Over at TechCrunch there's a little preview of Sphere, a new blog search engine being beta tested by 100 lucky invitees. Will this be the Technorati-killer? Will this finally eliminate spam blogs (splogs, as I've seen them referred to), or get those really moronic results out of the blogosphere's searchability? Perhaps.

Sphere has a three stage approach (not unlike John Dvorak's three-tier spam filters, which allow him to "get no spam"). First, they analyze the inbound and outbound links. Second, they analyze metadata like length of posts and frequency of posting. Third, and what is supposed to differentiate them from the others, is a "secret sauce" of content analysis. Supposedly they're able to judge the actual content of the blog, which would, in theory, eliminate those fun posts like, "I have a search site based on penis enlargement that I think the whole world should look at." Time will tell if this is indeed the One True Blog Search.

Other highlights of Sphere include an index dating back almost 3 years, and a Flash and Ajax interface. Too bad I couldn't check it out myself, but here's hoping this can cut through the bad luck of other past efforts. Can't wait until they actually launch.