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How can I track blog articles about Neopets?

My daughter is a complete Neopets fanatic and has asked me to help her keep track of what people are saying about neopets in the blogosphere. I tried using NewsGator [see Searching the Blogosphere with NewsGator Online] but its search feed had too much junk included. Is there a better alternative?


Dave's Answer:

In fact there is a better alternative, and I completely understand your upset with the NewsGator search service: I too find that there are lots of junk matches in the "smart feed" capability. The new alternative? One of the premier blog search tools that's always been a go-to site for this sort of thing: Technorati.

The key is that in Technorati you can specify that you only want to have search matches with authority, or, what I specify, "a lot of authority". Let me show you how...

Go to Technorati's home page and search for your key phrase. In this case, "neopets":

Technorati search for Neopets

Near the top of the search results page is a set of menus allowing customizing results, with immediate results:

Technorati search for Neopets

Going from "any authority" to "a lot of authority" quickly shrinks the results from over 22,000 blog entries on neopets to about 185. Far more manageable!

Now, the key: notice the "subscribe" link on the right side. Search looks good? Subscribe to the search results in your favorite RSS reader (perhaps NewsGator Online, as I use) and you'll always have the latest high-authority blog entries on Neopets to read. And, hopefully, you can help your daughter be a highly successful Neopets community member!

Btw, if you're a geek, notice that you can construct Technorati searches pretty easily, by following this model:

http://www.technorati.com/search/neopets

Simply replace "neopets" with the word or phrase of choice. Want to constrain it to sites with high authority only? Just add a parameter:

http://www.technorati.com/search/neopets?authority=a7

Neat, eh? :-)

Tip 'o the derby to Steve Rubel for pointing out the URL format trick!


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Comments

how did you Sign Up neopets Beacause when I try to Sign up it always end up reading youneed to have a valid cookie

Posted by: Florence at March 20, 2007 11:42 PM

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Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

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