Blogs in general, and business blogs in particular got another credibility boost today. Ask Jeeves finally admitted that rumors of a purchase of the heavy hitting aggregator Bloglines were valid today. The search player “Ask Jeeves” continued it’s systematic acquisition of high leverage growth resources with the recent purchase.

What’s significant here is that all acquisitions made in the last year by Ask Jeeves (well over $500 million) have been made in properties that will significantly boost volume to it’s search engine and provide new mediums for advertising distribution. Bloglines is another purchase that fits right in with this plan.

“Ask Jeeves is, in the main, about information retrieval,” said Daniel Read, vice president of product management at Ask Jeeves in a recent article. “What we see in Bloglines is another angle at looking at information retrieval. You could almost call it persistent searching. It enables you to persistently search for the type of information you’re interested in.”

Obviously blogs fit right into Ask Jeeves acquisition and high-leverage growth focus. With thousands of words of new niche specific content being added every minute in the form of blogs, the amount and quality of information is constantly growing. Ask Jeeves recognizes the direction that the internet is moving just as Google did when it purchased Blogger.com. The net is becoming increasingly personalized and niche-specific, and the companies that recognize that will be the leaders in the dynamic interactive environment of the new internet.

It’s not just about words and ideas — profit counts too!

The first integration project for Ask Jeeves will apparently be integrating the Bloglines team with Ask Jeeves’ Teoma search group to boost the search engine’s effectiveness. But if past comments by Bloglines CEO Mark Fletcher (who’ll be joining Ask Jeeves as VP,) are any indication of the direction the blogosphere is moving then content-related integrated advertising is not far off either.

As we’ve discussed in previous articles, there is not yet a viable business model for profiting with RSS feeds. But targeted ads directly related to the content of blogs is inevitable. It will likely be the next evolutionary step in the maturation of the blogosphere into a more viable business growth channel.

Regardless of what your peers may or may not be saying about business blogging, the internet is being incrementally transformed day after day with blogs. If that were not true you would not see powerhouse players like Microsoft, Google, and Ask Jeeves pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the blogging arena. It’s the interactive connection that people have been longing for, and the “word of mouth” leverage that business owners have been longing for.

As a small business owners you have plenty of hard facts and market moves by “big dollar” players that indicate the way the 21st Century marketplace is moving. You need to either get off the beach and start surfing the wave of change now by starting your own business blog. Or you sit on the sand watching your competition have all the fun and gain more and more mind share. Don’t be fooled into a “wait and see” attitude. There is no in-between!

To learn how you can go from “blogging newbie” to business blogging master, check out the five week interactive coaching course How to Master Business Blogging.