Dialog Adds Sources to NewsRoom eContent (Nov 30) - Dialog has added 2000 new sources to its NewsRoom. "With the addition of the new sources, users can now search and retrieve materials drawn from a total of 10,000 sources based in 129 countries. "
Google's Orkut puzzles experts - Internet watchers ponder reason for social network site by Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle (Nov 29) -- Google's social networking Web site, Orkut, has been adding content from columnists in a style - (although it would be more accurate to call this ruminations rather than content). "The articles on Orkut are in an area called "media center" that includes links to author profiles and a photography gallery, the Global Image Cafe." This can be viewed by anyone at http://media.orkut.com, but only members of Orkut can submit articles.
Orkut is a social networking centre but has been losing traffic. Perhaps this will help shore it up.
Year in Review: Search Gets Ready to Rumble By Matt Hicks, eWeek (Nov 28) "Opinion: The Web search market becomes a battle among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and a rush to extend the reach and profit potential of search. " Main trends - targeting, local search, personalization - the object being to make money.
SearchTHIS: A Four Point Cautionary Tale By Kevin M. Ryan, iMedia (Nov 30) -- Picks out key warning points for search marketers from the eMarketer White Paper, Top Ten Ways to Make Search Marketing Work For You.
Of interest - search words becoming too expensive - "We may be starting to see a search disaster happening as well. eMarketer cited a Jupiter survey of June, 2003 in which 57 percent of respondents declared that many of their keywords had become too expensive for them and just over half were concerned they were paying too much for keywords.
Consumer backlash coming -- "...but the third revelation from eMarketer suggests there may be a consumer backlash on paid listings coming our way. Citing a survey completed by Intelliseek -- an overwhelming 66 percent majority of surfers distrust search ads."
Consumers going back to bookmarks? -- "The White Paper cites a WebSideStory study in direct navigation that states that entering a URL or using a bookmark as opposed to using a search engine increased 15 percent from 2002 to 2003."
Wikipedia Creators Move Into News by Joanna Glasner, Wired (Nov 29)
Members of the Wikimedia Foundation have decided to try their hand at journalism by creating Wikinews where members can collobaratively create and edit news stores. Objective -- "to collaboratively report and summarize news on all subjects from a neutral point of view." But will these amateur journalists dig out a story through interviews and analysis of data or will they be mainly (only?) summarizing what the news they read?
Wikinews is available at http://demo.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
Looking for Good Art - Part 3: Glorious National Collections by David Mattison, Searcher Nov/Dec 2004 -- "free digital databases that document the art history of Western civilization from medieval times through the 19th century."
Open WorldCat Pilot:A User's Perspective by Nancy O'Neill, Searcher (Nov / Dec 2004) Describes the OCLC's Open WorldCat Pilot Project http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/pilot/] to add library records to the Google and Yahoo databases. Has tips on how to search. Problem remains - will it really find the book in the closest library and will you be able to get it from the library?
Australia's Ansearch to hatch competitor to Google PC World Australia (Nov 26) - the new search engine Ansearch (http://www.mysearch.com.au/) is taking a different tact to other search engines. It is focusing on high traffic websites rather than highly linked, ranking on usage, and indexing the site (presumably the main page) rather than the pages. This approach is seen as being more effective for featuring business/commerce sites.
Ever-widening search "Key Internet tool is expanding locally and globally, consultant says" By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News (November 27, 2004) - Interview reveals that Chris Sherman has been writing a book on the advanced capabilities of Google. Also notes that search engines will soon have to help us deal with the increasing quantity on non-U.S, non-English language resources on the Web.
Another Firefox first - it includes the Creative Commons search engine in its toolbar. This will help artists and authors find content available for non-commercial use.
Creative Commons Search Engine Integrated into Firefox 1.0 Search Engine Journal (Nov 24)
Shopping Search Week 2004! by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Nov 29) - Part 1 of a series with updates about shopping search engines. Points to a trend to searching websites of local retailers and then buying locally.
Online shoppers warned to be vigilant EXPERTS CAUTION AGAINST SPYWARE, PHISHING By Dan Lee, Mercury News (Nov 29) Has several tips.
