lj_nifty: Google blog search searches and excerpts from LiveJournal

Rich Lafferty's LiveJournal (

mendel) wrote in

lj_nifty,
@ 2005-09-14 10:49:00

Current mood:

pleased

Google blog search searches and excerpts from LiveJournal

For those of you annoyed at how Google no longer provides excerpts for LiveJournal entries in its search results, you'll be pleased to see that they've launched Google Blog Search. For instance, you could read about my motorcycle adventures, or see jwz curse at unhelpful people.

It's straightforward to embed a Google searchything in your userinfo or style:

<form method="get" action="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch">
<input type="text" name="as_q" size="31" maxlength="255" value="" />
<input type="hidden" name="bl_url" value="http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_nifty" />
<input type="submit" name="btnG" value="Search My Livejournal" />
</form>

(Post a new comment)

	asciident 2005-09-14 04:37 pm UTC (link)
	Rich, wouuld you mind cutting the code? It's kind of long. ;) Thanks. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mendel 2005-09-14 05:15 pm UTC (link)
	I'm not sure what you mean -- the five lines in <pre>? Or something else? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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progress, 2005-09-14 05:30 pm UTC (Expand)

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mendel, 2005-09-14 05:47 pm UTC (Expand)

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progress, 2005-09-14 05:49 pm UTC (Expand)

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proctologiste, 2005-09-14 07:08 pm UTC (Expand)

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dandelion, 2005-09-14 05:40 pm UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-14 06:02 pm UTC (Expand)

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asciident, 2005-09-14 06:30 pm UTC (Expand)

	beepboop 2005-09-14 04:37 pm UTC (link)
	big smile mannequins! i love em! :D (Reply to this)

kunzite1
2005-09-14 04:45 pm UTC (link)

ok. sorry for 3 posts of this comment. i'm still waking up! :D

var string GBSscript_url  = "http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch";
var string GBSjournal_url = $.journal->base_url();
var string GBSsubmit      = "Search My LiveJournal";
"""
<form method="get" action="$GBSscript_url">
<input type="text" name="as_q" size="31" maxlength="255" value=""> />
<input type="hidden" name="bl_url" value="$GBSjournal_url" />
<input type="submit" name="btnG" value="$GBSsubmit" />
</form>
""";

(Reply to this)

	skryche 2005-09-14 04:46 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, that's just awesome. (Reply to this)

	isidorenabi 2005-09-14 04:46 pm UTC (link)
	looks like google is ignoring no-index no-follow no-archive tags for the blogsearch feature. lame. (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	lemniskate 2005-09-14 04:54 pm UTC (link)
	definitely lame. Most of my stuff is friendslocked, but still. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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darththalia, 2005-09-14 04:57 pm UTC (Expand)

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eagon, 2005-09-14 05:17 pm UTC (Expand)

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emarkienna, 2005-09-14 11:40 pm UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-15 07:42 am UTC (Expand)

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mendel, 2005-09-14 05:21 pm UTC (Expand)

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mendel, 2005-09-14 05:23 pm UTC (Expand)

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dushtiche, 2005-09-14 05:34 pm UTC (Expand)

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moonjaguar, 2005-09-14 06:24 pm UTC (Expand)

Strange -

node, 2005-09-14 07:15 pm UTC (Expand)

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cacahuate, 2005-09-14 08:33 pm UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-14 06:17 pm UTC (Expand)

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isidorenabi, 2005-09-14 06:23 pm UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-14 06:34 pm UTC (Expand)

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mendel, 2005-09-14 06:33 pm UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-14 06:43 pm UTC (Expand)

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cacahuate, 2005-09-14 08:34 pm UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-14 08:43 pm UTC (Expand)

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tamaranth, 2005-09-14 10:10 pm UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-14 10:34 pm UTC (Expand)

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tamaranth, 2005-09-14 10:50 pm UTC (Expand)

	darxus 2005-09-14 04:58 pm UTC (link)
	How do you find out about things like this, does google have an announcement lists ? (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	casey 2005-09-14 05:15 pm UTC (link)
	They're kind of weird about announcing some features and letting others be discovered, but these days most new things make it to the Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ (Reply to this) (Parent)

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mendel, 2005-09-14 05:16 pm UTC (Expand)

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ravi, 2005-09-14 05:33 pm UTC (Expand)

	vampwillow 2005-09-14 05:17 pm UTC (link)
	personally I see this as a problem. Whereas before they accessed the HTML and found the robots.txt and nosnippet rules, now they are taking the information from the RSS feed and so have no knowledge (or need for) instructions not to analyse / make searchable our LJs. About time the RSS spec had a "no google" feature I think! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	nikolasco 2005-09-14 06:18 pm UTC (link)
	See above (no it wasn't there when you commented. I'm just lazy) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	brocklisoup 2005-09-14 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	Awesome! I've always wanted a way to search my entries. Also, I looked at your profile and thought "I know that bike!" I usually ride my dad's 86 Shadow 750. You beat me to a bike license by a month and a half. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mendel 2005-09-14 05:28 pm UTC (link)
	Hah, nice. Got a spare left side cover? :-) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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brocklisoup, 2005-09-14 05:31 pm UTC (Expand)

