Metasearch: Andrew Goodman has rediscovered the meta-search engines, Webcrawler and Metacrawler, both run by Infospace, and likes them very much. One criticism of metasearch engines over the last year has been the number of pay-for-placement listings and the resulting commercial bias. Metacrawler tries to keep a balance. For queries that seem commercial (products or services eg "real estate" Toronto ) it will pick up more results from Overture or FindWhat, but for more academic topics (paleontology was given as an example), there will be fewer sponsored listings and shown at the bottom rather than the top.
Behold the Mighty Pterodactyl: Meta Search Lives!
By Andrew Goodman, Traffick -(Sept 29, 2002)
Google News: Is Google News the best in news delivery since the first newspaper went online? Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher thinks so. He says, "With the new Google News, I think I've seen the best implementation of the global newsstand to date. The service calculates what are the most significant stories being published at any given time, and ranks them according to time published, number of links to the story, and credibility of the publishing organization. It then presents them in a way that highlights news by its importance. The Google News main page is a sort of "front page" of a global online "newspaper" (or a more accurate analogy might be "wire service"), with stories placed in categories including top stories, U.S. news, world news, sports, business, science-tech, health, and entertainment."
Some important things to know:
- Google uses its page-ranking system to show the "best" stories first.
- It doesn't pick up stories that require user registration.
- It does pick up the New York Times. Google News users will see the article. If they want to see more at NYT they'll have to register.
Google News Could Change Online News Industry Here's What Newspapers Should Consider by Steve Outing. E&P. (Sept 25, 2002)
Wisenut: Looksmart has finally given new life to the ailing Wisenut search engine. Chris Sherman reports that Wisenut has been spidering the Web over the past 60 days to create a new database of 900 million pages. Plans are to make this larger with nothing older than 30 days. Wisenut used to be a nice engine because of the clustering by topic (done through link analysis) and the Sneak-a-peek look at a page.
LookSmart Revives Wisenut Search Engine by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Sept 30, 2002)
Yahoo: Yahoo has closed its Premium Document service after only 8 months. This had been offered through a partnership with Northern Light by which searchers could buy articles from the Northern Light Special Collection of 7100 publications. Perhaps this is another example of Internet users resisting for-fee services. Yahoo has been adding some other search aids - quick answers for weather and news, and distribution of Yahoo Finance news through RSS. (RSS feed was later suspended.)
Yahoo shelves for-fee research service CNet News (Sept 27, 2002)
EMail: Email could double to 60 billion message a day by 2006 according to a report from IDC. Only half will be person-to-person. The other half (up from 30% today) will be automated alerts, newsletters, and advertising - especially the dreaded spam. This report says that the web-based accounts are the main way people check email. Jupiter Research had put spam today at 35% of all email.
E-mail to Double by 2006 by Christopher Saunders. CyberAtlas ( Sept 27, 2002)
Widespread Use Despite Abuse by Robyn Greenspan. CyberAtlas (Sept 13, 2002)
Search Engines: Search engines aren't perfect. A week ago there was the story that the phrase "go to hell" at Google would bring up Microsoft, giving it a higher ranking than even hell.com. This Reuters article -- Why search engines sometimes goof (Sept 27, 2002) -- looks at how this can happen. Google and others consider in their ranking of results what others say about a given web page. It seems that many sites refer to Microsoft in the same context as hell. Knowing this, some try hard to manipulate search results - occasionally with success.
Online News: Nielsen / NetRatings found that in August 9 of the top 20 news Web sites were affiliated to newspapers. "The top news sites in terms of audience were CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Yahoo! News, and NYTimes.com, in that order. ABCNews.com came in 5th place, followed by Gannett's online properties and washingtonpost.com." Article has a table showing the top 20 with audience and time spent per person. People spend an average of 37 minutes at DrudgeReport and 34 minutes at Fox News and the New York Times.
