TailRank added a bunch of new features today in a major relaunch of the service. If you are unfamiliar with TailRank, review this post that also discusses its competitors. The basic idea is that it tracks what blogs are writing about, and who’s linking to what, to determine what the major discussions of the day are about. A quick glance at the site will show the reader major breaking news as soon as a few blogs start to write about it.
The undisputed leader in this space is TechMeme, which most bloggers check multiple times per day for news. One thing I like about TailRank is that it has a simple search function, which TechMeme inexplicably ignores. That means if you are looking for yesterday’s, or last week’s, major blog news, TailRank is the place to search. I also like that Tailrank indexes 150,000 “major” blogs, whereas TechMeme only tracks the largest few thousand blogs. This is an issue that Steve Rubel and others have occasionally discussed, calling TechMeme a “Blog Country Club” with exclusive membership.
Previous TechCrunch posts mentioning TailRank are here.