I have previously written about the state of blogsearch in Australia and how difficult it can be to find Australian content. I’ve mentioned gnoos, the Australian Index and AustralianBlogs (more a blog directory than blog search) as being our only really viable localised search options. I’ve also lamented it would be great if Google blogsearch was available for our au domain.
Over the weekend I fell over a site called www.blogs.com.au. This site was released on April 2 this year. At present it is a customised Google search, which searches the 1,200+ blogs that are included.
Continued How Many Australian Blogs are There?
10 responses so far ↓
James Farmer // April 23, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Tragically I too have been collecting aussie blog names… melbourneblogs, sydneyblogs etc. etc. One of these days!
Meg // April 23, 2007 at 2:20 pm
James
Why tragic? Perhaps you could share
Duncan // April 23, 2007 at 3:59 pm
The figure being used last year (and I think I was using it as well) is 700,000, although prior to that figures were 300-400,000. Statistically those figures would mean Australia was under-represented in the blogosphere as opposed to many other countries, including France and the UK, where penetration on blogs was something like 7-10% of the population (raw, this doesn’t allow for multiple blogs per person) at one stage. If you check the archives at The Blog Herald (look for “blog count”) I might have posted some other figures. To be honest I don’t think we’ll ever have a real number, because how do you count Australian blogs when the domain gestapo auDA restricts .com.au registrations forcing ordinary bloggers offshore for .com and other domain names. That, and the countless millions of other Australians using Blogger, Windows Live Spaces and MySpace for blogging as well.
PS: Add subscribe to comments plugin, this is a thread I’d like to follow
Meg // April 23, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Wow, that’s a lot of blogs.
I don’t know about “millions” using hosted domains! I still predominantly get a blank look when I mention the word “blog” (but maybe that’s just the people I mix with).
But certainly I imagine there would be a majority of blogs which are NOT on the au domain, or even hosted here. But I daresay you’re correct – that we’ll never know for sure.
PS – I’ll add the comments plugin when I eventually get time to transfer this blog to my own domain (the plugin is not an option at the moment, well not that I can find)!
How Many Australian Blogs are there? // April 23, 2007 at 7:44 pm
[...] Meg asks a question right out of my own past: how many Australian Blogs are there?. [...]
Michelle // April 25, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Thanks for sharing that Meg. There really isn’t enough hours in the days to read all the Australian blogs which I am only just discovering.
scientaestubique // April 26, 2007 at 12:54 am
The majority of young bloggers I meet use an overseas hosted domain, often with no specific reference to what country they are in. It would be nice to see a similar system to Technorati’s claiming system, for Aussie blogs only.
Meg // April 26, 2007 at 8:57 am
Hi Michelle – I can certainly relate to that! There’s not enough hours in the day to find them or sort them either. Anthony (and others) are doing a great service.
Scientaestubique, they are difficult to identify, and I agree that a home grown claim system would be nice (beyond my resources however)!
brownie // April 26, 2007 at 11:11 pm
if you visit Blogshares their list has 2318 but of course it isn’t complete …
Latest blogs included in the blogs.com.au search index : The Local // April 27, 2007 at 4:10 pm
[...] means that more than 300 blogs were added during April. Which is very good to see but as has been discussed over at Blogpond this figure is just the tip of the Ozosphere with Duncan Riley saying there could be 4 million [...]