Papers Run Nearly Half Of Top 20 News Sites by Carl Sullivan. (Sept 19, 2002) Editor and Publisher
Google News: Lots of coverage this week about the new Google News. At the Online Journalism Review Mark Glaser compares a summary by Google of the major news stories about itself vs the one Glazer wrote. Which do you prefer, he asks (though he also admits to finding Google News very helpful).
Take the Google News Challenge; U.S. Gov Pushes Broadband (Sept 26, 2002) OJR
List of Lists: Gary Price has moved his List of Lists to Special Issues. "Special issues are any regularly published special editorial content usually having an industry or company focus. Traditionally, special issues are used to drive advertising sales in the magazine, the focus of money-making in most trade magazines. " List of Lists is now part of this service. As an example, for Education there is an article from Business Week with the list of Best Business Schools. The link in this case goes directly to the article online. http://www.specialissues.com/lol/
Natural Language: Tara Calishain at Research Buzz has found a new natural language search engine. AnswerBus has been developed at the University of Michigan. It matches the searcher's question to sentences on web pages and offers 10 possible answers. It can answer questions such as "how big is the galaxy" and "what is natural language processing". It can't find detail likes jobs for veterinarians. But give it time. Background information about AnswerBus is at http://www2002.org/CDROM/poster/203/
Copernic: Copernic Technologies will be releasing Copernic Agent 6.0 in early October. This is to be a significant upgrade to Copernic 2001. The Detroit Free Press gives it a solid review. Calls it a "powerful information-management system for your computer".
Search engine bulks up to handle Internet jungle by Mike Wendland. (Sept 24, 2002) Detroit Free Press
Google News: New York Times says the new News service from Google may add to the strained relations with Yahoo. Yahoo may even be considering switching back to using Inktomi as the backup search engine. Also, Google is showing signs of becoming a portal despite their protests to the contrary. Has news, shopping (of a sort), directory and search engine. Anything is possible.
All the News Google Algorithms Say Is Fit to Print
by Saul Hansell (Sept 24, 2002) New York Times
Search Engine Showdown Chris Sherman in today's Search Day (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday) gave a plug to Greg Notess' site Search Engine Showdown (http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/) . Seems Greg has done a massive update and added a weblog. There will be lots of news here and will rival Pandia, another excellent source.
Google News: Changes afoot at Google. News sources are up to 4000. Also the presentation is new and improved. Top Stories page has the headlines with photos and links to the main newspapers all in one spot. Very nice. Danny Sulllivan in has report in Search Day refers people to http://holovaty.com/blog/archive/2002/09/19/1209 for more information.
Search Engines: Audience data from Nielsen/NetRatings on use of search engines shows Yahoo, MSN, and Google at the top with Altavista, Netscape, Lycos, and Looksmart at the bottom.
Nielsen//NetRatings Search Engine Ratings by Danny Sullivan (Sept 17, 2002) Search Engine Watch.
Web Stats: Jupiter Research finds that 35% of Internet users on the Web are using AOL. MSN has 14% of the market (that much!). Email is what they do most (93%) followed by using search engines (79%). Younger people (under 34) are using Instant Messaging (59%) and older people (over 55) are going to health sites (54%).
"Jupiter found that the online activities conducted monthly or more frequently can be grouped into the following categories: communication/community, information/utility, commerce/consumer, career/financial, and entertainment/media. "
American Surfers Keep It Simple By Robyn Greenspan (Sept 19, 2002) Cyberatlas
FAST vs Google: Google is good but AlltheWeb is coming up in the fast lane says this writer. About Fast, the search engine (Alltheweb is the showcase), he says: "But coming up on the blind side is Lervik's low-profile, aerodynamic Norwegian machine, with a supercharged search engine and a well-tuned business model that may just leave Google in the dust." It's bigger (well almost - that changes), fresher (might be), and closer (more relevant - depends).
