So - having created an account in bloglines - I set out to explore some of the other rss search engines and see if I could find any diamonds amidst the roughage...
My first step was Feedster, and I have to say I was a little underwhelmed. The site does offer a cute widget option which you can post to your own blog page (which will update your feeds for you) - but most of the hits being returned for my searches were coming from the site Topix - which I'll review below. I will say the layout was a little more user-friendly than the others - with ads only taking up the right third and banner - but the results were kinda, eh...
What I liked about Topix.net is the combination of forums and rss feed results. There are polls, wire feed for the latest news on your topic, and the feeds themselves - but what I wasn't crazy about was the fact that almost 2/3 of the page on the right is ads and self promotion...
Technorati had a strong showing - with user ratings for feeds, videos, photos, and news articles about search topics. Very few ads and a user-friendly layout. They also had a sexy live update on their topics page - which spewed newly updated blogs in a constant stream.
And Syndic8.com... more ho hum... lots of useless stats - poor layout - didnt even bother to check search results after Technocrati - because it was anti-climactic...
So the clear winner is Technorati on all levels. Topix did seem to have a pretty robust user community - but it wasnt enough to tip the balance past the poor layout and annoying ads.
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