucleate around what? One of the great features of blogs are that they’re frequently and willfully independent. I read blogs by people who don’t like linking to other blogs because they wish to remain independent and think that linking to other blogs is incestuous or making a statement. Others don’t wish to be seen as falling in one category. How do you increase accessibility without stifling diversity?

I suggest you visit his page to read his post and comment over there (hence the lack of a comment option on this thread).