The Search for the Fastest Engine Can an upstart from Norway outpace Google and finish first on the Web? by Ian Wylie. Fast Company (Oct 2002 issue)
Pay Per CLick: There's more to search engine marketing than signing up for PPC at Overture and Google. This article comments on CPC (cost per click at Looksmart), annual fees (Yahoo), and per-URL paid inclusion (Inktomi, Altavista, Inktomi), and a new category - XML feeds. The XML portion has some interesting figures on number of search terms used in a search.
"Approximately 40 percent of queries in LookSmart have three or more words. About 32 percent in Teoma have three or more. Ask Jeeves has an even higher skew, nearly 62 percent, because of its natural language focus. Within FAST, the database that powers Lycos and others, the average is 2.5 terms. That suggests a similar frequency distribution to LookSmart and Teoma."
The Overlooked Killer App: Paid Inclusion by Kevin Lee (Sept 19, 2002) Clickz.com
e-Books: Another article to say that e-books are slow to take off - but they will one day when they become simpler to use and an e-book can be read on more than one platform. Some books are viewable online. Coach House in Canada has a list of titles and Baen.com in the US has some science fiction.
Electronic books appear stalled at technology gate by Andre Mayer (Sept 18, 2002) Globe and Mail.
MetaSearch Engines: Daniel Bazac, a search engine marketer, ranks and rates meta-search engines in this article for LLRX.com. Basic points are good and there are many meta-search engines listed - including several from Europe. But I disagree with some of the rankings. Profusion he says is mediocre - but it is one of the few to categorize searchable databases. He doesn't like Moonmist - but it does have a large roster of search engines. He recommends people avoid Surfwax but for the subscriber this is a powerful tool with meta search, document summarization, and sharing. It's handy to have the long list but people will have to judge for themselves.
The Meta Search Engines: A Web Searcher's Best Friends By Daniel Bazac (Sept 16, 2002) LLRX.com
Domain .eu Europe has adopted a new top-level domain -- .eu. This will help companies who operate in more than one European country and reduce the pressure on the .com names and many times already taken. A New Internet Domain for Europe (Sept 16, 2002) DW WOrld.de
MetaTags: Andrew Goodman at Traffick.com says that metatags don't really figure into ranking search results and generally aren't very useful. Use of the tags is too open to spam and deception. An End to Metatags (Enough Already, Part 1) (Sept 2, 2002) But in Part 2 he reaffirms the usefulness of metadata (and use of metatags) for internal use on corporate intranets. Google Uses Meta Tags Sparingly, But Should You? (Enough Already, Part 2) (Sept 16, 2002)
Meta-Search Engines: Chris Sherman is spotlighting meta-search this week. Meta Search Engine Week! (Sept 16, 2002) He says that they are good for "quick and dirty", "broad and shallow" - and fishing expeditions in general. But they don't solve the "haystack problem". Let Chris Sherman tell you what that is.
The Big Four Meta Search Engines (Sept 17) covers the four Infospace meta-searchers: Dogpile, Metacrawler, Excite, and Webcrawler.
Thumbnails: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a subsidiary of Xerox Corporation, has developed "Enhanced Thumbnails", a visualization technique for finding relevant content more quickly. They claim that "study participants were able to find information an average of 29% faster". There is a demo with some canned searches at the site.
MSN offers thumbnails (though not PARC's enhanced version) as does Alexa. Inktomi is also experimenting with use of thumbnails for document searching. Might turn out to be the next significant improvement in web searching.
http://www.parc.com/solutions/enhancedthumbnails/default.html
Web Stats: The latest report from Pew Internet and American Life is about use of the Internet by college students in the US. The Internet Goes to College: How Students are Living in the Future with Today's Technology
"*79% of college Internet users say the Internet has had a positive impact
on their college academic experience.
*73% use the Internet more than the library for research.
*72% check their email every day.
*60% think the Internet has improved their relationships with classmates.
*56% believe that email has enhanced their relationship with professors.
*46% say email enables them to express ideas to a professor that they would
not have expressed in class."
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=71
For interpretation of significance see Web Is a Vital College 'Utility,' Study Reports by Ellen McCarthy (Sept 16, 2002) Washington Post.
