Gary Price worked out all the syntax that can be used at the new Yahoo search. Web Search--Yahoo (Feb 18, 2004)
The Future Of Search Engine Technology Andy Beal WebProNews.com (Jan 29) - notes that search engines are trying to "anticipate the intentions of the searcher" but it tends to be for finding neighbourhood pizza shop. Argues that the future is based on personalization. "However, in order to achieve this new search nirvana we, as consumers, must quell our fears and trepidations surrounding the protection of our privacy. In order for the search engines to develop technology that will be intuitive and anticipate our every need, we must first relinquish at least some of the privacy that we currently hold so dear. Let’s take a look at some of the ways that search technology could improve and you’ll soon get the idea why it will require us to cooperate with the search engine providers. " Has other scenarios of a rosy future in which search improves because the operating system monitors all activities. Let's remember - all solutions bring new problems.
Searching for Personalization? Introducing goZone.com Press Release (Feb 25) goZone.com is a new search engine with some interesting features for personalization. It keeps track of search history and stats. Through myProfile one can customize the display and content somewhat and the type of sort. goZOne uses Open Project Directory as the base - sites listed at dMoz have been regrouped into zones. People are invited to join and add their own listing. This search engine has been built to show sponsored listings.
Some of the ideas seem good but the search is for ANY word, there is no syntax, the sort doesn't make a significant difference - if any at all. Not a good start.
AOL: 'Search is just a feature' by Bambi Francisco. CBS Marketwatch (Feb 27) -- AOL defines itself as a "content company". Gerry Campbell, vice president and general manager of AOL's search and navigation says, "Search is just one piece of a multifaceted value project ... We're different [in search] because of the amount of premium content and relationships that we can work with."
Gary Price interviewed Jason Wiener, CEO of Dipsie. Dipsie is working on indexing the invisible web - "We can index pages that utilize cookies, database backends, forms and client-side scripting, among others. Our scalable technology will allow us to have over 10 billion pages within our first year alone." Ranking methods will be "language based".
Capitalizing on Information by Clare Hart. CEO Factiva. Upgrade (Dec 2003 / Jan 2004) pdf file. Identifies four developments for ensuring "digestible amounts of relevant information are delivered to individuals at the point of decision" - "convergence of technology and content", "content in context", "intelligent tools", and "fast ways to analyze great quantities of information".
Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing by Frank Bajak. AP via Yahoo News (Feb 27) - Another enthusiastic article about RSS with many examples of new adoptees - recall notices from the U.S. Product Safety Commission? Good quote -- "RSS has been called the TiVo (news - web sites) of the Web, the first "killer app" of the anticipated automation of social and commercial transactions online using the Web's second-generation XML (extensible markup language) standard. "
News -- "Yahoo's new search engine trolls through RSS feeds in addition to Web pages. And a five-person company called Feedster.com is trying to build a business around customizing searches of 500,000 feeds — and then delivering you the search results in a single feed. '
Predictions are - RSS will go mainstream in 2004.
RSS: A Big Success In Danger of Failure By Bill Burnham. The Weekly Read (Feb 20, 2004) - RSS is excellent as a form of sign-up push, but there are now so many channels that the noise is deafening. How does one find good feeds on topics? Burnham suggests classification and taxonomies - but how would such a system be implemented? He points to services like Reuters and Thomson as intermediaries that have solved this problem in other fields. Would they like to take this on? Would people pay for it?
Dialog Launches DialogPRO NewsEdge, Latest in a Series of Business Intelligence Services for Small Businesses Worldwide Press Release (Feb 25, 2004) -- "DialogPRO ("predictable research online") NewsEdge is a high-value, easy-to-use news alerting tool, available for subscription at fixed monthly fees, that delivers real-time news provided by top news and research sources based across town and around the world, and also offers easy-to-use access to archives of previously reported news stories and research."
9,000 Google hits can't be wrong - or can they? By Lionel Beehner. Christian Science Monitor (Feb 27, 2004) - criticizes journalists for practicing "reportorial Googling" rather than sound research for their stories.
The crux of the matter -- "True, Google is a handy and smart website as well as an excellent starting place to gather background information or to brainstorm for story ideas (or, for that matter, a fun way to spy on friends and exes). But it's neither a scientific nor accurate tool to gauge a subject's popularity. Its data can be faulty, fleeting, and, as any doctoral student or fact-checker knows, terribly inaccurate. Not only because the search engine brings up blogs and message boards and Bob Andrews's freshman term paper on Western civilization - none of which was probably fact- or spell-checked - but because its hit-counts fluctuate faster than poll numbers in Iowa."
"Best Hotels on the Web 2003" just released by TripAdvisor (Feb 26, 2004) -- "TripAdvisor, the leading travel research site, announced today the results of a year-long study of the most popular hotels on the web for 2003. Using its Hotel Popularity Index, TripAdvisor's "Best Hotels on the Web - 2003" award ranks the top hotel in major cities worldwide, based on the quantity and quality of information found on the web for more than 100,000 hotels in over 14,000 cities." See Best Hotels on the Web 2003
weather.com(R) Reigns as the Most Popular News and Information Site on the Web PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch (Feb 26, 2004) -- The Weather Channel - weather.com in January was "the most visited news and information site on the Internet and ranked number 11 among all Web sites". Blurb says "The site helps users plan for everyday life by delivering current conditions and forecasts for 98,000 locations worldwide and providing relevant lifestyle content. weather.com averages more than 20 million unique users each month and is consistently ranked the most popular source of online weather information and among the Top 15 of all Web domains according to Nielsen//NetRatings." Weather.com is primarily for the United States. It does have international versions but Canada is not one of them
Canadians use The Weather Network.
ZapMeta Meta-Search Offers Nice Set of Web Features ResearchBuzz (Feb 25) - good advice on using this metasearch engine. It has 9 search engines - you can choose which to use - and it collates results. Has several features for viewing results and many filtering options for Advanced Search. Amazingly, it does seem to handle boolean - eg. "scenic drives" AND (quebec OR maine) - but always be careful - not all search engines can process a boolean query. It says it can handle NEAR too but only in simple queries, such as - darwin NEAR beagle. See the Search Tips page.
Also see Chris Sherman's review - ZapMeta: A Promising New Meta Search Engine SearchDay (Feb 26) -- "A new meta search engine offers speedy, relevant results, and some cool visualization features that actually make it easy to check out sponsored listings without leaving your result page. "
Sherman noted that this is the creation of a team of college students (college not named). One worry is that Zapmeta only has an agreement with Gigablast for running searches. Search engines are fussy about this and do block access.
ResearchBuzz has several interesting items on RSS this week.
- Get RSS Feeds from the Open Directory Project
- Another Roll-Your-Own-Custom-RSS-Feed: Rollup
- Feedster Lets You Roll Your Own RSS Feedpapers
Thomson ISI and NEC Team Up to Index Web-based Scholarship; New Web Citation Index to use NEC Technology BusinessWire (Feb 25) -- "The new Web Citation Index(TM) will combine a suite of technologies developed by NEC, including "autonomous citation indexing" tools from NEC's CiteSeer environment, with the capabilities underlying ISI Web of Knowledge(SM). Thomson ISI editors will carefully monitor the quality of this new resource to ensure all indexed material meets the Thomson ISI high-quality standards. "
Sortbydate makes it easy to sort results by date. This is most useful for news search and weblogs, but Sortbydate also lets you do this at selected search engines and multimedia collections. Dates on the web are very unreliable, but there are times, that no matter how poor the dates are, we'd prefer to see most recent results from a search engine first. Search engines include Alltheweb, Google, Inktomi, Teoma and Wisenut - no Altavista and no Yahoo. You can bookmark these searches for later use.
[Spotted at TVC ALert - SortByDate Helps Find Current News.]
Yahoo Keyword Density Analysis Comparison to Google Research by goRank.com compiled on Feb 17 comparing "keyword density elements of Yahoo's new algorithm with Google's algorithm".
Found that Yahoo seemed to have a preference for more words on a page and more frequent exact word matches. Google's lower figure for keyword density (2% vs Yahoo at 2.8%) may because it does semantic word matching.
Both engines care about keyword density in the title. (Google = 16.9% and Yahoo = 19.6%).
Link text is a factor too, where Yahoo may prefer less text and better matches in the links.
Bolding could make a small difference. Yahoo likes it.
AOL To Buy Ask Jeeves? - question posed by Andy Beal in his SearchEngine Lowdown blog (Feb 25). Would AOL be able to keep more of its subscribers if it owned its own search engine - Ask Jeeves for example - than letting people go off into non-AOL parts with Google? Also see Beal on Ask Jeeves Needs a Voice - good examples at how helpful AJ is at answering questions like capital of New York or "What does a dachshund look like?".
