Overture: Altavista renewed a 12-month contract with Overture for pay-for-placement listings at altavista.com and extended it to altavista.ca. The top three listings show under Products and Services. Overture is also used at the UK and German Altavista sites.
Overture Nabs AltaVista Contract by Christopher Saunders (May 30, 2002) InternetNews.com
Google: Google has rules about what people can say on their websites if they wish to advertise through Google. Anita Roddick, founder of the BodyShop, called John Malkovich and "vomitous worm" in her weblog because of his public threat against Scottish Member of Parliament George Galloway and Independent reporter Robert Fisk over Israel. Google removed the ad for her weblog saying "they do not accept ads for sites with any political content that could be perceived as "anti" anything".
Gagged by Google: Body Shop founder censored by search engine by Laura Flanders. (May 30, 2002) Workingforchange.com
PDF Files: Greg Notess has identified that AlltheWeb indexes all of a pdf file, and Google only indexes the first 120K. -- AllTheWeb Does PDFs by Greg Notess. Search Engine Showdown (May 18, 2002)
Search Software: FirstStopWebSearch is a new desktop meta-search software package. Standard free version comes with 16 engines and the user can add others, keeps a search history and saves results. Deluxe has 50+ engines and has advanced filtering. Lastly, the Visual version shows results as thumbnails of the pages. Sounds promising - but I haven't tried it yet.
http://www.firststopwebsearch.com/index.html
Future of the Net: There is more to come in our mobile, wireless, networked, and converged content lives. From the mIT Technology Review -- ""Ubiquitous,” “pervasive” or “embedded” computing—is hardly new. But it is gaining momentum."
"At first blush, it might seem that computing is already ubiquitous. After all, the World Wide Web transformed the Internet from the province of academic scientists into history’s biggest town library, village marketplace and sidewalk soapbox. Now, though, software designers, including several members of this year’s TR100, are turning the Internet and the Web into the media we’ll use to stay connected, share our favorite content, tap into distant computing resources and run our businesses—and do it all faster."
The State of Information Technology: Computing power will fade into the woodwork. by Wade Roush. Technology Review (May 20, 2002)
Browser: A positive article from Reuters about Netscape 7.0 says it is manages information better and might be faster than Netscape 6.0. Also it is said to be aimed at the consumer rather than the developer. (Frankly, any product with low market share should consider the consumer first and the developers will follow.) Does this mean the browser wars are back? No - not until AOL supports Netscape, its own product, by dropping Internet Explorer
New Netscape may revive browser battle. USAToday (May 23, 2002)
Health Online Pew Internet and American Life Project looks at use of health information online in the US.
"In a national survey conducted March 1-31, 2002, the Pew Internet Project found that 62% of Internet users, or 73 million people in the United States, have gone online in search of health information. For shorthand purposes, we call them "health seekers" throughout this report. About 6 million Americans go online for medical advice on a typical day. That means more people go online for medical advice on any given day than actually visit health professionals, according to figures provided by the American Medical Association. "
But health seekers don't necessarily check source, currency, and other criteria for quality of information.
Vital Decisions: How Internet users decide what information to trust when they or their loved ones are sick Pew Internet & American Life (May 22, 2002)
Browser There's a Netscape 7.0 in beta. PC World does the review.
First Look at Netscape 7.0: A Good Start by Tom Spring in PCWorld (May 22, 2002) -- "Preview of update reveals niceties, including e-mail management tools, tabbed browsing, and site icons." Also see Netscape 7: Nice, but I'll stay with IE. Here's why by Dave Coursey, AnchorDesk (May 23) - says some new features are lifted from Opera. On the whole, however, "not earth-shattering".
Google Toolbar More description of the new features to the Google toolbar from Chris Sherman: combined search, browser control (helps kill pop-ups), navigation control.
Google's Gaggle of New Goodies Chris Sherman (May 22,2002) SearchDay
Google Labs Tara Calishain tried out some of the stuff at the new Google labs - labs.google.com. It's a tech playground - there are four demos - nothing in production yet.
Google Opens Up Google Labs... by Tara Calishain (May 21, 2002)
Paul Festa writes about more add-ons to the Google toolbar to help in navigation and combined search. Already the toolbar is available in 20 languages.
Google ushers Web surfers into labs By Paul Festa at CNet (May 21, 2002) MSNBC
Web Stats Measures of search hours are now available from Nielsen Net Ratings and Jupiter Media Metrix. As reported at SearchEngineWatch, home and work users in the US spent 12.9 million hours in March at Google, 5.4 at Yahoo, and 4.9 at MSN. AOL (4.3) and AJ (2.2) were in 4th and 5th positions.