Search Engines: Searches at Google and AlltheWeb are compared, and Singingfish thrown in as an interesting extra in Start your engines for varied Web searching by Linda Knapp. Seattle Times (Sept 14, 2002)
Web Stats: Cyberatlas reported a 17% increase in the US of American accessing the Web from work in August. Were their bosses on vacation? More men were on the Internet (55%) and for a longer time than women. The top properties receiving traffic weren't too surprising - the usual trio of Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo (where people stayed for 2.16 hours on average). Google, Lycos, Amazon and eBay made the top 10 brand list, but so did About.com. Why? This site seems to be losing guides - many have the revolving photo to "apply now" and the content is out of date. It bombards visitors with popups, has more sponsored listings than any other site I can think of.
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/traffic_patterns/article/0,,5931_1462121,00.html
Semantic Web: The Web and searching it is still in its infancy. Tim Berners-Lee and others foresee a time when there in an intelligence through software for connecting one site to another according to their "semantics". This is the Semantic Web. Another approach is to identify concepts - words related to each other - to create a concept map. Both method may be needed to may be needed to "tame" the Web.
Weaving A Web of Ideas by Stephen Cherry. (Sept 13, 2002) IEEE Spectrum Online -- "Engines that search for meaning rather than words will make the Web more manageable. " -- Excellent article.
Encyclopedia: Globe Technology has a new Tech Encyclopedia. http://www.globetechnology.com/site/tech_encyclopedia.html
Finding Domain Names: Genie Tyburski recommends some for-fee subscription-based tools for finding domain names owned by companies or individuals.
Wayback Compare versions of web pages through Docucomp software at the Wayback Machine. Enter site and dates, and click in the Comparison box. It's still in test and takes time to process but could be used to see changes in a company's public face or a government site's offerings. Go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://web.archive.org/collections/web/advanced.html
AlltheWeb: AlltheWeb will look for pages that have specific non-text content such as images, audio, video, java. The latest in this list are pages with Micromedia Flash. Use Altavista Advanced - http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced This facility will also be available at FAST's partners - Lycos and Infospace.com.
FAST unveils Macromedia Flash searching capability on Alltheweb and to its portal customers Press release (Sept 12, 2002)
“Macromedia Flash content is included in nine of the top 10 most visited websites,” said Param Singh, director, Macromedia. “This new, advanced search feature from FAST presents a winning solution for the millions of people looking to perform highly-specialized searches for relevant information contained with Macromedia Flash content on the millions of sites which include our technology. We are pleased that FAST is providing this functionality to further improve the user experiences online.”
Maps: Maporama is a new European service with street-level maps for Europe, USA, and Canada. It plans to cover more than 635,000 cities in more than 180 countries. Also has door-to-door itineraries for places in Europe and some in USA and Canada. Can set up a MyMaporama with up to 225 maps and / or itineraries. Details on the coverage is at Maporama - Global Coverage.
WorldWide Maps http://www.maporama.com/share/
Maporama Home http://channel.maporama.com/home/en/default.asp
See also Gary Price's Resourceshelf.
New Book New book - Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet edited by Anne Mintz. “This book is about information on the Internet that is intentionally wrong or misleading. It is about deception on the web dangerous data in your future, the age of misinformation is to come". Has 10 chapters by foremost writers on information technology and services. Web site has table of contents and sample chapter. http://books.infotoday.com/books/WebDecep.shtml
China: As fast as China builds a wall against foreign search engines, the search engines find ways around. China has been redirecting Google users to authorized Chinese services - a practice that may have some intellectual property implications. Altavista users are blocked from altavista.com and altavista.co.uk but Altavista is trying other URLs. Google created a mirror at elgooG. Then suddenly China lifted the block except for some politically taboo content.
