Rating Search Engines: Maggie Overfelt at Fortune tested the major search engines. Yahoo got an A and Google only a B+. Wisenut earned a D-.
Grading the Search Engines by Maggie Overfelt, Fortune (August 29, 2002)
Google Fortune takes a very close look at Google as people consider taking it public. Google now handles 150 million queries a day, works with 74 languages, has over 2 billion pages and 400 million images and its ad program has been very successful. But is Google "primarily a technology company or a marketing vehicle"? "How smoothly Google balances its clever past with its commercial future will determine how smoothly it navigates through its adolescence."
All the Right Moves by Ed Welles, Fortune Small Business (August 29, 2002): "Google has all the trappings of the hot dot-coms that came before it. But is it smart enough to avoid suffering the same fate?"
Reinventing Google by Liz Borod, Fortune Small Business (August 29, 2002): "Co-founder Sergey Brin sheds light on a new CEO, market pressures and more for the Web's most-effective search engine. " .. in which a Google user thanks Google for saving his life by returning results quickly about heart attacks.
Google in Hot Water: Farhad Manjoo of Salon responds to Daniel Brandt's criticism of Google's use of cookies and PageRank. (See August 26). He points out that people can opt to not set preferences and therefore not have the cookies. Also, PageRank is only one factor in ranking results.
Conspiracy Researcher Says Google's No Good by Farhad Manjoo, Alternet.org (August 30, 2002)
Newsreaders: People who really want to follow the news moment to moment will want to use an RSS Newsreader. Many publishers from major media news to hobbiest weblog produce their content in RSS format which newsreaders can grab. Ben Hammersley writes about his use of RSS and selected newsreaders (Amphetadesk, NetNewsWire Lite, Carmen's Headline Viewer) in this article in the Guardian -- Working the web: Newsreaders (August 29, 2002)
Search Engines" Chris Sherman commented on studies done by Infonic and Mondosoft into use of search engines. They report that search facilities at web sites are very poor and in some cases almost unuseable. In the Infonoic study 74% of test searches were unsuccessful. Mondosoft's study included big search sites and smaller speciality. They found that only 5% of searchers look at the second page, 52% of queries are one word and 12% are three or more, and 22% of searches had no results. Webmasters are advised to monitor search behaviour and results, and content producers to make their content more searchable.
Why Search Engines Fail by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (August 29, 2002)
Browsers: Can you believe it? WebSiteStory estimates Netscape's share of market to be down to 3.4% and Microsoft's Internet Explorer at 96% (up from 87% a year ago). In the survey, less than 1% were found to be using Opera. Netscape's share is higher than average in Switzerland, Germany, Canada and the US but it's still very low. Meanwhile, AOL has just released Version 7.0 of Netscape, but has not decided whether to use it rather than IE in its new release of AOL this fall.
Netscape usage down to 3.4% Computer Weekly CW360 (August 29, 2002)
AOL launches new Netscape browser Reuters in Globe and Mail (August 29, 2002)
Search Strategy VirtualChase advises searchers to "consider the source". When undertaking a search, consider the sources that are most likely to have the answer. Start with a broad search in order to identify potential sources, rather than a detailed one in the hope of finding an exact answer. Makes sense. See Research Tip: Consider the Source (Aug 28, 2002)
Portals: Yahoo, AOL and MSN are the top three portals drawing 84% of the US Internet population. All offer the standard portal features - news, search, email, groups, games, calendar - but they will need to expand into broadband offerings and find ways to get revenue from content and services. More video such as Yahoo's webcam may be the route.
Keeping Those Portals Open by Jim Wagner, SiliconValley.internet.com (August 26, 2002)
Browser Toolbars: There are many good alternatives to the Google Toolbar that may enable quick searches on a number of search engines.
- Both IE and Netscape support searching from the location / address bar
- IE has the Quick Search utility as a Web Accessory which lets you create shortcuts.
- Bookmarklets are javascript functions for search buttons - should work with all browsers that support javascript.
- Dave's Quick Search Toolbar puts the search field in the Windows taskbar.
Get the article and try them all.
Readers turn tables on Google by Henry Norr, San Francisco Chronicle (August 26, 2002)
Surfwax Surfwax has announced Surfwax Scholar for use in schools. Surfwax is known mainly as a meta-search engine but it has many other capabilities for accessing the Invisible Web, refining searches, storing searches, summarizing pages, and sharing files. The press release states: "SurfWax Scholar provides a school-controlled environment to facilitate searching the Internet, document sharing, and proper citing of sources."
Schools To Meet Internet Challenges With SurfWax Scholar InternetWire (August 20, 2002)
Weblogs NY Times says weblogs number over half a million. It mentions a few ways for searching for blogs: eatonportal.com, blogstreet.com, and blogtree.com - also some WebRings.