Google Tops In "Search Hours" Ratings by Danny Sulllivan (May 13, 2002)
Web Stats Traffic to the three top search sites increased again - MSN up 16% to 42.4 million, Yahoo at 20% to 38.4 million, and Google (the true search sites) up 54% to 34.2 million. AOL dropped to fourth position, nudged out by Google on its way upwards.
Search.com, owned by CNet, also saw an increase to 4.1 million visitors. It is looking fresher and may have received a facelift. But it still doesn't search CBC although CBC is listed in the news category. Hotbot decreased 21% to 2.3 million visitors. Hotbot offers the most of the Inktomi-based search engines but is underappreciated.
More interesting tidbits about the growth of other sites - mainly of the shopping variety - may be found in this article ...
Giants Of Web Search Services Experience Rapid Audience Growth, According To Media Metrix April 2002 Internet Ratings (May 15, 2002) Jupiter Media Metrix
Yahoo and Premium Content Yahoo News will be picking up some stories from the New York Times archinve and offering them at $2.50 US.
Yahoo! to Pipe Premium NYTimes.com by Erin Joyce (May 16, 2002) Silicon Alley News.
AlltheWeb Without any fanfare at all, AlltheWeb has made changes to its search service. There is a new look - very clean and sharp. Options for searching are tabs across the top - Web, News, Pictures, Videos, MP3, and FTP files - a popular and useful design. On the results page the topic groupings (FAST Topics) are on the right side. There are ads - sponsored listings and small images - and they don't seem to slow down loading the page. AlltheWeb says we should look for more changes soon. AlltheWeb - What's New (May 7, 2002)
Gary Price reported that AlltheWeb is now indexing pdf files. Yes - the easiest way to find these is to use the Advanced Search and do a must include pdf in the URL. For example: Must Include pdf in URL and Must Include "web search" in Text. One can also use FAST's search commands in the simple search box: "web search" url.all:pdf
FAST has several field commands which now seem to be working (they didn't a couple of months ago). There are several options for searching the URL - by top level domain, domain, host, or just word. See the Help page under Special Features.
AlltheWeb displays the search input form and current query at the bottom of the results. This makes it very easy to modify the search and is one of AlltheWeb's nicest features.
Data Visualization at NLM The US National Library of Medicine will be using Antarcti.ca information visualization tools to enhance searching DIRLINE (Directory of Information Resources Online). "Research demonstrates that maps communicate more information than any other display technique," says Antarcti.ca founder Tim Bray, "Timely access to relevant information is the core of effective research and there is no where that is more critical than in healthcare."
National Library Of Medicine Selects Antarcti.ca Systems (May 15, 2002) Internet Wire
Lycos Email Terra Lycos is following the other web mail providers and offering a for-fee email service. "Among the features Lycos Mail Plus users receive: are: 25MB of storage; POP3 e-mail access (which allows users to tap their account from Outlook and Eudora and other applications); and no banner ads. The annual cost is $19.95. "
Terra Lycos Delivers Paid e-Mail Services bty Colin Haley (May 15, 2002) boston.internet.com
KillerInfo KillerInfo (www.killerinfo.com) is a new meta-search engine that clusters results into more specific aspects of the topic. It uses Vivisimo's technology to create the "category guide" from the search set. It pulls these results from two databases: one with "13,000 special interest directories", and the other with paid inclusion listings called Killer Sites. It appears to pick up results from ALtavista, MSN, Open Directory (OD), Yahoo and to look for ANY of the words. The Help page indicates that one can search host: and title: It has a quick peek feature.
New Search Engine KillerInfo.com Launches With Breakthrough Tool For Easy Searching (May 15, 2002) PR Newswire
Alexa WebSearch Alexa has introduced a new search service. Called Alexa Websearch, it marries the Google database to Alexa's analysis of usage patterns to identify "related" sites. Search is basic. It is an AND engine (looks for all words), accepts "" to mark words together, and - to exclude words. Front page is commercial - but that's ok. Results page shows title, url, short description but each result also has a link to Details for. This is Alexa's page with information about the site: traffic, contact information, and a list of related sites -- "People who visit this page also visit". Lastly, there are links to related categories in Open Directory (www.dmoz.org). Could work out quite nicely. Alexa has had bad press because, under the ownership of Amazon, it wasn't as carefull with personal data as it should have been. Alexa has posted information on its new privacy policy - but you need a lot of time and interest to read it.