	excerpts of LJ posts in Google search results _duncan 2005-09-14 05:43 pm UTC (link)
	Google no longer provides excerpts for LiveJournal entries in its search results Eh? They don't? Google search: "gear even vented doesn't breathe very well especially at parking-lot" (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: excerpts of LJ posts in Google search results mendel 2005-09-14 05:51 pm UTC (link)
	Huh, that's new, too. As of at least a couple weeks ago, there were no excerpts or cached copies for pages in livejournal.com -- just the title. I wonder if it works for entries predating their feed-based indexing. (Yep, it does..) Good news all around today, yay! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	st_arbirix 2005-09-14 05:49 pm UTC (link)
	For some reason LJ keeps appending "/>" after the text entry box so that it's visible. Anyone else getting this? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	st_arbirix 2005-09-14 05:50 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, oops. I found it. The posted code includes it. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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mendel, 2005-09-14 05:52 pm UTC (Expand)

	nikolasco 2005-09-14 06:21 pm UTC (link)
	Note that this doesn't go back forever. After some prodding, I've found that my journal was indexed starting May 4^th (Reply to this) (Thread)

	specialspark 2005-09-15 04:50 am UTC (link)
	Do you know if it will ever go back all the way? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-15 07:35 am UTC (Expand)

	flatvurm 2005-09-14 07:12 pm UTC (link)
	Just a quick note for anyone interested: I generally prefer to use the USERNAME.livejournal.com URL that comes with a paid account, but Google Blog Seach appears to prefer the www.livejournal.com/user/USERNAME style if you're using the "blogurl" option or the HTML code example in this post. Word to the wise. (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

abates
2005-09-15 12:17 am UTC (link)

that's because Google mostly seems to find journals via weblogs.com, and LJ pings that using the /user/USERNAME URL.

This also may explain how posts were made public then switched to friends only were rapidly caught by Google - if Google's looking at weblogs.com every five minutes or so, and happens to spot you've just updated, it'll grab your feed before you switch the post's security...

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-15 07:38 am UTC (Expand)

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nikolasco, 2005-09-15 07:40 am UTC (Expand)

(Deleted post)

	msilverstar 2005-09-15 02:12 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, they screwed up, but my contacts there say they know it and are purging the index of the pages with noindex tags. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	irishvampire13 2005-09-14 11:50 pm UTC (link)
	Okay, this is not a good idea. There's immense potential for invasions of privacy. (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	mendel 2005-09-15 12:04 am UTC (link)
	If you're posting it to the Internet, it's not private. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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dieppe, 2005-09-15 02:17 am UTC (Expand)

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mendel, 2005-09-15 02:37 am UTC (Expand)

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anotherdream, 2005-09-15 10:06 am UTC (Expand)

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mendel, 2005-09-15 11:33 am UTC (Expand)

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original_copy, 2005-09-15 07:18 am UTC (Expand)

	msilverstar 2005-09-15 02:13 am UTC (link)
	I contacted friends there, and they know about the blogsearch problem -- the pages were left from the test index when they went into beta. It should be fixed this week. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	pw201 2005-09-15 08:20 am UTC (link)
	How will they fix it when there's no standard in RSS or Atom to indicate that they shouldn't index the page? Are they going to fetch the corresponding HTML page and look for the META tags in that? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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msilverstar, 2005-09-15 08:28 am UTC (Expand)

nikolasco
2005-09-15 07:50 am UTC (link)

The safer solution is to always post friends-only or private and then make things public manually. You can force yourself to do this by going to the console and running:
set newpost_minsecurity level
where level is public, friends, or private. You'll have to edit the entry to make it public.

Of course, the minsecurity thing might be more trouble than it's worth, depending on the ratio of public/friends-only entries ... bleh

(Reply to this)

	fatmuttony 2005-09-15 10:51 am UTC (link)
	It seems to show results only from some posts, and ignores others, though they are all public posts... Why? (Reply to this)

	ex_operator680 2005-09-15 01:46 pm UTC (link)
	1) Very nifty HTML form to my mind :) , I did not know I can insert HTML into my user infor details... 2)I also worry about the privacy issue regarding search results provided by Blogsearch service (Reply to this)

	halfawake 2005-09-16 08:18 am UTC (link)
	Just to let everyone know, Google is fixing the indexing problems. (Reply to this)

	bill_anterson 2005-09-21 05:34 pm UTC (link)
	Good news! -- Bill Anterson, Orthodontics Today (Reply to this) (Thread)

	everdred 2005-09-23 06:37 pm UTC (link)
	Spam harder, Bill! You're still nowhere near the top. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	smesh 2005-11-17 12:53 am UTC (link)
	I'm Googling (or Yahoo!'ing:) using site:www.livejournal.com and inurl:users/username. For your motorcycle it works perfect! :) (Reply to this)

	suraimu 2005-11-28 12:46 am UTC (link)
	Too bad this code is completely worthless for friends-only journals. I wish LJ had its own built-in search feature. I'd use it constantly. (Reply to this)

untypoed
2009-04-17 01:26 am UTC (link)

I'm probably 3 years and a Hurricane Katrina late (I was in it) but This is proof that Livejournal is in desperate need of a search feature. A bloging website service that has users that need to make tricks or make unreliable ljseek.com services is.. it's like a lighter version of North Korea, isn't it? It's very stupid. Livejournal has been around for years and it hasn't released a feature to allow us to search for blog entries. And I feel like I'm the only one who notices it because no one is standing up to get the developer's attention so they can finally make the feature.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	pushoffsidewalk 2009-07-05 05:51 pm UTC (link)
	I agree with you :(. I desperately want one of those search option things that actually works.. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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