Lycos gets a fresh look By Frank Barnako, CBS.MarketWatch.com (Feb 25) - reported that the U.S. Lycos has a new layout that emphasizes the Lycos services for Gamesville, Matchmaker, Angelfire and Tripod. Terra Networks intends to make the Lycos.com homepage "a hub for personal connections, giving users a single starting place to manage their Internet experience as a way to connect with others".
It has been a long time since I last looked at Lycos. People located in Canada are forced to Lycos.ca. Lycos sites and services are very prominent. There is also a link to Bell.ca for phone products - a remnant of the old Bell-Lycos association. Lycos Topics connect to content areas. Autos123.com is Canadian, but the Entertainment is a mix - there are Canadian television listings for members, but not Movie Showtime and Tickets. Searching is no longer the point at Lycos. Advanced Search is a dead link at Lycos.ca. There are fewer search results from Lycos.ca than Lycos.com (have to play tricks with the URL to get the .com results).
Search Lycos still exists with Advanced Search and the Open Directory categories. But this may not be for long.
Marcus Zillman prefers the term "deep web" rather than "invisible web" - that mass of pages and files the search engines don't index. In a new article for LLRX - Deep Web Research - he has put together a guide to "resources to better understand the history of the deep web research, as well as various classified resources that allow you to search through the currently available web to find those key sources of information nuggets only found by understanding how to search the "deep web". " It is a list of resources organized into 6 groups - no annotations on worth or recommended use.
Ask Jeeves: What's the Future of Search? By Andy Beal, SearchDay (Feb 25) - Andy Beal asked Ask Jeeves' vice president of products Jim Lanzone about the future of search. Lanzone proudly pointed to Ask Jeeve's Smart Search as an example of improved search experience - and rightly so. The future will see us searching from anywhere - we won't be limited to the desktop browser.
New Search Toolbar Adds Visuals to Results by Matt Hicks. EWeek (Feb 24) via Yahoo News. Yet another search-engine toolbar but this one is graphically enhanced. Viewpoint Toolbar will show thumbnails of the top 5 sites. I've never found thumbnails much use but they liven up the page. Viewpoint will hold favourites and block popups. Works with IE. So far ho-hum. Won't be available until mid-March.
Ebay to experiment again with local auction sites by Ben Berkowitz. Reuters (Feb 24) via CBS Marketwatch. - May open up auction sites for individual cities.
Of interest - "Ebay, which has 41,000 auction categories worldwide and gets up to 6,000 item listings per second at peak times, will focus its investments in 2004 on its PayPal payments business, operations in China, and infrastructure, she [Chief Executive Meg Whitman ] said." EBay does not see Google, Yahoo or MSN as competitors in spite of their interest in shopping. Whitman said they were "enablers of our business."
This has to be the ultimate in saturation for articles about Google - The Complete Guide to Googlemania! in the March 2004 issue of Wired Magazine (13 pages). Read in your spare time. Does list some Google-based tools created by hackers.
KeepMedia Launches RSS Feeds at John Battelle's SearchBlog (Feb 23) - KeepMedia is a for-fee service for articles from 160 publications - and growing. It has introduced an RSS feed with the titles of featured news stories picked by the editors. Articles will be free to view. Add it to your newsreader now Featured News RSS
Microsoft unveils antispam technology Microsoft will be proposing Caller ID to validate the source address of email. Microsoft will be releasing a sender-authentication plugin to Sendmail.
"Sendmail will incorporate a "selection of sender authentication technologies" into its open-source Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), including a technology called DomainKeys championed by Yahoo and "proposals put forward by Microsoft and others", Sendmail said."
Local Search Growing, but Small Biz Advertisers Cautious by Greg Sterling. SearchDay (Feb 24) - Online shoppers in the US were surveyed about their search tools.
"64% said "search engines are better" than printed yellow pages for finding commercial information. And 52% said search engines are better than other "offline" sources such as newspapers, magazines and direct mail. " But search engines weren't better than the online "Internet Yellow Pages, vertical directories or telephone directory assistance". Author doesn't think that small business owners will flock to pay-per-click advertising at the search engines.
Content Search Adds RSS Alerts Feature XMLMania.com (Feb 24)
iUpload, a company based in Burlington, Ontario, has been enriching its content management solutions with RSS. First MailbyRss and now RSS alerts instead of the more traditional opt-in emails.
"iUpload Content Search will allow a visitor to a site that is managed with iUpload Content Manager to subscribe to specific information and have it delivered as an RSS feed. Site visitors create requests based on their interests: category, section, language, and/or keywords. Once a feed is created, the subscriber is alerted and receives any updates in his/her news reader software or aggregator. "
Copernic Launches United States Operations With Expanded Sales Team - Industry veterans tapped to further international growth for leading enterprise search provider. Press Release (Feb 24)
From the press release: "Copernic, addressing the search requirements of the small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME), today announced the opening of its first United States office. Based in Palo Alto, California the offices will serve as Copernic’s U.S. headquarters and will be led by an experienced sales team from industry leaders Verity and Inktomi. This move, the first in an expansion plan that includes additional office openings in the U.S. and Europe, helps to further accelerate Copernic’s growth as a leader in providing search solutions to the SME."
Good luck Copernic.
One in Three Americans Use a Search Engine, According to Nielsen//NetRatings PRNewswire via CBS NewsWatch (Feb 23) [Alternate copy from NetRatings - pdf file]
Nielsen//NetRatings found that "114.5 million or 39 percent of Americans used a search engine during January 2004". These users represent 76% of the US online population. They spent 40 minutes on average in the month using search engines.
Top destinations were
- Google 39.37%
- Yahoo 30.38
- MSN 29.63
- AOL 15.53
- Ask Jeeves 8.49
Online shoppers used search engines too - especially Google (36%) and Yahoo (25.3%)
Users were interviewed for most desired qualities. Not suprisingly relevancy was most important (51.8%) and credibility second (34.2%). (But it is odd that these were separated. If asked I think most people would say relevant and accurate was the most important.) Speed of results was important to 33%. Interface and design were the least important.
CNet covered the report too. Google tops the search charts By Dinesh C. Sharma (Feb 23)
LeanIndex from 312inc.com might be the solution for anyone who needs to create their own niche search engine that will also alert them to new information.
312, Inc. Launches LeanIndex and LeanSwap, a Powerful Personal and Social Search Solution for Windows, UNIX, Linux and Macintosh Users Press Release (Feb 23)
"LeanIndex personal search engine is simple to use and finds information fast. It runs from a profile created by the user that contains keywords to look for, Web sites to search, the time between searches and how the user wants to be alerted. LeanIndex only searches Web sites the user pre-selects and trusts to keep them up-to-date with reliable news and information."
"LeanIndex simplifies a user’s ability to find what they need allowing them to make better-informed personal and business decisions. Three Twelve’s LeanSwap service creates a new Web community for sharing LeanIndex search profiles, tips, tricks and ideas. “312 created LeanSwap so people searching the Internet can now find other people who have similar interests and exchange ideas, tips and Web information sources,” said Brian Neilson, 312’s co-founder and chief executive officer."
Thomas Register and Thomas Regional Launch ThomasNet.com to Provide One Premier Resource for Industry Business Wire via NewsAlert (Feb 23) -- "ThomasNet.com offers the Web's largest industrial resource, with over 650,000 distributors, manufacturers and service companies within more than 67,000 searchable categories." ThomasNet uses FAST search technology. It can be searched by product or company, and has and also offer CAD drawings.
Users Direct the Next Big Thing - Emerging technologies, such as social networks, rely on people to shape and guide them. - Dennis O'Reilly, PC World Thursday, February 19, 2004
Free Book Excerpt: Eradicating E-mail Aggravations by Steve Bass. PC World (Feb 20, 2004)
PC Annoyances is a book by Steve Bass of tips on making life more pleasant with computing. A portion of Chapter 1 about Email is available as a PDF file (12 of the 30 pages). This section covers general email annoyances and has tips for Outlook, Eudora, Hotmail. There are some very useful bits on netiquette, cleaning out viruses, handling large attachments, making URLs work, tidying up forwarded emails.
The Oreilly site for PC Annoyances has some free downloads of utilities and other helpful articles.
You've Got Spam - It clogs your computer and wastes your time. But you can protect yourself from e-mail hell. By DEREK CHEZZI. Macleans (Feb 23) - In Canada, according to a 2003 survey, people "would rather clean toilets than deal with a clogged in-box" - or so reports this article in Macleans. And there are no signs that it will get better. The CAN-SPAM Act in the United States has made things worse - Neil Schwartzman, chairman of the Canadian arm of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) said ithe US act was "horrific" - it gave companies the right to send out spam rather than stopping it. The article describes the Canadian scene - how spammers get the addresses, how they set up shop, what ISPs do about it, what the law is, and what legislation is being considered.