Chris Sherman wrote about Alexa Websearch in Alexa Meets Google (May 14, 2002) SearchDay
Realnames Shutting Down The company who made it possible to type Ford in the location bar of the browser and actually get the web site for the Ford Motor Company is closing. Realnames was the first to help simplify web addresses by registering (for a fee) products and companies and connecting them directly to the website. I remember once seeing the Canadian government had registered the word Canada (before Disney beat them to it). Microsoft the RealNames service to interpret searches entered in the address bar. Several search engines also referred to RealNames - Altavista for one. Today there is less need because search engines have added more smarts to pick out the official web site quickly. Microsoft Internet Explorer users will hardly miss it - except for those searchers who counted on RealNames for translating Japanese and Chinese names. This, however, could shape into a major problem. RealNames has been used to convert internationalized domain names or IDNs which contain non-ASCII characters into IP numbers that can be recognized on the Internet.
Netscape and AOL use their own keyword system - it continues.
RealNames online 'keyword' system shuts down (May 13, 2002) AP in USA Today
RealNames Shuts Down, Blaming Microsoft by Brian Morrissey (May 13, 2002) ISP News
RealNames shutdown threatens Asian naming market (May 14, 2002) CompuWire
Altavista Altavista has announced that it expanded its multimedia collection by 73% and is making its news-related photos and images immediately searchable. More is always better. Enter a query at www.altavista.com and click on the Image tab or go directly to www.altavista.com/sites/search/simage. The page shows recent searches by users for images, audio, and video. No doubt the collection is better - but on May 13th 2002 I couldn't find a photo of Fidel Castro and former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, shaking hands.
Teoma Luke warm review of Teoma. Does say that its database has about 200 million URLs. Paul Gardi, the VP, says "But if you're researching a really meaty, broad subject, we're the only technology that can find these kinds of pages."
Teoma Challenges Google by Pointing to Expert Sites by Doug Bedell (May 9, 2002) ECommerce Times
BBC Search Engine Neil McIntosh at the Guardian questions how altruistic BBC really was in introducing a search engine for the UK. His tests show that BBCi gives preference to its own sites . McIntosh compared searches at BBCi, which uses the Google database, to Google.co.uk. He concludes "The corporation will need to tread very carefully not to cause further outcry - and breach the trust of the net users it is trying to woo."
Battle of the search engines (May 7, 2002) Guardian Unlimited
Search Tools Preston Gralla of AnchorDesk ZDNet mentioned three search tools in Web research made easy: How to find and store info (May 2, 2002): NetroSnooper, NetKnowledge Tools, and PC Magazine's Site Snagger. Readers recommend their favourite tools in the TalkBack forum. Most popular seemed to be Surfsaver for saving web pages and searching them.
Semantic Web The Languages of the Semantic Web by Uche Ogbuji June 2002 - I think a person could know what the Semantic Web is and have some idea of what's involved in creating it after reading this article.
"The Semantic Web is a vision of a next-generation network that lets content publishers provide notations designed to express a crude "meaning" of the page, instead of merely dumping arbitrary text onto a page. Autonomous agent software can then use this information to organize and filter data to meet the user's needs." But it's a long way off.
Excite Infospace has launched its new meta-search promised for the excite.com site. After the demise of Excite and its resurrection under Infospace, Web search results had been only from Overture. Now they are drawn from Altavista, Ask Jeeves,Inktomi, About.com, Looksmart, FindWhat and Overture - or so it is stated at the web site. The press release also mentioned Fast, Open Directory, and Sprinks (would be part of About.com). Unfortunately, the source of the results is never given.
A search for forensic anthropology produces the same top two results at Excite.com as at Overture.com and there are several other matches on the first page though not in the same order. My guess is that these results are mainly from Inktomi via Overture (Overture draws from Inktomi when it doesn't have pay-for-placement entries. Digital cameras is a better test since we know there will be pay-for-placement entries. The first five results at Excite match the first five at Overture - but Excite doesn't show the bidding amounts or give any indication that they are PPC.
ADDENDUM: The URL for Excite's link does give some clues. On May 24, many results for the "forensic anthropology" were coming from excite.directhit.com (actually the AskJeeves database) and Overture.
Press release stated, ""Today's launch demonstrates our commitment to bringing together the best search results from many of the leading search engines, editorial Web directories and pay-for-performance properties in one convenient location on the Web for Internet users," said York Baur, InfoSpace executive vice president, wireline and broadband. "Our meta-search technology uniquely positions us in the marketplace both from a product and business perspective as it is a winning proposition for the Excite and WebCrawler user, as well as our other search relationships, and for InfoSpace." They hope to restore Excite to "its former glory". I don't think so - not by a long shot.