Search engines sidestep China censors ZDNet UK News (Sept 12, 2002)
China Toughens Obstacles to Internet Searches by Joseph Kahn. (Sept 11, 2002) New York Times
China Ends Google Search Block by Martin Facker (Sept 12, 2002) AP reported through Yahoo News
Google's Back in China - Sort of (Sept 13, 2002) Reuters through the Globe and Mail
Plagiarism: Some kids look to Google Answers for the full answer to their homework questions. Teachers cite many cases where students take directly from the Internet and don't cite sources.
Thin Line Splits Cheating, Smarts by Dustin Goot (Sept 12, 2002 Wired News
Internet Essential: Yes, I'd say so. Internetnews.com reports that Study: 20% of U.S. Feels Web Is 'Essential' - Christopher Saunders (Sept 6, 2002) . Arbitron (radio audience researcher) and Edison Media Research (media metrics) conducted their biannual Internet media and entertainment study in which they found that. "34 percent of Americans chose the Internet as the most "cool and exciting" medium -- one percent less than television. The numbers were much higher among 12- to 34-year-olds, however: 46 percent voted the Internet as the "most essential" medium to their lives, while 29 percent picked TV. " Main interest of the study was in streaming media users. These people are most likely to get broadband and to buy content.
Get a Hobby Steve Bass in PC World helps us take our minds off worrying things and adopt a hobby instead. We can get ideas and resources from the Web. Home Office: Use your PC to Start a Hobby (Sept 4, 2002) "Gardening, snake collecting, sailing, music--it's time to get with it."
Browser: There will be a version 7.0 of Opera for Windows that will handle dynamic content. The Opera browser is not as bloated as Netscape and IE and therefore takes less space, is faster to download, and works more quickly.
Opera 7 Sneak Peek by Jim Wagner in Internetnews.com (Sept 6, 2002)
Browser: PC Magazine rates Netscape 7.0 as 4 out of 5. Netscape 7.0 Brings Mozilla to the Masses by Edward Mendelson (Sept 4, 2002). Mendelson concludes "you may quickly get addicted to the easily accessible features and sleek interface."
NewsEdge: Dialog has teamed up with NewsEdge - both owned by Thomson - to provide personalized news alerting and current awareness.
Dialog Launches Dialog NewsEdge Service URLWire (Sept 3, 2002)
Google: Another article mulling over the greatness and vulnerabilities of Google. Engine trouble by Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian (Sept 5, 2002)
Vivisimo Drops Search Engines: or the search engines dropped Vivisimo. Vivisimo now searches Fast, MSN, Looksmart, and OpenFind. Netscape, Yahoo, Open Directory, and AOL are gone. Yikes. The topical clustering that Vivisimo does will still be very useful on results from Fast and MSN (really Inktomi), but not having the connection to Google thru Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape is a great loss.
OpenFind is a search engine developed in Taiwan. It claims to be fast and big (3.5 billion pages). It is still very new and untested but does have some features of interest: ability to search newly crawled pages, and a mysearch facility. Chinese will like it for the Chinese content.
Meta Search Engine: Metacrawler has been relaunched and is much improved. It will search Google, Fast, Overture, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, About.com, Looksmart, Find What, SearchHippo. Only three of these are pay per click: Overture, Findwhat, and Looksmart. One can customize the selection of search engines and the display on the Advanced Search. The paid-placement results are marked (though not as clear as they could be) as Featured Search Results (actually taken from Overture) or MetaCrawler Suggests. There are also banner ads but no pop-ups..
The big change is the addition of Google which had blocked use of its site to all the InfoSpace properties several months ago. Under the new agreement, all the Infospace properties (Metacrawler, DogPile, Excite, Webcrawler, Infospace) will include, along with web results, results from the Google's paid advertising program, Sponsored Links Program. Metacrawler is the first, and the others will follow during September.
Press releases for both stories are at http://www.businesswire.com/insp/index-ep.shtml - under September 4, 2002.
Blogosphere: Greg Notess writes about blogs. He doesn't like the ones he has seen but thinks the technology might have some merit for content management at a web site in maintaining what's new pages, community pages, and any other "periodically updated page".