"It's become an arms race. "Spammers are getting smarter. They're working hard to get past the filters," says Vancouver's Jesse Dougherty, director of development for the anti-spam task force of Sophos, a developer of security software. He points to a dangerous new trend: an unholy pact between spammers and virus writers. They are unleashing viruses that deliver spam payloads, capture new e-mail addresses and turn unprotected computers into "zombie" machines that can be used to send out more spam."
Other articles included in this special report are
- 7 Ways to Reduce Spam. Makes the usual suggestion that you maintain two addresses: a personal one and one for shopping and subscribing. However, it is difficult keeping these in separate worlds. Better to avoid providing your main account when setting up registrations to use a service. Be prepared to abandon that email address if necessary.
- 5 Types of Workplace Spam
- How Spammers Find You
- Chart: An Ever-Increasing Onslaught - 60% of email is spam.
- Categories of UnSolicited Commercial Email
Suze Orman, the personal finance whiz, is a guide at Yahoo Finance with tips about income tax in the United States. Sometimes Just Trying to Save Money on Taxes Can End Up Costing You More More personal finance guides are planned - 24 in total.
Yahoo! goes 'pay for exclusion!' by Mike Grehan. NetImperative (Feb 23) -- Yahoo will be excluding Inktomi paid-inclusion URLs from its new Yahoo index after April 15th and setting up a new paid-inclusion service. Inktomi is still used by MSN and some others. Search engine marketers will need to pay to be included in both.
Smart searching from Ask Jeeves Claire Woffenden. Web-user.com (Feb 22) - Smart features have been added to Ask Jeeves in the UK. Examples are -- "“weather in Rome in May” will return weather trends for the Italian city in May, while a query for "news on Beckham” will return the latest news headlines on the Real Madrid star."
Chris Sherman gives Queryster a favourable review. Queryster is somewhat like an all-in-one engine that makes it easy to navigate from engine to engine to view results. A Fun Multi-Search Tool. SearchDay (Feb 23) - notes that Queryster can be customized to search your favourite 10 engines.
Google and Newspapers - Co-founder Sergey Brin on the evolution of search and his company's partnerships with publishers. By Carl Sullivan. E&P (Feb 17) - asked Sergey Brin about
- next evolution in contextual advertising
- text-based advertising vs online advertising (with photos and graphics)
- classified ads (Brin says that Google doesn't intend to offer classified ads. The drop in classified ads is troubling to the newspapers.)
- editorial control of publishers over AdsSense
- newspapers online - Brin said "Online versions of newspapers are great at covering and disseminating breaking news. They also do a really good job on local news and giving national or international news a local angle, as well as providing local classified listings. Also, online newspapers are the best way to stay informed about a place of interest not near you, like somewhere you used to live."
Companies needing to get control over the wash of information now available through RSS feeds may wish to appoint a Newsmaster. Robin Good has coined this term - "a new type of webmaster who specializes in crafting uniquely powerful magic search formulas generating continuous RSS feed on narrowly selected topics". The person would select the sources, fine tune the search queries, and create specialized topical information channels for distribution. The author is doing something of a riff on the FeedPaper proposed by Feedster -- "Feedpaper is a web-based and RSS-enabled micropublication on any topic of its creators choosing. " There are several links to RSS-related articles by Good and many tool sets. This article will give many ideas on how to approach delivering an information service to employees, customers, and niche communities. Robin Good also has a modestly priced NewsMaster's Toolkit.
The Birth Of The NewsMaster: The Network Starts To Organize Itself in MasterNewMedia (Feb 19)
New Yahoo really something to see By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY (Feb 22) - finds Yahoo has a livelier presentation than Google, and possibly more relevant results on some searches. Notes that Yahoo is making use of other content on its network - travel, maps, weather etc
You can compare results from the new Yahoo.com vs Google for yourself at GoogleGuy -- http://www.googleguy.de/google-yahoo/
Tourism Offices Get Web Savvy By BOB TEDESCHI. NY Times (Feb 22) -- Forget the colour brochures. Tourism bureaus are on the Web. Start with the Tourism Offices Worldwide Directory published by Brian Lucas in Winnipeg. Many countries will have pages written for the American tourist.
Blog Design at the Design Desk. (Feb 20) - says good web design has moved to weblogs. Has some links to resources.
The new and improved Yahoo By Serge Thibodeau. SearchGuild -- It's just a peek at under the hood - result ranking may be more like Inktomi than Google. Yahoo will use its algorithms to try to identify what the page is about - the theme.
Can Yahoo out-Google the rest? Engine searches for edge
By SAUL HANSELL New York Times via Dailynews.com (Feb 22) -- CEO Terry Semel says that the new Yahoo search engine is just the beginning of many changes to take place in the near future.
Of interest ...
""Personalization will ultimately change the way search is delivered," Mr. Weiner said. In particular, he hopes that by watching users over time, the search engine can guess what sort of information they are looking for - or, as he put it, "If you type in flowers, do you want to buy flowers, plant flowers or see pictures of flowers?"
Another plan is to create search systems for Yahoo's specialized areas, like finance, jobs and travel. Last fall, the company introduced a highly regarded search service in its shopping channel that lets users specify prices, brands and product attributes. Each specialized search engine, of course, also creates opportunities for specialized advertising. "
Q&A: Patrick Spain, Founder HighBeam By Colin Haley. Internet News (Feb 20) - Patrick Spain is the CEO of the Highbeam Research, a new venture that takes in eLibrary, Encyclopedia.com, and Researchville.com to form a new online research service. It has a premiums section and a free Web search powered by Fast. Target market is "Anyone doing research on the Web. That includes small business people for whom free online search engines are not suitable. Also, people working in larger companies. Companies are letting employees make independent decisions about the tools they need to help them do their jobs. "
Yahoo, Google split fuels search competition By Michael Bazeley, Mercury News (Feb 19) "Yahoo said Wednesday that it had stopped using Google's search engine and is now relying on its own technology to provide what the company called ``more comprehensive and relevant'' results for users." This may be true for Yahoo.com but not Yahoo.ca. Results from Yahoo.ca are still clearly from Google.
Easy Power Searching with Google By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Feb 19) -- "Soople is an elegant control console for Google's many powerful advanced features, bringing them all together in a well-designed, easy to use interface."
The Net Is All About Interactivity by Reid Goldsborough. LinkUp Digital (Feb 1) -- considers opportunities for discussion on the Internet citing those that have worked and those where resistance has crept in (such as at eBay). Not noted in the article is the difficulty of dealing with the quantity of drivel, spam, and porn that occurs in any open forum.
Moreover Technologies and MSN Working Together PR Newswire (Feb 18) -- Moreover Technologies, known for its news feeds on thousands of topics, "has entered into a formal relationship with MSN under which MSN will integrate Moreover’s CI-Metabase of breaking news content into international My MSN and international MSN Newsbot. "
Larry Chase's Search Engine for Marketers -- "This free service features short reviews and links to the top sites in 40 marketing categories, such as: Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Increasing Site Traffic, Link Popularity, Direct Marketing, Web Analytics, Search Engine Marketing, Affiliate Programs, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Media Buying, CRM, and more."
Yahoo! Introduces More Comprehensive and Relevant Search Experience with New Yahoo! Search Technology. Business Wire. Feb 18 - Did Yahoo release its bulletin only after the ever diligent search-engine marketers spotted the changes? Yahoo says it has begun "rolling out the new Yahoo! Search Technology (YST)" and "expects to continue the process on a worldwide basis over the next several weeks". It's possible the rollout hasn't hit Toronto yet - results from Google and Yahoo remain the same.
Other bits of interest -- "Yahoo! Search Technology is already integrated into Yahoo! News Search and the award-winning Yahoo! Product Search and going forward will be leveraged into other areas of Yahoo!, including Yahoo! Travel, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Personals and Yahoo! HotJobs. In addition, Yahoo! Search Technology will power search for Overture's algorithmic search partners and will be made available to future customers. "
MSN Newsbot (beta) has news search for Latin America, South Africa, India, Malaysia, and Singapore in addition to the UK, France, Germany and Spain. MSN Newsbot WOrldwide
Search Tips Report: Information You Can Use by Sue Eipert. (Feb 2004) -- Search Strategy Tip: where to start searching the Web - has 7 starting points.
Search wars about to get personal by Stephanie Olsen. CNet News (Feb 17) -- ComScore Media Metrix found that people use two different search engines on average each month. Loyalty is tenuous - people could quickly find a new favourite.
