Blogger Related Content Search Engine-First Screenshot and Review

After a lot of speculation over what "related-content.g?q=" was, I have finally come to know why a new piece of javascript was added to all the blogs hosted on blogger. Amazingly, it turned out to be much bigger a feature than I expected.

The above mentioned JavaScript is added by Blogger to create a Blogspot only search engine to enable users to search updates made by blogspot users related to a particular topic. As an additional plus, it also displays realtime Twitter updates made by Twitter users on any particular topic. It also displays related videos probably from Youtube.

Blogger_Related_Content
Edited Image of Google Search. Not actual Blogger Search

The search results page at this time is nothing but a crude HTML page clearly implying that the Blogger team is still developing it. Moreover, lack of custom styling indicates that there is still a lot of time before this feature goes public. Videos provided are still not linked but show only a thumbnail image. Going by the source code, Google real-time search has been used to display Twitter updates. Links on the result pages are dofollow without any involvement of JavaScript of any kind. Moreover, related-content.g is not disallowed in Blogger.com robots.txt implying that PageRank would certainly pass onto these links.
Blogger Related Content Search
This is how Blogger Related Content Search Results look like right now for the search term "Blogger"

To see this in action, type http://blogger.com/related-content.g?q=[Your Search Query] in your address bar. e.g. If you wish to see content related to this blog, go to http://blogger.com/related-content.g?q=computer-help-tips.blogspot.com.

Update:15/3/2011: Yesterday on the Blogger Buzz blog, Chang Kim, Product Manager at Blogger posted this:-

We’ll also be showcasing our new content discovery feature that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you’re currently reading.
Blogger Related Posts Media
This is how Blogger's Related post and media search will look

So, now it is official that such a feature is surely going to be added in Blogger. Also, Blogger is going to get an overhauled Wordpress like layout in the upcoming months. Still feel you should be on Wordpress? Nah!

Read this on: How to get Included in Blogger Related Content Search.