InfoSpace Launches Next Generation Meta-Search Product (May 6) Business Wire at Moneycentral.msn.com.
Weblogs Business pros flock to Weblogs by Martin Wolk at MSNBC News (April 15, 2002). Positive article about using weblogs for business purposes. Says it increases worker efficiency and is a good way for spreading information.
"Journalists use weblogs to build and maintain an audience. Lawyers use them to discuss cases in the news. Educators use them to encourage class participation and offer resources to students"
Google and Web Services Perhaps Google's release of the Application Programming Interface (API) will be the model for building web services. Ben Heskett at CNet news says, "Web services, the most hyped technology trend in a beleaguered tech industry these days, are meant to allow businesses with different computing systems to more easily interact and conduct transactions. What separates Google's Web services approach from those of larger technology companies is that the search specialist has attempted to inspire developers through a relatively simple tool: an API that lets a developer tap into its search franchise. " -- good article on possible direction for web services and the companies involved.
Search for Web services leads to Google by Ben Heskett (May 6, 2002) CNet News
Lycos Terra Lycos is running a new ad campaign for its portal -- ""We're positioning Lycos as a site for explorers, people continually seeking to learn and grow," said a site spokesman. "It enriches their everyday lives, helps them to discover new adventures through many worlds, that there's rich and varied content you can discover through sites." " OK
Terra Lycos Launches $6 Million Campaign (May 3) Christopher Saunders. Internet News.
New search engine for UK BBC has launched a new search engine BBCi Search at bbc.co.uk which is to be UK-focused giving priority to UK and European sites. It is largely intended for new users, will be "family friendly", and will not have paid-for results. It searches the Web and BBC News and Sports, and will indicate sites that are recommended by BBC editors. Web results are from an optimized version of Google.
Competitors E-Spotting, Overture, Ask Jeeves, and Altavista are likely to be unhappy with the competition - says the Media Guardian. They do have paid-for results. BBC based its venture on a survey it did that found that 90% of the respondents would prefer unbiased search. The Independent wonders why - when there is a google.uk - and being in the search business costs a lot of money, money which in this case is funded through public license fees in the UK.
However, adding the search facility does make the BBC website more desirable as a starting point. Searching is straightforward. The help page doesn't have much information but my tests indicate that the Google commands work: OR -- provence (marigolds OR petunias); intitle -- intitle:provence wine; inurl -- inurl:provence pension. Site also works -- site:.fr provence.
Very nice - we'll have to watch how well it does.
BBC launches net search engine (May 2, 2002) BBC News
BBC angers rivals by launching online search engine (May 3, 2002) by Owen Gibson in Guardian Unlimited
Dyke said the BBC should focus on programmes, so why is he taking on Google? Search me... (may 3, 2002) Charles Arthur and David Lister in The Independent
Quigo Technologies A follow-up on my earlier comments about Flipper, the search engine from Quigo. Yaron Galai, the CEO, emailed to provide more information on the technology and the considerations that were background for Flipper. Web search engines do cost money to mount and maintain. Fair enough. We know that as more databases are added, Flipper will get better. I've posted Mr. Galai's complete response here with his permission.
"I read your short review about Flipper and am sorry to hear that you are disappointed with the search experience. Quigo is the first engine that is able to retrieve and index documents from the deep web. We focus on database-driven pages that are usually overlooked or completely inaccessible by legacy search engines.
As a company, we generally use our technology in 2 significantly different business environments. Clearly we have to generate revenues, and that can come either from the searching side or from the side being searched. So, if the searcher is not looking to pay for the search service, we have to get our revenues from those sites that are included in the index.
In a nutshell, these are the 2 directions we're pursuing:
1. Next-generation PPC - This is what you are seeing in Flipper. We index both paying and non-paying sites and rank them purely according to the relevancy of the result to the user. Our policy is generally to add 1non-paying site (or 'editorial' site) for each paying site we sign up. This
ensures that over time we'll be able to significantly improve our coverage for a wide array of search terms and provide more and more professional sources of information while being able to stay in business. Knowing that our engine does not yet provide good coverage for all search queries, we complimented it with AV results to make it more useful for the user while we grow.
2. Pure search tool - We do offer our technologies as a professional search tool for organizations that are willing to pay for the service. In this
environment, we usually index a list of sites defined by the client and obviously do not include any type of paying or consumer-oriented sites. The only example I can provide you with that is not confidential is a search tool being used by a government agency.