Of interest --
"To measure people's loyalty to search engines, ComScore compared the average number of times people conducted a search in December with the average number of searches at Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. On average, those surveyed searched 28 times in the month. Google users came closest to that average, searching the site about 23 times. Yahoo and AOL users searched an average of 16 times, and MSN users 11 times."
Market share -- "Yahoo had the largest share with 48 per cent , or 52 million of that population in December, while Google reached 44 per cent , or 47 million. MSN helped 41 million people, and AOL 31 million."
Search engines will be going sticky again. This was the principle of portals. Next round will be with personalization based on searcher preferences.
"Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Lee said that the company plans to introduce personalized search sometime this year. Such a service would likely track, with his or her permission, a visitor's physical location, personal preferences and search history to deliver more relevant results."
Google Achieves Search Milestone with Immediate Access to More Than 6 Billion Items Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Feb 17) - "Google's collection of 6 billion items comprises 4.28 billion web pages, 880 million images, 845 million Usenet messages, and a growing collection of book-related information pages."
Google, Yahoo duel for documents by Stephanie Olsen. CNet (Feb 17)
"Google said that in addition to searching a broader set of documents, its crawlers are now searching information-rich Web sites more deeply. Google doubled the amount of images in its index, for example, and updated the specialty index with a new user interface and ranking algorithm, Google's Brin said. Expansion also includes items external to the Web. Google has started adding pages of books to its searchable database, for instance. "
Google eyes a gaggle of sites By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY (Feb 18) - reminds us that Google has adopted a two-tier search where "The searches that retrieve millions of results go into the main index; the more esoteric ones go into the second one. "
Finally the wait is over. Yahoo Drops Google as Search Results Provider, Now Using Its Own Database - details from Gary Price at the ResourceShelf.
Chris Sherman at Searchday calls it Birth of a New Machine
"Today's launch is the beginning of a progressive rollout that will take place over the next few weeks. It is also the beginning of numerous planned enhancements focusing on web search, personalization and vertical search.
It's important to note that the new search engine is for web results only. Image search is still powered by Google, and News search is still a combination of Yahoo's own editorial and technological resources."
Yahoo has created a new search engine. Sherman says it indexes up to 500 k on a page (Google is 101 k), and handles many filetypes. Results are similar on common queries, but not on the rare terms. Perhaps Yahoo handles spam better.
The Yahoo Help page says -- "YST ranks web pages according to their relevance to a particular query by analyzing document features, including text, title and description accuracy, source, associated links, and other unique document characteristics. A single search gives you immediate results from a database that is updated daily to capture newly created and changing pages, including late breaking news and timely events. "
On a search for atrial fibrillation stress, results in the first 10 were the same except for one itme at Google. Rankings were roughly the same too. Yahoo had 26,500 hits and Google 39,300 - indicating that Yahoo has a good sized index.
MSN and Hotbot, which use the Yahoo-owned Inktomi, had roughly 15,200 hits - identical results - and 100% different from Yahoo or Google's.
Display is plain with links to Cached copy and More pages from this site. There is an Advanced Search for looking in title or the url, controlling on date, and limiting by site / domain, by format, by country, and by language. The Boolean OR is supported but not full Boolean. Syntax is described on the Search Basics Help Page.
For example -- intitle:"atrial fibrillation" stress site:medscape.com.
It's a good start.
MSNBC goes to the Oscars with The Big Picture: Your Guide to the Academy Awards. . See clips, make your choices. It's high-powered multimedia - very well done.
Mentioned in MSNBC.com's Latest 'Big Picture' Steve Outing E-Media Tidbits
Redefining the News Online Online Journalism Review (Feb 18) - reviews Digitizing the News Innovation in Online Newspapers by Pablo J. Boczkowski.
Of interest --
"He found that new media emerge not in a burst of revolutionary technological change, but by merging the structures and practices of existing media with newly available technical capabilities. Innovation in online newspapers is an ongoing process in which different combinations of initial conditions and local factors lead publishers along different paths.
And he found that reader participation online is changing the definition of what is considered news. "Instead of being primarily journalist-centered, the news online appears increasingly to be also user-centered," writes Boczkowski. "In the online environment, users have a much greater direct effect on the news.""
Article includes an edited excerpt from the last chapter of the book.
Study: E-Newsletter Readers Grow Itchy Trigger Fingers By Janis Mara. Internet Advertising Report (Feb 17) - summarizes Jakob Nielsen's just released "E-Mail Newsletter Usability, 2nd Edition." . Nielsen and Amy Stover surveyed 45 people about their use of email and found they subscribed to 345 newsletters. To be successful a newsletter must deliver "timely and specific information that holds users' attention".
Groxis Plugs Into Google Search at DEMO 2004 PRNewswire via NewsAlert (Feb 17) -- "Groxis, Inc., the leader in visual information management software, announced today the beta release of its long-anticipated Google plug-in, a software module for Grokker, the popular desktop search and personal data-mining tool. Available as a free beta to Grokker customers, the Google plug-in enables users to query and retrieve information from Google and visualize the results in an easy-to-navigate Grokker map."
More change at Altavista News - or I'm just noticing it. Help page says that it picks up from 7,000 sources. Good. But I see that it no longer uses Prisma Topics to create topical clusters.
comScore Media Metrix Announces Top 50 U.S. Internet Property Rankings for January 2004 (Feb 17) "On America’s Mind in January: Taxes, Politics and Diets"
"“Consumer behavior followed patterns that we’ve seen for several years and have come to expect, reflecting the official kickoff of the tax season and the unofficial start of the diet season,” said Peter Daboll, president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix. “But we also saw the effects of the Democratic primaries and unique news events, underscoring the degree to which the Web has become a natural extension and barometer of everyday life.”"
Yahoo is king - it received 110 million unique visitors in January - 72% of the U.S. Internet user population. MSN, AOL, eBay, and Google follow in spots 2 to 5.
HP to create digital archive of all Time magazines Reuters (Feb 17) --Hewlett-Packard is to create a digital archive of all Time magazines dating back to 1923. Subscribers to Time will be able to access it. This might be a good reason to become a subscriber to Time.
PC Magazine has a series of articles about spyware in the March 2004 issue. Start with Spy Stoppers by Cade Metz. Use the print version for the whole story. Opens with a warning that there are over 78,000 spyware programs, any one of which can make life with your computer a misery. Reviews several spyware programs and says that not one of them will be a cure-all but use one anyway. Sean Carrol gives tips on how to avoid spyware and Neil Rubenking lists 11 signs of spyware.
Chris Sherman finds Changes Afoot at Yahoo & MSN (SearchDay Feb 16). Looks like Yahoo is building a new index rather than simply using the Inktomi one for Yahoo search.
He also says that MSN has dropped Looksmart listings. But, here in Toronto the Looksmart directory is still on the front page of search.msn.com. There are some slight differences. The subject categories are sometimes in a different order, and MSN doesn't list as many sites for a category - but what they do list are also at Looksmart.
Search For Tomorrow by Joel Achenbach, Biz Report (Feb 16) - presents a history of web searching as background to some comments about its future. The future is to be ruled by agents.
""I often use the analogy of Web agents being like travel agents," says James Hendler, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland. "When I go to my travel agent and say where I want to go, they don't usually just say, 'Yes, you can get there.' They give me some options of different ways to get there. They think about some things I might have forgotten. Do I need a car, do I need a hotel reservation? And then they go do it for me.""
Looks to the metadata of the promised Semantic Web to make it easier for search engines to "understand" what it's looking at.
UCmore Search Engine Tool Cleans Up Image Search Engine Marketing (Feb 16) - UCMore is a search companion utility that can recommend sites based on the one you are viewing - similar to Alexa. Anti-spyware products usually identify it as spyware. But UCMore, according to this entry, has been accepted by a couple of the watchdog anti-spyware organizations.
BIGontheNet has announced the p-Zoom search engine - to be found at ZOOMstation.com. (These people need help with branding). BIGontheNet's p-ZOOM Search Engine Companion Debuts at DEMO 2004 (Feb 16) p-Zoom is a search companion that works with the browser to clusters search results. It claims "p-ZOOM is the only search engine companion that offers more than just refined search results. The user can personalize his search experience and express his moods with an extensive collection of template designs. " The folders show in the Internet Explorer search bar. Price is $39.90 US. 30-day trial. Requires IE 5.5+ and Windows 2000 +
In fact, though, the Vivisimo toolbar and minibar will cluster results at any search site. (Also for IE5.5 + and WIndows).
