Change dashboard to use Google BlogSearch instead of Technorati

[Otto42]

I made this change to my blog a while back, and I've found it to be a lot more useful. Basically, it changes the incoming links to use Google BlogSearch instead of Technorati for searching. Google BlogSearch is a lot faster to respond, less prone to total failure (which happens to Technorati seemingly once every couple weeks or so), and seems to return a lot more timely results. I can see who's linking to me much more quickly.

Patch included.

Change technorati lookup to Google on the dashboard.

Meh. Technorati seems to have more results and less spam.

I don't care one way or the other really though TBH.

-1: In the wp.com forums, it's been commented on many times over thet Google's Blogsearch missing a lot of posts and links.

Of course so does Technorati. :)

Well, while I've found it to be more useful than Technorati (by a loooooong shot), but others may disagree.

In my experience, Technorati's links are often incorrect, weeks or sometimes months late, usually spam, and never useful. Google Blogsearch, on the other hand, has yet to give me any incorrect links and the spam ratio is pretty low (again, only in my experience). Using a link:yourblog.com seems to work very well indeed.

I just put it out there for discussion and comment. And in case anybody wants to try it for themselves. :)

Also, no need for this to be considered for the upcoming releases. Push it back, think about it a while.

How about my attached patch, which adds a filter for the feed path. Then the user can change the blog service.

Put a similar filter on the link part of that too, so that a plugin could adjust both. Then I think that's a perfectly acceptable idea.

This is all filtered now.

Probably should be noted here that the filters were added for #2177 by [5346].