Name that tune -- then find it with GoFish By Michael Bazeley, Mercury News (Nov 27) Announces GoFish a kind of music comparison shopping search engine -- "GoFish, started by the founder of the now-defunct Musiclocker service, allows people to simultaneously search for songs from Napster, Buy.com, iTunes and a host of other online music merchants. The site also looks for audiobooks, video, ring tones and games."
Got Competitive Intelligence? Tips, tools and techniques for the savvy marketer [PPT[ by Donna F. Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici, LLRX.com (Nov 28) - tool kit of resources, free and for-fee, to use to profile companies, track their activities, follow market trends, and monitor clients and propects.
Corporate Blogging [PPT] by Sabrina I. Pacifici, LLRX.com. (Nov 28) Excellent presentation on the usefullness of blogs for an organization, the different kinds, and how to develop. Comments on blogs as a method "to facilitate research services, knowledge management, marketing, training, and communications within groups, departments, and enterprise wide".
Newspapers Should Really Worry by By Adam L. Penenberg, Wired (Nov 24) Young people - ages 18 to 34 - aren't interested in reading newspapers. They get their news from browsing and sampling online information sources - Google News, blogs, news websites. They don't read newspapers or magazines.
Upstarts Try to Make Name in Online Travel by MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP via Yahoo News (Nov 27) - Travel taking off on the Internet. Forrester Research estimates "that 29.4 million U.S. households will use the Internet to book travel in this calendar year, spending $53 billion in the process". Expedia, Travelocity and Orvitz have 16% of online traffic. But there are other "travel aggregators" such as Mobissimo, SideStep, Cheapflights, Qixo (charges subscribers to use its service), Kayak and Farechase (now owned by Yahoo).
Folks at Microsoft must be taking the day-after-thanksgiving off for shopping. MSN Search Beta defaults to the old Yahoo-based MSN Search - there are no new features and no explanation. Google's beta efforts are always more durable than this.
Mamma.Com Inc. Plans to Acquire Copernic Technologies Inc. CCN Matthews via CBS Marketwatch (Nov 25) Mamma, the metasearch engine, wants to buy Copernic, the desktop - enterprise search software company. Mamma is based in Montreal, and Copernic is in Saint Foy outside Quebec. Both have operations in the US.
Mamma always seemed to me to be about advertising, and Copernic about really developing search products.
Yahoo's New Front Page and Shortcuts ResearchBuzz (Nov 24) Tara Calishain comments on the new look to the Yahoo home page and in particular the much reduced space given - at the bottom of the page - to the subject directory. She writes, "And now I'm afraid with such a small amount of front page space that they're not going to devote much attention or resources to it. Which would be crying, crying shame." I agree. Large subject directories with breadth of coverage are needed to "find related groups of information". Let's hope that Open Directory stays afloat.
Scopus Launched UKSG Serials News (Nov 3) Elsevier launched Scopus, an "Abstract and Indexing (A&I) database, which covers 14,000 scientific, technical, medical and social sciences titles from 4,000 STM publishers." Has 167 million scientific web pages going back to 1960s. Scopus also uses Scirus, a search engine of scientific content on the public Web.
Opera introduces fit-to-window rechnology Globe and Mail Update (Nov 24) "Opera Software has announced that it has solved the problem of rendering Web pages effectively regardless of screen size."
Getting the Most Out of Firefox By Brian Livingston, Datamation (Nov 23) -- good and bad of Firefox. Good to read both. Author includes workarounds for some of the weaknesses. In the end, still picks Firefox over other browsers.
The Sites Before Christmas Foot-Weary Shoppers Can Fill Their Lists From a Growing Online Mall By Leslie Walker, The Washington Post (Nov 25) [Registration reqd] -- discovered how much easier it is today to order "unusual, foreign, cheap or luxury products online". Has several shopping success stories. I'll add mine too - found a box of the very rare and delicious Thornton's toffees through Froogle and a company named MadeinBritain LTD- ships in the US and Canada.
Grokking Wondir John Battelle (Nov 19) - About Wondir - a question-answering service created in 2002 by Matthew Koll.
"When you do ask a question (in plain english), Wondir does a number of clever things. First, it parses your question's text and categorizes it in any number of potential topic clusters. It then alerts registered users who have raised their hands as willing to answer questions in those topics, either through email, RSS (soon), or IM. It also posts the question right there on the service, in a scrolling ticker below the search box."