<http://www.govsonar.org/dwsearch/govsonar/search.jsp?query=usama>
As you can see, we index sources of information they ask us to which they deem unsearchable via regular search tools. Some of these sources are also expected to show up on Flipper in the near future. So, in order to enjoy the full power of our unique technology, you will need to be either 1) patient while we grow our index or 2) pay...
If you have any other questions - please let me know. Also - if you have any specific sources of information you'd like to see indexed on Flipper, we'd appreciate you sending them to us. As we sign up new paying sites, we're constantly looking for new and interesting areas to cover.
BTW - if any of this information is relevant for your audience, feel free to post it as you see fit. "
Dead Search Engines Greg Notess holds a memorial for the dead search engines in an article of the same name in the May/June 2002 issue of Online Magazine. It's a cluttered graveyard with rusty bits still lying around to confuse the unsuspecting - a bit like ghosts with rattling chains.
For Fee: When should a website change from being free to all or part being for-fee? What are the options? The trend to for-fee in all kinds of sites - search engines, news, and everything else - is examined From Free to Fee: The Next Trend in Web Site Development by Barbie E. Keiser in the May 2002 Searcher.
"Several readers have questioned what goes into the decision-making process as a Web site begins charging a fee for what formerly was free, including how site owners set pricing schedules. In the case of some search engines and other popular sites, target Web sites can pay to improve their positioning in search results or, sometimes, must pay to guarantee inclusion in any form. The consumer may end up paying in more than money, but in lost quality of search results. In any case, the trend is worth exploring."
Overture On the one hand, Yahoo renewed its agreement with Overture for sponsored listings for 3 years. On the other, AOL dropped Overture in favor of Google's paid listings. This article by Danny Sullivan has many links to news about Overture's adventures.
Overture Out, Google In At AOL by Danny Sullivan (May 1, 2002) SearchDay.
Online News Headline says it all -- Online Newspapers Top Local News Source On Web (Apr 29, 2002) at BizReport.
"This just in: Web surfers looking for local news on the Internet are most likely to visit online newspapers, beating out Yahoo, local television sites and America Online."
"But what is it that drives Internet users to a newspaper's online edition? Among those interviewed by telephone, 38 percent go to the Net for breaking news, 34 percent search archives and classified ads, 32 percent look for greater detail of a story in the paper's printed version, and 31 percent are trying to find information not available in print."
Internet Explorer 6.0 and Search IE6.0 has similar search capabilities to IE5.5 in quick search and autosearching but I think bookmarklets is new. See Search the Web with Internet Explorer 6 by Cory Kleinschmidt (Apr 30, 2002) at Traffick.com.
The article also mentions extending search capabilities of the browser with "a search utility like GuruNet or Zapper". Gurnet is now Atomica and is excellent - but it is independent of the browser . Zapper was a neat tool for meta-searching but is the tool supported anymore? It is still available for download but there hasn't had a press release since spring 2001.
Yahoo vs Google Google is coming up on Yahoo as the top source for search referrals. StatMarket found that while 36.4% of search referrals to sites came through Yahoo (searcher locates site thru Yahoo), Google had risen to 31.9%. MSN is far back in third place at 12.7%. In June 2000, Yahoo accounted for 46% of search referrals.
But Yahoo is moving away from its business as a search centre. That was Yahoo 1.0. The new Yahoo 2.0 under CEO Terry Semel, (previously of Warner Brothers) has been reorganized into six business units: listings, commerce, communications, media, access and enterprise.
Among these changes, Yahoo is opening a new advice service. It will close Yahoo Experts staffed by volunteers and open a new revenue generating one through a partnership with LiveAdvice. (LiveAdvice used to be called InfoRocket. It connects paying customers to "experts" by phone or email.)
"LiveAdvice charges a 16 cents per-minute connection fee for phone calls made through its service within the United States and Canada and takes a 30 percent to 50 percent commission on fees charged by advice givers. Yahoo Advice will charge the same rates, LiveAdvice spokesman Michael Fox said. "
The advice site will include "include psychic, relationship and related listings" but not adult.
Will the new Yahoo Experts go head-to-head with Google Answers? How much money is there really in this business? Should we all apply as experts and make some extra pin money?
Google challenges Yahoo!'s position as top search engine (May 1, 2002) Computer Weekly CW360
Semel rises to Yahoo challenge by Jim Hu. (May 1) CNet News.
Need some advice? Ask Yahoo by Troy Wolverton (Apr 30) ZDNet News
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