The Blog Realm: News Sources, Searching with Daypop, and Content Management by Greg Notess. Online Magazine (Sept 2002)
Google and China: There have been dozens of stories about China blocking its citizens from using Google. A report from Itechnology in South Africa said "A series of Chinese ministries dealing with the Internet and state security pleaded ignorance on Tuesday as to why US-based Internet search engine Google has been blocked in the country." But the BBC News merely says that there has been no official comment. BBC News has links to several other stories over the past few months about China's efforts to control net use.
China pleads ignorance over Google ban Independent Online (Sept 3, 2002)
Google fights Chinese ban BBC News Technology (Sept 3, 2002)
Viruses declining? CNN asks Whither the Worm (September 3, 2002). Research at Network Associates indicates that the growth in the number of computer viruses may be declining. Growth has been 50% a year since 1990, except for this year when it might only be 5%. Maybe all that anti-virus software is working. But the risk isn't to be ignored. It is estimated that 7% of email messages carry a virus.
Audio Video Search Singingfish is a leader in audio video search. Now the Japanese get to benefit too.
SingingFish Delivers First-Ever Audio Video Search Technology to Japanese Internet Market via Toshiba's Popular Subsidiary Fresheye Intensifying demand by Japanese users for streaming media prompts agreement with world's leading audio video search engine - Singingfish. Press Release (Sept 3, 2002)
Inktomi Sullivan confirms that Inktomi has increased its database to 2 billion. He also reports that Inktomi has added "conceptual searching" - if you look for York you'll get it and not New York or other common pairing - but it doesn't work perfectly with everything yet. See this at work at MSN Advanced - search.msn.com/advanced.asp
Inktomi Increases Size, Introduces Anti-Proximity by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch (Sept 3, 2002)
Google: More about Google! Danny Sullivan asks if Google has become the Microsoft of search engines, attracting hatred because it is seen as very powerful. Hype may be hurting Google and certainly misrepresenting its capabilities.
Google: Can The Marsha Brady Of Search Stay Sweet? by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch (September 3, 2002)
Searchengine blog: There's a new blog about search engines by Peter Da Vanzo at http://www.searchengineblog.com/ - very clean, concise, clear. Follows discussions by search engine optimizers. Delivers a weekly summary by email.
Bookmarklets Bookmarklets are bits of javascript that will do quick tasks and can be added like a bookmark to a browser. Tasks may include sending the URL of a page, changing the page look, running a search, doing a calculation to name a few. Steve Kangas has been Mr. Bookmarklet. His site is www.bookmarklets.com.
Web Savvy: Give Your Browser Special Powers "Miniature JavaScripts can enhance Web surfing--if you're careful." by Brad Grimes. PC World (Sept 2002)
Browsers: Scott Spanbauer at PC World reviewed alternatives to IE - Mozilla 1, Netscape 7, and RapidMedia networks RapidBrowser. Mozilla had a slight edge. PC World says, "If you want a grassroots alternative to Microsoft's vision of what the Web should be, this browser is it". Spanbauer had reviewed IE, Netscape 6.2, and Opera 6.0 in February - and gave IE a 4.5 over the others at 4.0.
IE Alternatives: Three New Contenders "Mozilla 1, Netscape 7, and RapidBrowser XP try to turn up the heat on Internet Explorer." by Scott Spanbauer. PC WOrld (September 2002)
Browsing & Beyond "13 must-have tools for today's Internet, including the best in browsers and add-ons, e-mail, instant messaging, and much more" by Scott Spanbauer, PC WOrld (February 2002)
CNET has also reviewed Netscape 7.0 and gave it a 7 out of 10. Reviewer liked the tabbed display of windows and the speedy IM clients but not the AOL ads and size. See Netscape 7.0 (August 29, 2002)
24/7 References Librarians (live!) answer questions around the clock by Neal Koch in New York Times and reprinted in International Herald Tribune (Sept 2, 2002). Librarians provide online reference to their public at any time of the day. Southern California has the largest library consortium for real time reference at 24/7 reference.
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