There is also an email service you can use to search Google. Send search query to google@capeclear.com with search terms in the subject line.
A Nation of Bloggers and Googling by E-Mail by Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell. Online Diary in New York Times (August 22, 2002)
Blog on Copyright Weblog on copyright from Northwestern University Library (Evanston, Illinois). http://copyrightreadings.blogspot.com/
Google in Hot Water: Google-Watch.com finds fault with Google for handling of cookies and the way it ranks search results. The web site is the work of Public Information Research Inc in Texas - a small firm. The president, Daniel Brandt, has written two scathing reports on Google practices. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch commented on both in his Update letter to subscribers.
Cookies: Google tracks IP number, time, and search terms and stores this in cookies - and sets the expiry date at 2038. Brandt claims that now that many have static IP numbers (broadband customers will have static numbers) it will be much easier to check Google's logs for the keyword searches of a specific ID. One does wonder why such a long time frame. Why not 2003?
Page Rank: Brandt feels that Google lets its PageRank algorithms for determining popularity of pages drive its crawling practices - so the highly linked pages get much more attention than the lightly linked pages - a version of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Sullivan takes exception to some of the broad statements and especially at the perceived importance of PageRank. Google ranks based on the context of the links pointing to a page and the content of the page more than the number of links. Sullivan also reports that webmasters he talks to are quite satisfied with Google's indexing of new web sites. (And incidentally, I am too.) However, Sullivan does agree that page-link analysis has driven people into a frenzy of cross-linking and search engines will have to find new ways to make search results useful.
Google Google has scored high for popularity in the University of Michigan Customer Index, and a study by OneStat.com, but not in the Nielsen//NetRatings findings from July 2002. Yahoo got over 44% of home traffic in the week ending July 21, and MSN around 42% but Google had only 14% - though it was in 4th place after the three top portals. (Yahoo, MSN, AOL).
Google is the Greatest? BizReport (August 21, 2002)
Scirus and Fast: Elsevier Science, publisher of scientific information, has adopted Fast technology for the Scirus science search engine. "The new version improves the user experience with more subject-specific content and features like expanded information types, dynamic teasers which highlight the search terms within the search result list, and improved relevance ranking." Scirus contains 107 million science pages.
Award-winning Scientific Search Engine, Scirus, and Fast delivery improved Search Experience for Researchers (August 21, 2002) FAST Press Release
Texting: A survey by Verizon Wireless in the U.S. found that women may prefer to send text messages over wireless connections. "87 percent of 30-to-40 year-old women felt text messaging would help them improve their personal and business communications. What's more, 80 percent of the women surveyed said they'd find their phones more useful if they could multitask with them by being able to send a text message while talking at the same time." According to the survey favourite places for doing it are movie theatres, sports games or concerts, and classrooms. Number of users in the US of wireless messaging is expected to grow from the current 1.4 million users to 15 million in 2004.
Women Embrace Texting by Bob Woods (August 21, 2002) Cyberatlas
Search Site: LLRX.com has consolidated its information on search engines on one page -- the Search Engine Resource Center at http://www.llrx.com/search_engines.html.
Most Popular Sites: University of Michigan released its American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) with a section on e-business satisfaction. For portals - Yahoo held the top, and MSN surpassed AOL. Google received the very high score of 80, well ahead of Ask Jeeves (62) and AltaVista (61). There were several popular online news sites: ABCNews (74), MSNBC (73), CNN, NY Times, USA Today. Amazon (84) was the most popular store and eBay (82) the top auction site (is there any other?).
The Voice of the Customer: Google Rules, MSN Picks up Steam, News Sites Have A Bright Future; Findings from U. of Michigan Report Released by E-Business Measurement Partner ForeSee Results (August 19, 2002) Business Wire picked up through NewsAlert.com
News Sites Beat Search Engines in Customer Satisfaction Chris Sherman (August 20, 2002) SearchDay
Commercial listings: Search engines are gradually labelling the paid placement listings but are slow to disclose their policies about paid inclusion. Only Fast really informs its users about its for-fee service to customers for more frequent and thorough indexing of their sites.
Search sites work to clean up their act by Stephanie Olsen (AUgust 19, 2002) CNet News
Online News: Nando Times will require user registration later this month. In return it promises personalization, 30-day archive, and e-mailed newsletters. This seems to be the trend. It can be an inconvenience for readers - especially if they don't accept cookies. NandoTimes READER NOTICE: User registration planned later this month
Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher identified user registration as one of several trends in online news. Other trends include charging for content, paid content networks, the digital replica editions, and growth of wireless broadband. The paid content network would make it easier for a consumer to buy a subscription to several content providers at one go. Qtik offers this service in New York - and others will soon appear. Hmm - we'll go through several business models before we find one that consumers really like.
