Catching up with Google Search

My inability to have successfully found a decent mobile RSS feed reader means that everytime I have even a couple of days off I return to a bloglines account that has thousands of posts waiting to be read...nonetheless, three days later, I am finally on top of them all again.

The good news that I have returned to is that Google Search are opening up more of their data for university researchers, this following quickly on the heels of Microsoft's new Webmaster Portal. Although the two programs are aimed at different communities, they are both likely to open up a wealth of information to those interested in webometric research.

Whilst access to the search engine data is welcomed, I'm guessing that the more sensitive additional information about how search engines are crawling and indexing web pages will continue to be a secret, and such information is perceived as necessary in the scientific community if much of the research is to be taken seriously.