Web Watch by Web Search Advisor

Blog is short for Web Log. A blog is a web page that is updated on a regular basis, and contains information on a specific topic. Blogs got their start as a place to make journal entries on the web. Some typical uses of a blog are to record personal events, political views and social commentaries. A blog can be shaped into whatever you want it to be, even a newsletter, just like this one.

The term “blog” was so popular during the 2004 presidential election that it was the number 1 search word on the Merriam-Webster dictionary web site, http://www.m-w.com/. It is now an official word in the dictionary.

A blog has become a great way for businesses to communicate with their customers. A blog accessible from a web site as a newsfeed gives visitors a reason to come back. Blogs are also included in search engine searches and offer advantages for increasing a web site’s page rank.

To get started creating a blog visit www.blogger.com, a Google owned site.
What’s great about a blog is that you can edit and post your content with an easy to use web based interface. You don’t need to be a web designer/master. Blogs are available to anyone and everyone for free.

If you are a business person you may want to consult your web designer/master about adding an “RSS” or “XML” newsfeed to your web site so that your blog postings can be read by your visitors automatically after each posting you make. You don’t have to write your E-News, for example, send it to your web master and wait for it to be posted. You can have a link from your web site to your blog automatically updated using “RSS” or “XML” technology (more on this below).

If you are interested in reading today’s popular blogs then it’s time to learn about “Newsreaders”. With a Newsreader you can subscribe to and read blogs of interest to you.
You may be thinking this sounds a lot like News Groups (See Google Groups). Newsfeeds are similar to News Groups in that you can subscribe to topics of interest to you. They differ however, in their underlying technology and purpose.

Newsreaders are either downloadable programs that look a lot like your email reader, (MS Outlook, for example) or they are web based. Some are free and some have a cost. A good free one to get started with is the web based newsreader, Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/).

Visit http://www.atomenabled.org/everyone/atomenabled/index.php?c=5 for a comprehensive list of newsreaders.

Now, what is “XML” and “RSS”? As you’ve been surfing the web, you may have come across these small icons on web sites that say, “xml” or “rss” like this:

If you come across a site of interest and it has one of these icons, select the icon and drag it into your open newsreader to subscribe. Newsreaders vary though, and for some you may need to enter the “URL” of the blog (newsfeed) to subscribe. For example, the URL of the Web Watch blog newsfeed is: http://www.websearchadvisor.com/atom.xml, which you can determine by clicking on the “xml” icon on the www.websearchadvisor.com web site, and noting the URL displayed in your browser’s Address field.

I hope I’ve given you enough information to at least get you started reading blogs. For the web site owner think of blogs as a way of syndicating your E-News or of “pushing” your information out to the web (yes, this just may replace email newsletters). For web site searchers consider opening your newsreader and searching the next time you’re looking for information on the web. You may find more timely information quicker than with a general purpose search engine.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2005 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Web Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.