Examining Paid Content's Future by Steve Outing (August 14, 2002) Editor and Publisher
Google: Google has some finding aids for Netscape 6.x users to use Google from the location bar, side panel, or search panel. Googlify Your Browser - http://www.google.com/mozilla/google-search.html.
Search Instruction: Internet instructors at The Montclair State University find that having students do comparative searches at web search engines and determining recall and precision helps them become better searchers and appreciate the differences among the search tools. The instructors addressed the following three questions:
"1. Do all search engines find the same information?
2. How can we judge the retrieval effectiveness of these results?
3. Why do we get different results using different search engines at the same time, or the same search engine at different times?"
So Much Information, So Little Time. Evaluating Web Resources With Search Engines By Drs. Kimberly A. Killmer and Nicole B. Koppel - Montclair State University. TheJournal.com from T.H.E. Institute. August 2002
Judging by the references to older search engines, the article is based on observations of a year ago or so but the considerations for web search apply.
Reference Tools: Larry Magid reviews reference tools on the web in A Reference Library on Disk or Online, New York Times, August 15, 2002.
Internet Use: New study for the Pew Internet & American Life Project on use of the Internet by US students reports that students are far ahead of their teachers and their schools in making use of the Internet for learning. "Students use the Internet dozens of ways to help them in school. They see the Internet as a virtual textbook and reference library, a virtual tutor
and study shortcut, a place to conduct virtual study groups, a virtual locker, backpack and notebook, and as a virtual guidance counselor when they are deciding about careers and colleges." See The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools (August 14, 2002)
Schools tells their side of the story in Ghosts of Classrooms Past: A Web Teaching Tool Languishes . Jeffrey Selingo reports in the New York Times (August 15, 2002) on the declining use of Highwired.com by teachers for classroom communication. Once a thriving Web service for homework assignments, discussions, and email, it is nearly a ghost town. There are too many hurdles: access to the Internet, school bureaucracy in updating the site, time and effort with no compensation - updates and discussion take a lot of time, and training.
Virtual Reference: The Virtual Reference Desk is picking up steam in the United States. The Library of Congress has launched an Ask-the-librarian service based on OCLC's QuestionPoint system. This grew out of the project started in 2000 called the Collaborative Digital Reference Service and is expected to be adopted by many other libraries. QuestionPoint supports a knowledge-based database for storing (and sharing) questions and answers, routing questions, and enabling online chat.
Chris Sherman featured the servince in Stumped? Ask the Library of Congress SearchDay (August 15, 2002)
Ask A Librarian - Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/
Has several categories, some with online chat times. Researcher is promised an answer in 5 days or less. Query form asks for the question, name, email address, and optionally - resources checked. Accepts Canadian and US addresses (state/province).
Virtual Reference Desk http://www.vrd.org/index.shtml
Has a locator for finding AskA services by subject. The VRD Network includes AskEric, Internet Public LIbrarian, LIbrary of Congress American Memory, ScienceLine (from the UK) and others.
QuestionPoint - Collaborative Reference Services - http://www.questionpoint.org/
Describes the service and is a resource site for subscribed members. Has presentations done at ALA about QuestionPoint.
QuestionPoint Marks New Era in Virtual Reference by Barbara Quint in Information Today (June 10, 2002)
InfoToday Conference: The InfoToday conference, held in New York in May 2002, covered tracks on "practical searching, search engines, public policy issues (copyright and licensing), competitive intelligence, preparing content for electronic publication (XML, DOI, linking, and aggregation), and Web design for info pros". Paula Hane reported on the conference, InfoToday 2002, in Information Today (July/August 2002).
Presentations are also available . Ran Hock, author of a popular book on Web searching, did a couple of sessions on web search and news search. Stephen Abram looked at Trends for Internet LIbrarians.
Web site Evaluation: We can never be too vigilant in assessing the credibility and authority of a web site. People posting to Buslib-L discussion list in August 2002 have recommended several resources for learning how to do this well.
An Educators' Guide to Credibility and Web Evaluation by University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign. Created Spring 1999. Revised July 2002. Addresses "the issues of credibility and Web evaluation, especially in relationship to Internet use in the classroom". Looks at 1. Reasons to evaluate; 2. Methods of evaluation; and 3. Teaching Web evaluation.
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/credibility/index.html
You Have Been Misinformed — Now What?: Attacking Dangerous Data by Carol Ebbinghouse in Searcher (April 2001) -- measures to take if you have been defrauded on the Internet as a consumer, shopper, or investor.
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr01/ebbinghouse.htm
Getting It Right: Verifying Sources on the Net by Sabrina I. Pacifici in LLRX.com (March 1, 2002)
http://www.llrx.com/features/verifying.htm
Web Stats: Nearly 10% of the world's population has access to the Internet. That's 580 million people of whom 185 million are in Europe (broadly defined) and 182 million in the US and Canada. Might reach 1 billion by 2005. From survey by NUA Internet Surveys and reported in the Globe and Mail.