But the company has two other versions - sponsored and bundled. Advertisers can customize Zoom and offer it as a giveaway - hence sponsored. Search engines can buy the bundled version to sell "topic folder labels as paid keywords as part of their advertising programs. Content-targeted or contextual ads would be delivered based on the content of a folder that is being viewed. In other words, the search engine's ad system sees that the user is viewing a folder about Digital Cameras Reviews; it will deliver an ad listing that is related to Digital Cameras Reviews." Will there be no relief from advertising?
Instant Messaging Becoming a Workplace Tool by Margaret Steen. Knight Ridder via Individual.com (Feb 16)
"About 76.3 million people worldwide used instant messaging at work in 2003, according to research group IDC; about 72 percent of those were in the United States or Canada. Most of them -- about 53.9 million -- downloaded free consumer products -- such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger -- and used them for business. The other 22.4 million were using corporate products purchased by their companies, such as IBM's Sametime. "
But there will be difficulties - security, productivity, confidentiality, and records management requirements.
New Source of Online Ad Revenue By BOB TEDESCHI. New York Times (Feb 16) - Small businesses may have to advertise on the Web even if they aren't online just to be found. In the U.S. local search - zip code plus service - is gaining ground. If you're not on the list, you won't get the business. Google also lets its advertisers target particular geographic areas. Overture will soon do the same. But will the search engines ever be as good as yellow pages?
"Starting March 1, users of SuperPages will be able to perform general searches by typing in any keyword or phrase, rather than being limited to the precise business categories created by SuperPages.
According to Lester Chu, a Verizon vice president overseeing SuperPages.com, the company will also offer to let advertisers bid for placement and pay only for the ads that are clicked on. For $10 a month, SuperPages will monitor and automatically adjust an advertiser's bid like a proxy on a listing to ensure that the placement remains high on the search page. The SuperPages changes follow similar upgrades at Switchboard, an Internet Yellow Pages company, that earlier this month abandoned the category search in favor of keyword search. SBC's SmartPages.com site will follow suit in coming months, according to company executives."
Search Beyond Google by Wade Roush. Technology Review (March 2004) [Requires free registration] -- "Google reigns supreme as the search engine of choice—but for how long? A pack of startups—and Microsoft—are developing technologies to find what you want, faster."
Excellent article on the challenges of search in an ever expanding web of information. Notes that Google has reason to be anxious. Page ranking by popularity, while it was a huge boost 2 years ago, is now plagued by spammers and may also not scale well. Many are working on alternatives.
"For example, there’s Teoma, which ranks results according to their standing among recognized authorities on a topic, and Australian startup Mooter, which studies the behavior of users to better intuit exactly what they’re looking for. And then there’s the gorilla from Redmond: Microsoft is turning to search as one of its next big business opportunities. Its researchers are devising a new operating system that melds Google-like search functions into all Windows programs, as well as software that scours the Web for definitive answers to questions you phrase in everyday English. Meanwhile, Yahoo! launched its own research laboratory in January, and Cutting himself is building an open-source alternative to Google (see “Keeping an Eye on Google”). “Nowadays,” he says, “I’m not convinced [Google is] markedly better.”"
Article describes how Mooter works - a clustering search engine that learns from what you look at.
"Mooter analyzes the potential meanings and permutations of the starting keywords and, behind the scenes, ranks the relevance of the resulting Web pages within broad categories called clusters. The user first sees an on-screen “starburst” of cluster names. ... "To develop a more precise understanding of what the user is probably looking for, the Mooter engine notes which clusters and links get clicked and uses that information to improve future responses. Suppose a user enters the term “dog,” clicks on a cluster called “breeds,” and then spends a lot of time looking at sites about Schnoodles (a popular Schnauzer-Poodle mix). When the user clicks on a new search result, Mooter will personalize the ranking to reflect this apparent pattern of interest, which might, for example, lead to sites about “dogs” plus “breeds” plus “Schnoodles” appearing higher. A refined set of results appears on every page; the engine continues to adjust the rankings based on the user’s behavior."
Another newcomer, Dipsie, intends to index the Deep Web of content in databases.
Teoma has been using its analysis of links between sites to identify web communities.
Amazon Glitch Unmasks War of Reviewers By AMY HARMON. New York Times (Feb 14) Amazon.ca revealed the identities of anonymous book reviewers at the Amazon.com site. Some, like John Rechy who wrote City of Light, gave themselves healthy 5-star ratings. Others are suspected of trashing works by their rivals.
"Numbering 10 million and growing by tens of thousands each week, the reader reviews are the most popular feature of Amazon's sites, according to the company, which also culls reviews from more traditional critics like Publishers Weekly. Many authors applaud the democracy of allowing readers to voice their opinions, and rejoice when they see a new one posted — so long as it is positive."
Books aren't the only things that receive reviews - DVDs, restaurants, electronic equipment. There is opportunity for bias in all.
"The word-of-mouth advice is widely seen as empowering to consumers who no longer have to rely on privileged critics with access to a television station or printing press to disseminate their opinions. But the reliability of the new authorities is the subject of increasing debate, at least among active Amazon users."
Bob Ducharme gets a lot of mileage out of using the filetype field name at Google to track down xml files. Article has several examples of using filetype: and inurl: well. Googling for XML. XML.com (Feb 11)
A Redesign's Afoot for About.com By Janis Mara. Internet Advertising (Feb 5) -- And not a moment too soon. "Portal site About.com will undergo a complete site redesign and editorial re-packaging in the first half of 2004, according to its parent company, Primedia. " About.com's owner, Primedia, is rejigging its operations to create four business units. About.com will be part of the "enthusiast media" unit. Let's hope they kill the popups, reduce the amount of page space given to ads, cut back on the amount of red on the page, and improve the search engine. About.com switched to weblog technology about a year ago but didn't use it to improve the appearance of the pages.
F.C.C. Begins Rewriting Rules on Delivery of the Internet By STEPHEN LABATON. New York Times (Feb 13) -- "Homes could start being connected to the Internet through electrical outlets, and consumers and business may find it easier to make cheaper telephone calls online under new rules that the Federal Communications Commission began preparing on Thursday."
Search site bans environmental group's ad. AP via USA Today (Feb 12) "... Google has banned the ads of an environmental group protesting a major cruise line's sewage treatment methods, casting a spotlight on editorial policies at the popular Web site's lucrative marketing program. " It raises questions of censorship and favoritism. This follows the trademark infringment lawsuit by American Blind and Wallpaper Factory stating that only they can use the phrases "American wallpaper" and "American blind." There are also problems with displaying ads from unlicensed pharmacies.
Study Finds Problems with Access to Credible Health Information Online, Calls for More Help for Consumers URAC and Consumer WebWatch (Feb 12) -- "URAC and Consumer WebWatch (CWW), a project of Consumers Union, released a report that finds problems with access to credible health information on the Internet and makes expert recommendations for improving access to health information for consumers. " Study identified 4 problem areas for consumer access to good health information and recommended technical improvements and more education.
Setting the Public Agenda for Online Health Report PDF (24 pages) December 2003
Resources for information architects by Martin White. Update (Feb 2004) - books, web resources, discussion lists, and conferences.
Create Your Own Online Web Page Archive by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Feb 12) - reviews Furl.net, a new service for saving and annotating pages online.
"Furl ("file URL") is a promising new service that's unlike any other I've come across. It solves the "disappearing bookmark" problem -- pages that for one reason or another vanish, making your bookmarks useless. It does this by actually storing a copy of the page for you on Furl's own servers."
Furl saves the pages on its servers. There is a disadvantage. What happens if Furl folds or has to introduce fees?
Seekscan Search Engine Searches Many Types of Information ResearchBuzz (Feb 9)
Seekscan is a new metasearch engine of a type. It offers groups of search engines for the web, shopping, images, news, reference, media and blogs. The Web collection has over 18 engines including Gigablast, Google, Teoma etc. The search results are shown one source at a time - they are not consolidated. The distinctive feature is that Seekscan has a control panel you use to move through the pages, zero in, save, rank the search. Interesting but a lot of work.
Waypath, a weblog search engine, has a new feature by which you can find books at Amazon that might relate to a weblog or weblog posting. Enter the url and Waypath does the matching.
There is also the Weblog Post Analysis - which will find related weblog posts to a given one. For example, an analysis of a posting I did about RSS vs Atom found 69 other weblog entries about the RSS / Atom controversy. You can follow a trail of postings by picking news ones to analyze from each set of results. You can also limit results to a particular weblog (clicking on the +) or exclude (the -). Related books show on these pages as well.
