Ever since I discovered Google Custom Search, I’ve been using it to pinpoint the exact kind of awesome articles, tips and tricks I’m looking for much quicker, and to increase my efficiency and decrease the time it takes me to find answers or write up blog posts.
Personally, I’m a big fan of productivity lists, how-to’s, and life hacks, so my custom search engine includes a lot of big name sites like Lifehacker, Zen Habits, Tim Ferriss’ 4HWW blog, and many more. Anytime I’m curious how to do something, like how to install a certain software application, how to improve my resume, or how to get the most out of a particular social networking site for instance, my custom-build search engine returns incredible results! And if you like to hyperlink to other resources and articles as additional support when you write new blog posts, this will serve as a fantastic tool for you just like it has for me.
I highly recommend Google’s Custom Search, and since I’ve already done the work and compiled a master list of over 50 of the web’s most credible and authoritative blogs, I’d also like to introduce my own Thrilling Blog Search engine as an open community tool for the Brazen Careerist network and the blogosphere at large. Try it out. Seriously! It provides some really cool results for all sorts of subjects from personal development to social media to finance. Link to the search engine page here and try a search for “resume,” “savings account,” or “LinkedIn” for example:
If you’d like to utilize this tool for your own blogging workflow, feel free to bookmark my directory/links page, or you can easily add it to your iGoogle homepage or your own website. Be aware that this search engine already crawls several of the most trusted blogs on the internet, but I will be adding to the sites in the future. If you’d like to contribute to the project or suggest a site for addition, you can get in touch with me but be aware there will be a strict review process. In other words, if you email me with a suggestion, you better be ready to pitch your site and why the community will benefit from it!
Here are the top-notch blogs/bloggers that are already a part of this fun customized blog community search tool:
Personal Growth/Productivity
- Lifehacker
- Zen Habits
- Steve Pavlina
- LifeDev
- Life Optimizer
- The Positivity Blog
- Scott H Young
- Duff McDuffee
- Today Is That Day
Career/Personal Branding
- Personal Branding Blog
- Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk
- Life Beyond Code
- Water Cooler Wisdom
- Personal PR
- Newly Corporate
- The Urban Muse
- PR Interactive
- Erik Folgate
Lifestyle Design/Travel
- The 4-Hour Workweek
- Anywired
- The Art of Nonconformity
- Real Social Dynamics
- Ronnie Nurss
- Brave New Traveler
Generation-Y Issues
Personal Finance
Freelancing/Entrepreneurship
- FreelanceSwitch
- Escape from Cubicle Nation
- Erica Douglass
- How to Change the World by Guy Kawasaki
- The Anti 9-to-5 Guide
- Instigator Blog
- College-Startup
- Jamie Harrop
Social Media/Technology
- Chris Brogan
- Dosh Dosh
- Copyblogger
- Tobias Baeck
- Paul Stamatiou
- Greg Rollett
- Moving From Me to We
- Paul Woods
Blogging/WordPress
Remember, this is a community project, so please feel free to get involved!
» Add a search widget to your Google homepage.
» Add the custom Thrilling Blog Search to your own site.
» Get in touch if you’ve got a suggested site that will benefit other bloggers and readers.
» Blog about this or tell your friends about the Thrilling Blog Search engine!
These are just the first round of additions to the Thrilling Blog Search community search tool. As I come across more great sites, I’ll be updating the list and the search engine tool. You can view several of my favorite blogs and suggested resources, as well as my custom Thrilling Blog Search tool on my Links Page here.
Cody, thanks for including The Urban Muse! I’m already a loyal reader of Freelance Switch and Anti 9-to-5 Guide, but I can’t wait to read some of the others!
Hey Susan, thanks for stopping by. Glad to include you, I’ve enjoyed your blog for a few months now. If you haven’t seen them already, you’ll probably benefit most from Escape from Cubicle Nation and Copyblogger
I’ve had quite a bit of feedback on this, so GOOD, I hope you guys like it!
If you like this idea, the best thing you can do to help spread it is you can just blog something simple on your website to share with your audience/friends.
I made this to benefit the blogosphere community at large. I’ve found it really helpful when searching and especially for finding high-quality, relevant outside resources to link to, so I only hope it can be as useful to others as well.
If you think it’s relevant/helpful enough for your audience, feel free to link to the Google search page or even embed a search bar into your own page! I am trying to maintain it so it stays useful and credible, but obviously I will do my best so that as many bloggers in the community as possible get a little exposure.
If you like it, plug it into your iGoogle page for a while, and see what your results are like. It’s been really helpful for me so far…
When I saw what you did, I decided to make a custom search for all of the blogs — currently 487 — monitored by http://www.iposacto.com.
The search box is at the top of the right column and the results deplay in the center column.
You can see the URLs that the custom search checks at ipsosacto.com/blog_url_list
Hey John, thanks for your visit and your comment. Glad I inspired you to utilize the custom search tool. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Cody,
Thanks for including me on the Social Media end! All of the blogs on your list are top notch. This will be a great research tool for articles or just for knowledge. Catch you soon.
Cody,
This is my first time visiting your site (courtesy of Dan’s plug at Personal Branding Blog), and I must say not only do you have a phenomenal design, but I enjoy your content. Your contribution both to your readers and the blogosphere with the google custom search is a solid one! The best part is that you include a good number of the blogs I read (though I suspect we could get together and I could convince you of about 12-15 more that would make it even more spectacular), so I don’t have to create my own.
Kepp up the good work hombre!
Thanks so much for putting this together – can’t wait to try it out! Thanks for including Personal PR.
Hope all’s going well with you!
@ Greg and Tiffany: Certainly glad to include you as part of the first batch. I’ve been enjoying your guys’ writing for quite some time, so I know your content stands up to the stuff on this list!
@ Ryan: Thanks for the compliments and for visiting. If you’ve got some worthy suggestions, feel free to send them my way.
I just want to send a special thanks to Guy Kawasaki for re-tweeting my post about the community blog search tool. Got a lot of traffic from Twitter and StumbleUpon users. Also, thanks are due to Dan Schawbel for promoting me alongside Unique Blog Design’s Nate Whitehill on his Personal Branding Blog! Check out Dan’s Personal Branding Magazine, it really is incredible.
ve had quite a bit of feedback on this, so GOOD, I hope you guys like it!
If you like this idea, the best thing you can do to help spread it is you can just blog something simple on your website to share with your audience/friends.