Europe may lead in Net access by Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail, August 13, 2002
Moreover: The online news aggregator, Moreover, has changed its service to show only 5 headlines to the passing visitor. However, subscribers - (registration is free) - get to see 25 news headlines on a subject. Check the Showcase for news and login. Moreover now claims a "CI-Metabase of more than 4,000 online news, industry, and specialized sources".
Google: If hardware is your love and you'd like to learn what Google uses tune into the webcasts that Chris Sherman lists in The Technology Behind Google (August 12, 2002)
Medical Resources: LLRX Buzz picked out Medical Reference for Non-Medical Librarians as an excellent resource. Even has Evidence Based Medicine Resource for Consumers. Health Sciences Library at UNC-Chapel Hill compiled the guide.
Google Toolbar: An Israeli security company, GreyMagic Software, has identified a bug in the Google toolbar that attackers might exploit. Google has issued a fix which will be installed on users' machines in most cases through an automatic update. Otherwise uninstall the current version and download the newest. Look for version 1.1.59/1.1.60.
Dangers of the Google tool bar exposed By Thomas C Greene in Washington. The Register (August 9, 2002)
Digital Editions: E-books have fizzled but there seems to be some interest in digital editions of magazines and newspapers. Most newspapers have web sites with current news and selected articles from the print edition from the past week. The New York Times and Globe and Mail are also available online through Newsstand.com as digital replicas of the print edition at a discounted price. The service is most useful to people who are too far away to receive a timely daily delivery. Technology Review from MIT has introduced a digital edition with "unique Search, SmartZoom, Highlight, and Electronic Note features" .
Downloading Magazine Replicas by Bob Tedeschi (August 5, 2002) New York Times
On-line newspapers turn a page by Kevin Marron (August 6, 2002) Globe and Mail
While acknowledging that the demand for e-books has not taken off as predicted, Donald Hawkins thinks "reports of their death have been exaggerated" -- there is still strong potential for e-book use by students and anyone needing technical reference books. Article is a good survey of the current players and state of the market.
Electronic Books: Reports of Their Death Have Been Exaggerated by Donald Hawkins, Online Magazine (July / August 2002)
Comics too are going online. CrossGen has created Comics on the Web (www.comicsontheweb.com) and offers 100 full-issue comic books - scanned images of the pages.
Comics extend their reach on the Web by Joseph Szadkowski, Washington Times (August 8, 2002)
Search Strategies: Chris Sherman points out the dangers of the Seven Deadly Nyms in web searching. It's all a matter of words - and being careful not to be caught in homonyms, heteronyms, polyonyms - and others. Covers stop words too.
MSN Search Preview: Users of Internet Explorer can use Search Assistant (the button in the tool bar) to run a search on MSN and preview thumbnail screenshots of the pages. "The Search Preview page shows six images at a time, accompanied by brief descriptions of the sites. " (from MSN Search Assistant Help.) Danny Sullivan reported on this in MSN Adds Preview Screenshots, Ability To Dig Deeper Into Results (August 5, 2002)
For Fee: Clare Hart of Factiva predicts that online consumers of information will be paying for their content in another two years. Could be true - more services are charging a subscription fee.
Factiva CEO: News will cost in two years by Rachel Lebihan (July 30, 2002) ZDNet
Email newsletter from Bill Gates: Bill Gates and other Microsoft executives have begun publishing am electronic newsletter about technology and public policy - proving, once again, the value of the email for delivering the message.
E-mail seen sending new message as publishing tool by Zack Medicoff, Globe and Mail, July 30, 2002
Javascript links Thunderstone, a search engine often picked up by meta-search engines, will crawl the links embedded in javascript - one more aspect of the invisible web. Thunderstone Attacks `Invisible Web' With First JavaScript Link Crawler Picked up by Newsalert - July 30, 2002.
Ask Jeeves Toolbar Suddenly these toolbars are coming out of the woodwork. AJ has offers one that will search news, a dictionary, the market, and weather; email a page; and of course, search AJ. http://sp.ask.com/docs/toolbar/
Search Agents Agentland has a collection of specialized search tools - most are agents available as downloadable software. See the newsletter for July 29, 2002.
Toolbars Paul Bruemmer does a Search Toolbar Roundup at Webmasterbase (July 27, 2002).
Good Things There's a weblog where people report on good things that have happened. It calls itself a virtual sandbox, has a newsletter, and has been in existance since 2000. Check it out - http://www.goodthings.com/ CNN reviewed it in Tired of bad news? Site spreads the good (July 26, 2002)
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