Soople is a new search interface to the Google search engine that presents most of the things you can do at Google. The main page has the main types of searches - web, images, news, stocks. It is also possible the search by a category of sites - books, computer magazines etc - very useful. There are also pages for using Google as a calculator, doing translations, looking up US phone numbers. Lastly there is a page similar to Google's Advanced search for setting a number of filters. The creator did this for his mother. Judging from the .nl in the email address, that fortunate mother lives in the Netherlands.
Google spurns RSS for rising blog format by Paul Festa. CNet News (Feb 11) Just as RSS comes on mainstream Atom, an alternative format for news feeds, challenges the RSS supremacy. And Google is backing Atom by offering only that format to members of Blogger.com. Meantime, Yahoo went with RSS - adding the RSS newsreader facility to its myYahoo. The dispute seems to be over control and open standards.
""RSS has long been controlled by a single vendor or entity," said Mark Pilgrim, an early contributor to Atom. "Atom's an open standard, so people can point at the spec and say they're conforming to it, and it's not controlled by one of their competitors. And RSS is. It's no surprise that the vendors in control of RSS are upset about this. Open standards benefit everyone but them.""
This Feb 11 PR Newswire press release through CBS Marketwatch says "Local Search Now 25% of Internet Commercial Activity" [requires free registration]. The Kelsey Group and BizRate.com conducted a survey of 5,500 online buyers (mainly U.S.) and found that 25.1% were looking for merchants near home or workplace.
Of interest -- "Chuck Davis, President and CEO of BizRate.com said, "Consumers are increasingly using search for shopping related queries. In fact, over a third (36%) of all search activity is now shopping-based, defined as using search functionality to look for a merchant, research a purchase or make an online purchase. We expect to see shopping searches continue to increase." "
Lycos U.S. Changes...Everything By Rebecca Lieb. Internet Advertising Report (Feb 12) - In two weeks Lycos will close its public portal and relaunch as a subscription-based service. It intends to tap into the increasing popularity of social networking that will include online dating and web site publishing. It is remaking itself into a "hub for personal connections."
"Stoever [Mark Stoever, executive vice president of Terra Lycos, U.S.] is confident Lycos can platform a dating customer into a subscriber to job, health, finance, family, or other categories Lycos is a player in, as well as encourage them to use the company's Web services, including site building and Weblogs. "We're excited by our progress in building a subscription business, but not at expense of advertising," he said. "We're building an audience that advertisers want to reach as well." "
Also Lycos taps into social networking AP via Globe and Mail (Feb 12)
An Extreme Searcher's Guide to the Best of the Web By Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Feb 11) - reviews Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook by Randolph Hock. Says that the book is "full of tips on how best to find and use specialized resources". See also the Extreme Searcher's Web Page.
Inxight SmartDiscovery 4 Provides Powerful New Capabilities Enabling Customers to Discover the True Value of Information Press Release (Feb 10)
"New Version Features Fact Extraction to Automatically Identify Events and Relationships in Text, and More Powerful Search, Entity Extraction and Taxonomy Capabilities "
Of interest -- ""Search is no longer enough," said Susan Feldman, IDC's vice president of content technologies. "Enterprises will never be able to understand the knowledge that they have at their fingertips unless they add new tools to their information workbench. Finding patterns over time and over collections of documents requires the kind of text mining capabilities that Inxight offers. These tools can prevent information disasters from happening." "
Queryster is a new search tool that gives quick access to individual search engines through a "map" of search engine logos. Click on the logo for the engine you wish to search and enter the search terms. You can customize the "map" to have the search engines you want from a list of 25. Under Tools, Queryster has options for people search, business search and many other tools. This makes it a better-than-average All-In-One tool.
Visualizing Paris, Barcelona and other Cities by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Feb 10) -- "Wanadoo Maps has added a new twist to online yellow pages in Europe: photos of thousands of buildings in France and Spain. " See the French version at Pages Jaunes. Open the map of Paris and click along the Left Bank to the Quai D'Orsay.
Moreover Releases Intranet v. Internet Research EContent (Feb 10) - Here's a shocking bit -- "Moreover Technologies has released research into knowledge worker's information consumption that indicates how Intranets have thus far failed to make significant in-roads into the public Internet's dominance as the primary information resource for many knowledge workers. " Only 10.9% saw the Intranet as the primary source of information.
Mining for Tech Ideas "Sources for info on the Web, new gadgets, and more." by Sree Screenivasan. PoynterOnline (Feb 10)
Pop-ups Are Coming to Screens Near You by Brian Livingston. Datamation (Feb 10) -- The popup stoppers are getting on the case to block the video popups from Unicast. These video commercials only play for PC users with Windows, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player 7.
The upside down of search "Commentary: At what point is search too good? " by Bambi Francisco. CBS Marketwatch (Feb 10)
Search can be improved by utlizing social-networking should we do it? Article talks about Spoke Network and its work to "is make the search process, or at least the searching-for-people process, more personalized and relevant".
"By organizing information based on social networks drawn from members' address books and the people they communicate with through e-mails (and instant messaging in the future, I'm told), Spoke improves upon the average search engine's results. ... On the other hand, the data it pulls together includes information about millions of people who are not members and suggests a dark underside to search precision." Also mentions Vivisimo's clustering as a search technology that will improve search. Concludes -- "The consequence of it all: There is no privacy left. We're more accessible. We're more targeted (Do we really need improved targeting for spam?). The channels to get to us are better defined. "
A Grown-Up's Guide to Instant Messaging Scott Spanbauer From the March 2004 issue of PC World magazine (January 28, 2004)
"As with most Internet tools, the trick to productive instant messaging is knowing how to use it and when not to use it. Here is an overview of available IM services and software, along with some commonsense advice on how to safeguard your privacy and security while you're using them. "
Alternative browser Mozilla has a "preview release of its next generation web browser, Mozilla Firefox" New Round of Releases Extends Mozilla Project's Standards Based Open Source Offerings. (Press release Feb 9)
Paul Andrews doesn't see Microsoft doing major battle with Google for web searching. Microsoft is intent on improving search offline. Microsoft not ready to battle with Google Seattle Times (Feb 9)
"There is one area, however, where Google could face Netscape's fate. If Microsoft chooses to integrate a Windows search with a Web search in a seamless, one-click fashion, the issue of antitrust "tying" once again may rear its pachydermal head.
By all indications, a primary goal of the next version of Windows — code-named Longhorn — is to help users organize and find stuff on their computer. No long-suffering PC user will quarrel with that (by contrast, Macintosh users have Apple Computer's superior "Sherlock" search tool). "
The Buzz Continues: RSS and Newsletters by Kathleen Goodwin. Clickz.com (Feb 9) - why RSS is better than the e-newsletter.
"RSS allows marketers (particularly newsletter publishers) to make their content available to any interested constituency in a number of new and interesting ways. With an RSS feed, readers can receive article-summary information, with headlines, short abstracts, and links to online content and full stories. People can subscribe to RSS feeds and receive them at the time and place of their choosing, often sidestepping many e-mail delivery issues. "
Online Search Engines Help Lift Cover of Privacy By Yuki Noguchi. Washington Post (Monday, February 9, 2004)
"Google hackers" are getting into pages that should have been under lock and key. But Google's crawl is so effective, that if webmasters don't take all the necessary precautions, some confidential material does make it into the public index. There is a new word - "Googledorks" - to identify people "who troll the Internet for confidential goods".
"Search strings including "xls," or "cc," or "ssn" often brings up spread sheets, credit card numbers, and Social Security numbers linked to a customer list. Adding the word "total" in searches often pulls up financial spreadsheets totaling dollar figures. A hacker with enough time and experience recognizing sensitive content can find an alarming amount of supposedly private information."
"The availability of private information contributes to rising incidence of identity theft, which for the last four years has been the No. 1 consumer problem for the Federal Trade Commission. Last year the FTC received nearly 215,000 complaints about identity theft, up from about 152,000 in 2002."
Social Networks: Will Users Pay to Get Friends? by Bob Tedeschi. New York Times (Feb 9)
Is there money in social networking? Operations like Friendster, Tribe.com, Orkut invite connections through friends of friends. Friendster has 5 million registered users and the reputation of a date-finding place.
Nonetheless there may be more opportunity for fees in business social networking such as Ryze.
"The prospects of social networking sites that focus on business-oriented users look more promising, analysts say. When these companies start charging fees later this year, they expect business users to spend more freely, partly because they may be able to expense the cost or write it off on taxes. That is one reason at least one business-oriented networking site, Ryze.com, has already reached profitability, according to Adrian Scott, its chief executive. "
Search Engine Watch Awards 2004 put Google on top for Outstanding Search Service - although reluctantly. It did receive 70% of the votes but some, including the editors, were concerned about changes to the ranking algorithims.
Alltheweb and Yahoo were in a distant but respectable second place. The SEW editors are concerned that Alltheweb may not be maintained or even continued by Yahoo / Overture.