Narrowing the search November 22, 2004, By Raul Valdes-Perez, News.com -- Notes several drawbacks to the personalization of search, most particularly that it's difficult to infer interest from what people click on. He sees a better future in clustering techniques. Mind Valdes-Perez is CEO and co-founder of Vivisimo and is responsible for the leading technology for clustering results.
An Exceptionally "EEVL" Search Resource By Gary Price, SearchDay (Nov 22) -- About EEVL - Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing - "EEVL has now launched four new subject-focused databases that provide free access to a couple of hundred ejournals in several disciplines."
Sites tell where to shop on the Web By Michael Bazeley Mercury News (Nov 22) -- reviews Shopping.com, Yahoo Shopping, Froogle, NexTag, Shopzilla.
Are desktop search programs ready for prime time? by Dan Verton, special to PC World (Nov 23) -- Finds that "
Copernic Desktop Search does the work without Google's security flaws"
Creative Commons' One-Of-A-Kind Search Engine Debuts, Heralding Next-Generation Web Search Features Nov 25.
"Creative Commons today unveiled an updated beta version of its search engine, which scours the web for text, images, audio, and video free to re-use on certain terms a search refinement offered by no other company or organization today." See http://search.creativecommons.org/index.jsp
Also see Updated Version of Creative Commons Search Engine Now Available Searh Engine Watch Blog.
Lycos - Ask Jeeves enter the organic SEO sector (November 23, 2004) Jim Hedger, ISEDB -- Ask Jeeves and Lycos have introduced services to help in optimising search engine results for the "organic" listings (ie non paid). Article describes operations of AJ and Lycos.
"That smaller search engines feel the need to draw revenues by providing organic search optimization services to clients shows how dominant Google, Yahoo and MSN are on the search landscape. Organic website optimization is an important form of mainstream advertising and like almost every other form of mainstream marketing is about manipulation. ... Search engine optimization is about manipulating site content to present information to electronic spiders. When the search firms blur the line between organic and obvious paid-advertising, search engine users have cause for concern. Now that two well known search firms have entered the organic market, that line may become even blurrier, a trend that should worry SEO practitioners."
Search Engine Disclosure: Better, but Still Wanting by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Nov 23) - Consumer WebWatch has revisited the matter of disclosure by search engines of their paid placements. SearchDay summarized the key findings - notably that most of the disclosure headings are difficult to read, meta-search engines are the worst offenders, and the disclosure statements are incomprehensible.
Rating Search Engine Disclosure Practices (Nov 24) Consumer Webwatch looked at The engines were 1stBlaze, AltaVista, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves (also My Search, My Way Search), Search.com, Google, InfoSpace Web Search, Lycos Network, MSN Search, Netscape Search, Overture, Web Search and Yahoo! Search.
They all comply but there is room for improvement. AOL Search was the clearest. Yahoo is clear in showing paid listings but will not disclose which results are from paid inclusion. Infospace marks individual items but faintly and will does not disclose that it uses paid inclusion. Google didn't have a page about disclosure policies.
Full report is at In Search of Disclosure: How Search Engines Alert Consumers to the Presence of Advertising in Search Results Consumer WebWatch (Nov 8)
"Advanced Search Techniques using Natural Language Processing" by Tony Rose, Freepint Nov 25, 2004 - overview article about work to improve information retrieval using natural language processing techniques.
Production version of Surfulater is now available. Surfulater is an offline browser that you may use from work and home - save pages offline, search them using the knowledge tree discovery tool. Web site has a page describing research applications. Works with Windows and Internet Explorer. Firefox coming soon.
A Hitwise report found that the big travel engine sites aren't as well used as we might think.
"Highly Hyped But Still Grounded: Travel Search Engines
Despite recent press coverage, several of the largest travel search engines - including www.sidestep.com, www.mobissimo.com, yahoo.farechase.com, www.cheapflights.com, www.qixo.com, and www.farechase.com - only accounted for 0.45 percent of total visits to the travel category in October 2004."
