I finished adding everyone tonight to the search engine while Josh went to the New Yorker festival. After I write this post, I'm off to raid the liquor cabinet (just kidding, MIL!), relax on the sofa, and figure out TIVO. I feel like the babysitter--they even opened the freezer to show me the assortment of ice cream that was there for the taking before they left for the reading.

In case you missed the earlier post today, I created a search engine that only searches the blogs that are on the blogroll. It is in the top right corner of my blog (it's also on the LFCA above the sidebar version of the blogroll). In other words, if you search for "boobs hurt, pregnant?" it takes you ONLY to links from the 1500 or so blogs currently on the blogroll. All new blogs will be automatically added.

You should go put your blog's name in quotes and search for it. If you do not come up in a search it means one of three things: (1) you typed it wrong, (2) I overlooked you by accident, or (3) your blog is un-googleable.

(1) Correct your spelling.

(2) This is entirely possible. I added almost 1500 blogs by hand. I'm bound to have missed a few in the process. The only ones I omitted were blogs from organizations and ones that weren't ALI in nature (for instance, I didn't add the ones from "non-IF blogs from IFers"). If your blog traditionally comes up in a normal Google search, tell me and I'll add you. Make sure you've googled yourself in a normal Google search engine before you write me because...

(3) There are a lot of blogs that have inadvertently or purposefully made themselves un-googleable. In Blogger, if you go under "settings" and click on the first option (basic), you will find an option called "add to search engines" or something similar to that. If you have that on "no," my search engine can't find you because Google can't find you. If you don't want to be found and you don't want to be included in search results, don't make any changes. But if you do, make sure that option is on "yes." I'm assuming there is a similar option on Wordpress, Typepad, etc.

So go play with it. It has so many functions. You can type in key words and find someone who has used a medication or has the same diagnosis or even lives in the same city (I guess if the person talks about their city on their blog, it would come up in the search engine).

If you read a post and then forget who wrote it, you can search for a few key words you remember and find it. If you want to know who is blogging about you, you can google your own blog name. If you're writing a blog post and you want to see if other people have already blogged about the topic, you can search for it.

See--useful.

So...um...play with it and please let me know what you think. Is it helpful? Are there things I can improve? There is stuff that is out of my control--I can't remove the ads from the side unless I can prove that I'm an academic institution--but there is other stuff I can tweak. Or, if I can't, I can beg someone computer-y to help me. I'd really love to hear your thoughts.

To the liquor cabinet!