Infospace metasearch engines are very popular. Dogpile, Excite, Webcrawler, and Metacrawler got a total of 48%, Dogpile getting top spot with 27%. Do people not realize that these metasearch engines are almost identical? Vivisimo dropped to second position because of its smaller roster of general search sources. Copernic Agent, although it is software, got a mention in this category.
There can be no doubt about the top news search engines - Google News and Yahoo News.
Google Toolbar leads as the toolbar of choice with Alexa in second place despite all the allegations that it is spyware. Copernic has a new toolbar - Copernic Meta - very good but hasn't developed a following. There are many excellent browser toolbars today - consider Altavista, Vivisimo, Hotbot, and even Dogpile.
Best features went to Google Definitions and Alltheweb URL Investigator. Love them both. People also like Google and Alltheweb as calculators - but do they actually use them?
Fascinating report - read the complete Awards 2004 article.
Péter's Digital Reference Shelf - February reviews the Official Academy Awards Database (OAAD) and the New York Times Movie Reviews . Peter Jacso must be a true movie buff. These are very thorough examinations of the two services.
OAAD doesn't really past muster -- "There is minimal information about the 2,750 movies and 4,300 individuals who have been nominated and/or won an Academy Award in the past 75 years. " ... "It needs enhancement."
But the New York Times Movie Reviews is ... " free, well-organized and has more than 5,000 movie reviews and many other special movie lists". There are biographies, filmographies and other lists from the All Movie Guide. As well NYT includes the digital version of The New York Times Best 1,000 Films (1999)
Microsoft's plans for a new search engine technology by Andy Beal. Pandia.com (Feb 2004) -- "Guest Writer Andy Beal talks to Robert Scoble from Microsoft about the future of search engine technology, Google and how search will be handled by the next incarnation of Windows. "
Microsoft is working hard at improving searching of the hard drive but what about the Internet? Robert Scoble sees "social behaviour analysis tools like Technorati becoming far more important". Also search engines will become more specialty - just RSS, just news etc. And users want more ways for search results to be delivered.
Switchboard.com Revamps Search, Cleans Up Site By: Brian Morrissey. DMNews (Feb 5) -- Switchboard has redesigned its web site and added some intelligence. The front page has tabs for yellow pages, white pages, maps - a design that has become standard for search engines.
"Using a learning algorithm, Switchboard takes user's queries and suggests possible categories based on previous searches by users. The Westborough, MA, company said this search feature differentiated it from other IYP players like Verizon's SuperPages.com and search engines like Google. "
There are other options for searching by distance (to search within x miles from an address), by city, and by category. Reverse lookup is called "search by phone number". Of interest is the record of most recent searches.
Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) and US city sites will be competiting with Google, Yahoo and others for local advertising dollars as these engines strive to be more "personal" and "regional".
Switchboard is based in Massachusets. All content is US.
Interesting Google Tool: SearchGrid ResearchBuzz (Feb 5) SearchGrid ( http://blog.outer-court.com/search-grid/ ) will pair up words entered on the horizontal and vertical axises of a grid. Top result from Google for the created phrase shows up in the cell along with count of total results. Works well with atrial in the vertical and fibrillation, drugs, rate, rhythm in the horizontal. Interesting results also for canada us in the vertical cell and relations, trade disputes, cattle in the horizontal. Have to be careful where you put the terms. Has possibilities.
Searching For Sounds by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Feb 5) - reviews the specialty search engine Find Sounds. These are small sounds like a mosquito, chipmunk, or a church bell. There is also a "sounds like" search.
Copernic Launches Copernic Tracker, an Essential Tool for Effective Web Monitoring Copernic Tracker is software for web-page monitoring. -- "This new tool makes it possible to automatically monitor an unlimited number of Web pages to stay on top of any changes or additions. Copernic Tracker even gives users the option of receiving update alerts by email or cell phone." Price is $49.95 US.
Mamma.com Launches Advanced Functionalities: Metasearch Engine Provides Powerful New Tools for Users to Search the Web Faster and More Efficiently Business Wire (Feb 5)
Mamma, the meta search engine, now supports some syntax for queries (quotation marks for phrases, + to include, - to exclude) and has redesigned the Power Search page to make it possible to select sources for web searching. Mamma's sources include Google, Teoma, Lycos, MSN, and Entireweb. Pay-per-click sources are clearly marked and can be excluded. Through Power Search one can set preferences for number of results on a page, highlighting of terms, type of description.
Alacritude Re-launches as HighBeam Research Outsell E-Brief (Jan 30) - notes that HighBeam Research is targeting the middle market of users with its modestly priced service for access to 2600 journals. The CEO is Patrick Spain, once of Hoover's. Outsell thinks it's going to be a tough market.
Spyware cures may cause more harm than good by John Borland. Cnet (Feb 5) - spyware watch what you do, insert ads, and can interfere with browsing. But some products that promise to protect your machine from this are just as bad. Stay with the well established companies -- "A few independent antispyware companies, such as Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and Spybot, have been around long enough and have been used by enough people to have gained a reputation as safe."
Gates' e-post idea gets stamp of disapproval By ANDRE MAYER, Globe and Mail (Feb 5) - several proposals have been floating around about charging postage on email. No one really thinks that will cut the spam.
When a Search Engine Isn't Enough, Call a Librarian By JEFFREY SELINGO. New York Times (Feb 5) - librarian at Rockville Regional Library in Maryland used everything at hand to answer a question that came through their live-chat desk about Ross Perot.
"Librarians fear that people are too trusting of the Web, particularly for health and corporate information, areas in which some libraries say they have been receiving fewer inquiries in recent years. In both fields, the accuracy of the information often depends on its source. In New York and at many other libraries, cardholders can gain access to subscriber-only databases - including popular ones like Medline Plus for medical information and Gale for business resources - from a remote location. "
Looksmart looks to the Year Ahead Looksmart newsletter (Feb 2004) - claims that Looksmart listings are still widely distributed to "Lycos, InfoSpace, CNET, RoadRunner and many others". Site has been redesigned to show tabs for Directory - Looksmart Directory of mainly paid listings, Web - Wisenut search engine of 1.2 billion pages, and Articles- Findarticles.com.
Looksmart's revenue comes from ads. Part of this redesign was to commecialize FiindArticles with Sponsored Links and promotions for subscription deals.
FindArticles is not as fresh as it used to and has likely dropped some journals. Although it lists Searcher as a journal it includes, known articles do not come up in a search and known urls come up empty. The same is true for Online and Information Today.
To check journals, use the A-Z list on the front page to find the name. Click on Online Issues to see what has been indexed. Click on any link to find out if there really is content. For content that is still available, there will be at least a 2 month lag and more likely 3 or 4.
Monster librarian at work By Dean Takahashi. Mercury News (Feb 5) - says that IBM computers gather 250 million web pages a week as grist for WebFountain's high-powered analysis. WebFountain looks for associations of names and words.
"Now IBM has begun licensing the technology to create ``buzz reports'' for corporate clients. WebFountain scours Web logs, chat rooms, newspaper stories and every other source of information to determine whether the chatter about a new product is good or bad; is a certain rock group on the way up or a one-hit wonder?"
Hack Your Own Search Engine Crawler By Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Feb 4) - Reviews the new book - Spidering Hacks by Kevin Hemenway and Tara Calishain. The book "offers "100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tools" for creating and running your own spiders. Among these tips and tools, of course, are instructions for creating your own personal web crawler that works much like those used by the major search engines."
Search Engine Keyphrases and the Power of the Modifier By Scott Buresh. Search Engine Guide. (February 03, 2004 ) - These tips about choice of keywords and phrases are intended for search engine marketers who are trying to get best placement, but searchers can apply them too. Add modifiers to identify the region, and descriptive adjectives and/or nouns to describe the object. He advises people to be wary of using low quality modifiers such as "free", "sample", "ideas", "advice" on their web pages - but all are good words for searchers to use.
Most people use 2 word phrases in search engines according to OneStat.com, OneStat.com (Feb 2)
From the report:
The 7 most used word phrases in search engines on the web are:
1. 2 word phrases 32.58%
2. 3 word phrase 25.61%
3. 1 word phrases 19.02%
4. 4 word phrases 12.83%
5. 5 word phrases 5.64%
6. 6 word phrases 2.32%
7. 7 word phrases 0.98%
1 word searches have dropped to 19.02% from 24.76. Figures are averages from the past 2 months.
How Many Pop-ups Can a Pop-up Stopper Stop? By Brian Livingston, Datamation (Feb 2) - there is a new kind of pop-up that the blockers can't detect. These are "non-streaming full-screen video" done by Unicast. They download in the background and when complete start to play automatically. Thus they take up bandwidth and computer processing. People using dial-up access and on older machines will surely suffer.
