Of the many blog-worthy topics emerging from the bloggers’ conference I attended on Tuesday was PubSub. We mentioned it once before. A self-described “prospective search engine,” they claim to index queries and match feeds to those queries, rather than indexing archived information. Or so said their very articulate CEO, Salim Ismail. Sounded like a great way to filter a stream of real-time information on a variety of topics, including one’s own site or blog.

However, can’t get the darn thing to work for us. Despite sending our feeds to the organization, and trying a wide variety of relevant queries, I’m not getting any PubSub love. I’m resisting the notion that it’s because I have not become a “member” yet - although this is one simple reason the matching engine might be turning a blind eye to the site. However, in theory, if the site works the way it says it does, this is not strictly speaking necessary. Nor should it be necessary to download the “always on” query toolbar. But after a significant investment of time spent examining their site and reading through an FAQ, I’ve resorted to a three-part strategy:

1. Email them at the address provided and ask what the problem is. Google and others manage to answer; curious as to what PubSub does.

2. Email the CEO, whose card I have on my desk - perhaps even including a forwarded copy of the email to the general address and whatever response, if any, they provide.

3. Join the PubSub membership list if absolutely necessary. I dislike signing up for things when I can’t tell if they actually work.

We’ll see what happens. Our little jury is out on the topic of PubSub, pending further insights/responses.

JF

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2005 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Search and SEM, Diary of a Business Blog.