The rise in interest in Google's own blog in 2006 paled next to the millions of new users of its eponymous search service, but there was definitely an up tick.

Google itself gave readers plenty more to read in the past year. For example, the company made its 294th blog posting of the year on December 30, almost a hundred more than in 2005.

This year, Google said it's likely to add a reader comment feature that, while popular at many blogs, has been missing from the search giant's blog.

"Before long perhaps you can begin leaving comments directly," said Karen Wickre, a member of the Google Blog team. "We're working on that."

Google owns Blogger, one of the leading blog creation services. But the fact that Google hasn't allowed comments left some observers questioning whether it really was meeting the definition of what a blog is.

"Without having comments open, the Google blog to me is no more than a press release using half of blog technology, and only exposing part of the heart of the real humans behind it," said Jeremiah Owyang in a posting at his Web Strategy blog, headlined "Google Misses The Boat on Blog Marketing."

Read more: internetnews.com