"Unicast's video commercials utilize Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9 technology, which is included in recent versions of the Redmond company's graphical operating system. The advertising firm says it has commitments from such top-tier advertisers as Pepsi, Honda, and Warner Brothers, and that the ads have been placed on high-traffic sites such as About.com, ESPN, and MSN. "
Anyone for boycotting those sites?
Online advisors help assess your air-travel options By Brad Foss, Associated Press in USA Today (Feb 3) - "Travel experts recommend two easy-to-use Web sites, seatguru.com and seatexpert.com, for details about the best and worst seats, and some in between, on every type of aircraft flown by large carriers. "
A Better Search Tool for Finding Needles in Haystacks by Gary Price. SearchDay (Feb 2) - recommends the NeedleSearch Toolbar because it is possible to capture the search functionality of any site and put it into a NeedleSearch rule. However, it works only with Mozilla browser.
Search Toolbars & Utilities by Danny Sullivan (Jan 27, 2003)
Search Engine Watch lists toolbars and provides short annotations. It lists toolbars from search engines, independent toolbars, and metasearch utilities. There are also references to various recent articles about toolbars.
On the whole it is a good list. However, Copernic Meta Search merits more than 12 words. This is a browser toolbar that provides meta searches against several Web search engines, as well as other category groupings. Among the metasearches is a handy dictionary and thesaurus. Most importantly, it lets you add search engines not on its list. Copernic Meta Search also operates as a deskbar, similar to Google, but easier to activate with a Ctrl ALT Click on a section of text.
KMWorld is issuing a new newsletter called NewsLinks. Updates will be issued twice a week. More information and sample issue at KMWOrld NewsLinks. Covers news, webinars, events, white papers, conferences.
ResourceShelf has taken a look at the beta version of MSN's new search engine -- MSN Search (U.S.) Runs Beta Test. Has a statement from Karen Redetzki, MSN Product Manager about the scattered nature of the tests.
The beta version appears to be available to searchers in Toronto. Go to
beta.search.msn.com.
Main difference from search.msn.com is that the Web Directory sites from Looksmart are gone (change we've been expecting for weeks). Also, Sponsored Results show at top of page. A query on "HD radio" has much better results on the beta version. Advanced Search features are the same.
Gary Price lists 10 things Google should fix. A Couple of Comments About Google - Google is a great search engine, but it is not perfect - Pandia Post (Jan 2004).
Internet radio on the go - Recording software, devices addportability, time shifting By Sam Diaz, Mercury News (Feb 2) -- you don't have to stay by your big desktop computer with high-speed connection to listen to Internet Radio.
Products mentioned:
Appian Technologies has software for "taping" the radio program on a CD for transfer to a mobile device. "Replay Radio (www.replay-radio.com) not only allows listeners of streaming radio to instantly record the streaming audio with a click of the mouse, but also allows users to schedule recordings of favorite programs that stream."
Radio YourWay (http://www.pogoproducts.com/radio_yourway.html) is a portable, solid-state AM/FM radio recorder. It's really a radio but you can record programs and listen to either live or recorded. It operates as a dictaphone as well. It comes with a USB connection for file transfer to the computer.
Ibiquity Digital (http://www.ibiquity.com/) is working with HD Radio that will have TiVo capabilities.
The Future of Search Engine Technology by Andy Beal. Pandia (Jan 28, 2004) - foresees changes in personalized results - more tuned to your real interests. Related to this will be advertisements in web-based email that are more relevant - especially if Google does go ahead with an email service. Desktop search is sure to develop. (Google deskbar sure is handy.)
OCLC has published Pattern Recognition: The 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan "to examine the significant issues and trends impacting OCLC, libraries, museums, archives and other allied organizations, both now and in the future. The scan provides a high-level view of the information landscape, intended both to inform and stimulate discussion about future strategic directions."
Site has an interactive world map showing spending on libraries, education and technology as a percentage of GDP. Report is available as web pages, pdf, or dowload.
Looks at social landscape, economic, technology, research and learning, library. Closes with future frameworks.
On Search, the Series By Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Jan 29) - describes a series of essays that Tim Bray, CEO of Antartica, has written about search as "almost a virtual textbook on search engine technology ... highly readable, and replete with Tim's personal insights and opinions."
There are 15 installments to On Search, the Series.
Searching Google more efficiently, Pandia Post (Feb 1 2004) features Nancy Blachman, author of How to Do Everything with Google and the companion website, Google ~Guide Both look excellent.
Ari Paparo Dot Com keeps lists of blog search engines.
Big LIst of Blog Search Engines
International Blog Search Engines
Booble is an "adult search engine" (ie sex sites) that imitates Google - it claim "parodies". Google is trying to shut it down.
Google unhappy with rude copycat BBC News (Jan 30)
Google, Booble in legal drama over trademarks Reuters (Jan 31)
Google Protests Give Web Site an Audience JOHN SCHWARTZ. New York Times (Feb 2)
"Along with the name, another clue to its bawdy nature can be found in the lewd liberties taken with the double O in the logo, which to reprint in a family newspaper would require pasties. Google, claiming trademark infringement, sent a cease and desist letter to the operators of the Booble site. "
Brought on by Google's intention to become a public company, there has been a flood of articles about an upcoming war between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo as Yahoo and Microsoft aim to unseat Google.
Search and Destroy by Stephen Lynch. New York Post (Feb 1) Gary Flake, principal scientist for Yahoo!, says that users choose based on the search experience -- ""The gap between search engines is very narrow now," ... "different users like a different experience."
- Yahoo is the smorgasborg.
- Google is minimalist and single focused.
- Microsoft wants to put search into all its product.
The Coming Search Wars By JOHN MARKOFF. New York Times via CNet (Feb 1) - "Get ready for Microsoft vs Silicon Valley, Round 2". It sounds cutthroat. Microsoft is pouring over Google's patents. Google attracted Mike Burrows from Microsoft. Microsoft is trying to demoralize Google staff. Both are trying to snap up the best minds in the industry.
Google is working on becoming the universal engine. It has a new project called Project Ocean - "to digitize the entire collection of the vast Stanford Library published before 1923".
"For all of Google's hyperactivity, there is still a lingering sense among many Silicon Valley veterans that they have seen this movie before. The company may not have Netscape's arrogance, but it is still not clear that all of its clever marketing, technology and brand identification can withstand Microsoft's onslaught when it arrives."
John Batelle, formerly of Wired and Industry Standard, has some comments in his SearchBlog about the article. NYT: The Valley v. MSFT, Round 2
Also see Search Engine Wars: MSN + Google = Netscape by Jim Hedger at ISEDB.com (Feb 5) - likens recent missteps by Google to those Netscape made when under siege.
Google for a grade: UW class to study popular search engine By Cynthia Flash. Seattle Times (Feb 2)
A professor at the University of Washington Information School, Joe Janes, is teaching a course on Google -- "to determine whether Google is in fact good or whether researchers' reliance on such a simple and one-sided search tool is degrading the quality of research. " Course outline for LIS 598 is open for viewing (for now).
IRN Research Launches Marketresearchontheweb.com Newsbreaks (Feb 2)
Marketresearchontheweb.com is a new gateway service from IRN Research. It offers "direct links to market data, company/product lists and directories, statistics, and industry news on over 3,000 regularly evaluated U.K. and European sites. The sites include trade associations, professional bodies, research institutes, chambers of commerce, market research publishers, trade journals, and portals. "
Subscriptions are available for individuals and organizations. There is a free trial to the “Food, Drink, and Tobacco” sector.
From the site:
"Market Research on the Web (MROW) is a one-stop shop for information professionals and librarians, researchers, consultants, students, and business executives looking for European Web sites containing market and industry data and statistics. It has been developed by IRN Research, a market research and information consultancy company established in 1991."
FAST Debuts Enterprise Search Platform by Paula Hane. Newsbreaks (Feb 2) -- "FAST ESP (Enterprise Search Platform) creates a single point of access for all information across an enterprise—in real time, regardless of data format, structure, or location." Susan Feldman, a Director at IDC and author of the article "The Answer Machine" (Jan 2000) said “FAST ESP is the first approximation of an ‘answer machine’ that I have seen.”
Emerald Introduces New Journal Publication System by Jim Ashling. Newsbreaks (Feb 2) -- "Emerald (http://www.emeraldinsight.com) has developed a new article submission and peer review system, called JADE (Journal Article Delivery Engine). Emerald publishes 130 journals in library and information sciences, management, engineering, and applied science and technology. " Sounds like a gem.
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