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Ice Rocket Review

Today’s blogger is thrown into a world of countless blogs on every subject, including the blogs of friends and family. An ideal blog search engine is one which is easy to use, fast, and effective at returning relevant results. Icerocket.com satisfies all of these requirements.

A blog search engine at heart, Icerocket combines a fully functional blog search with many other useful features for our typical WEB2.0 user. Based on Google’s search algorithm, Icerocket can search almost every public blog from the home screen. In the situation that a blog isn’t included in Icerocket’s search database, you can submit the blog’s URL into the box at the bottom-right corner with one click, so even in its ignorance, Icerocket has you covered. Users can also see the top three YouTube videos (by popularity); the top three box office movies; and the top three news articles, with links to the comments on each of these items underneath the items themselves, right from the main site. Icerocket also has buttons, with a striking resemblance to Google’s, allowing you to search blogs, the web, news, Myspace, or images. The search bar uses typical search commands (quotations, “and”, “or”, etc...), and after the results have appeared, you can click an “Advanced” button to the right of the queried term(s), that then gives you access to the site help, search preferences, and advanced search options. In the advanced options you can filter your results in more ways than your average blog search engine; by selecting words NOT to appear in the results, words to appear in the title or the tag of the post, specific sites to search within, the author of the post, as well as the date posted.

While searching for blogs is the site’s main purpose, its friendly look, fast response and load times, and its lack of graphical ads makes it a site worthy of being set as a homepage. Other features which sets Icerocket apart from other bloggers are its blog tracker, which monitors and records which blogs you go to and how often, and it’s free; its RSS builder, a utility that allows you to create and add RSS feeds to your own site with one click, effectively eliminating the need for a subscription tool like Google Reader, since the new posts appear on your site; Icerocket email, a simple email service with pop access, a spam blocker, and typical features like forwarding and auto-reply (the downside being its $20 per year price); Blog trends, an interesting feature that lets you search for up to three queries, including titles for each, specify a date to search within, and produce a line graph showing the percentage of posts that have the searched word(s) in them or that have the searched title(s); and the Icerocket toolbar, a toolbar for internet explorer much like the Yahoo toolbar (although the link was inactive when I last checked).

For those who don’t really know what they want to read about, Icerocket has a search cloud displaying the most recent searches right on the home page. In case you don’t like refreshing the page every five seconds to see what the new most recent searches are, Icerocket has a feature called IceSpy, which is a flash-based scrolling search cloud, allowing you to watch the searches go by in real-time and click the one that suits you. The only downside to such a feature is that you might see a search for something you find unacceptable or otherwise offensive, whereas the search cloud on the home page is filtered to eliminate that risk.

So whether you want to see what’s hot on YouTube, big in the news or catch juicy gossip on your buddy’s site, Icerocket is a fast, easy to use, effective blog search engine that’s right for anyone. It makes use of your skills with other search engines, and consolidates your social web experience into one unique experience. With advanced search features, and a familiar layout, Icerocket is sure to be a favorite among bloggers of all shapes and sizes.