Your Favorite Blog Comment Search Service is Gone

Backtype, everyone’s favorite blog comment search engine is no longer a blog comment search engine. This is terrible news for those of us who construct our own social media dashboards by pulling in search RSS feeds. There isn’t an alternative free service that matches BackType’s capabilities. This means that our dashboards won’t be able to tell us when people mention our keywords in blog comments.

Succumbing to Peer Pressure

Backtype has decided to throw its hat onto the increasingly ginormous pile of websites trying to be your one stop for all social media mentions, metrics and engagement. And, honestly I don’t blame them. I’m no businessman so I couldn’t tell you if the glut of similar products that I see in the same space (Radian6, Jive, SocialMention, trackur, Addictomatic, TipTop, Social Radar, Flowdock, ….) means none of them have a chance or if there actually is a niche for every single one of these tools. Maybe every single one is making mad money and it was stupid of them to wait this long. I’m just sad to lose the one tool out there that did comprehensive free searching in blog comments.

Back in the happy days when BackType and I were holding hands a lot and sneaking out at night, all I had to do was type in a keyword like “Social Source Commons” into BackType, it would search the comments of blogs all around the internet and give me back the search results with a link to the RSS feed. I could then just plug that RSS feed into my dashboard and be notified anytime someone mentioned us in the comments of a blog.

Now, not so much. Confirmed through Twitter, BackType isn’t offering blog comment search as part of their application anymore.

Sad Face. A thousand times Sad Face.

Who Will Fill Its Glorious Shoes?

Now, I have to pick up the remaining pieces of my life and start again. Sure there are a few other places that search comments but they’re all kind of lame:

• Social Mention: Comment Search
  Search results only used BoardReader, a message and discussion forum search which leaves out actual blog comments.
• WordPress Comment Search
  Awesome results but sadly only for comments on WordPress blogs
• Paid Services
  I’m sure they’re great for orgs that have budget to PAY.

I refuse to give up. There will be another effective, comprehensive, free blog comment search service. I know it.

Do you know where I can find it?