In my last post I described a fancy feature of Noflail Search: zero-result analysis. But to demonstrate that, I used another feature, one that’s less fancy but very convenient: the ability to search individual blogs (or Web sites) from Noflail Search. To search cookwithnikki.wordpress.com I put Noflail Search in Advanced Mode, entered Bing into the Engine box, and entered the domain name in the Site box like this:
Searching an individual blog
(The domain name has scrolled to the left.) Of course you coud go to Nikki’s blog and run the search there. But if you want to search several blogs, or Web sites, the Site box lets you search them all from one place.
Noflail Search remembers the sites you’ve searched and suggests completions as you type into the box. For example, when I type the letter c I get
Suggested completions for the letter c
because I have previously searched Nikki’s blog and Craigslist, and when I type the letter w I get
Suggested completions for the letter w
because I have previously searched Wikipedia and WordPress at large. Under the hood, when you search Nikki’s blog, Noflail Search appends site:cookwithnikki.wordpress.com to your query before dispatching it to the Bing backend. You can use the site: operator instead of the Site box, either in Noflail Search or in a traditional search engine, but you’ll have to do more typing.
While on the topic of searching blogs, Noflail Search lets you run your queries on several blog search engines. You can find those engines by clicking on the folder icon for the tag Blogs in the engines panel:
Blog search engines in Noflail Search
Bing Feeds, Google Blog Search and Technorati do generic blog search, while WordPress is the search facility of wordpress.com.