Firefox cutting into IE's lead by Paul Festa, CNet (Nov 22) -- Microsoft's share of the browser market has slipped below 90% and the Mozilla group (especially Firefox) has risen to 7.4%
Rocketinfo Successfully Renews Contract With International Trade Canada Market Wire (Nov 23) via CBS Marketwatch. RocketInfo delivers current news to companies doing business abroad through The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service (http://www.infoexport.gc.ca/)
The Blogosphere By the Numbers Rob McGann, Internet.com (Nov 22) Still hard to pin down the number of blogs - at least 4 million, many 10 million but many are dead or almost so. Blogging is mostly done by people between the ages of 13 and 39.
Google Scholar Focuses on Research-Quality Content by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Nov 22)
"... Google Scholar enables specific searches of scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, pre-prints, abstracts, and technical reports. Content includes a range of publishers and aggregators with whom Google already has standing arrangements, e.g., the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, OCLC’s Open WorldCat library locator service, etc. Result displays will show different version clusters, citation analysis, and library location (currently books only). Although claiming coverage “from all broad areas of research,” early evaluation seems to show a clear emphasis on science and technology, rather than the arts, humanities, or social sciences."
Extended look at capabilities, possibilities, implications, and initial reactions.
Also see -- Google Scholar as Academic Metasearch: Political not Algorithmic by Andrew Goodman (Nov 21) -Traffick.com - re-examines the library search component of Google Scholar provided through OCLC Worldcat. His search was for "Peter deLeon's Thinking About Political Corruption" which he found listed in York University, Ryerson and a few other Canadian university libraries. Goodman notes the citations given, and the regional libraries that Google selected. In passing he noted that University of Toronto libraries weren't among the results.
Mary Ellen Bates describes what she did to validate a site that supposedly had information on an executive's corporate activities. Lists four things that one should do to evaluate a site.
Is This For Real Bates Info (Nov 2004)
Calculating Deep Link Ratio Using Yahoo ResearchBuzz (Oct 20) Comments on a formula that was developed to determine the Deep Link Ratio. This will be mainly of use to search engine optimizers but the use of the syntax at Yahoo for checking links is very interesting. See The Deep Link Ratio at Text Link Ads UK
PubSub pushes the news Frank Barnako, CBS Newswatch (Nov 19)
"Claming to filter millions of Weblogs, SEC/Edgar filings, Internet newsgroups and press releases, PubSub's "matching engine" recognizes new information as soon as it's published and delivers it to subscribers on a Web page or an RSS reader."
Managing the Firehose of Real-Time Information by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Nov 17)
Create a search at PubSub and have it let you know when something comes up in blogs, newsgroups, SEC filings. Set it up to receive the information in a news reader.
Gary Price weighs in with many suggestions on searching OCLC WorldCat -- OCLC Launches Co-Branded Toolbar with Yahoo (Nov 15) Suggests that custom-made searches on the COpernic Meta Toolbar or the NeedleSearch one are good alternatives.
Also from Resource Shelf (Nov 10) Subject Headings Now Hyperlinked in Open Worldcat
A Cross-Border Examination of 20 Travel Web Sites Selling International Airline Tickets in the United States and Six Western European Countries Research Report from Consumer WebWatch (Nov 12)
Of interest:
- Expedia and Travelocity country versions aren't all the same - they have their own inventory of flights and deals.
- Americans might get better deals using a European travel site.
- Many people have experienced "fare jumping" at Travelocity, Orvitz, and Expedia during the search / booking process.
Netscape aims beyond Firefox by Paul Festa, CNet (Nov 17) Netscape plans to release a new version at the end of November, claiming that it "could change the way the world masters the Web." We've been looking to Netscape to do this for a long time, but Firefox filled the gap. Netscape is probably too late.
Eliyon Reports Record Third Quarter 2004 Growth, Third Quarter Sales Nearly 210% of Same Period 2003, Adds More Than 130 New Enterprise License Customers Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Nov 19)
"As of November 2004, the Eliyon database included 23 million profiles of business people from executives to individual contributors at more than 1.5 million companies, with more than 25,000 new profiles added and 100,000 updated daily."
Search engines get more specifics by Laura Bly, Virtual Voyager. USA Today (Nov 19) One in four travellers feels overwhelmed by travel information on the web according to Forrester Research. What will we all do with the plethora now? New entrants - Kayak, Yahoo FareChase, Mobissimo.
"SideStep, Kayak, Mobissimo and Yahoo's FareChase rely on technology to gather prices from multiple sources and display the results simultaneously. Another crop of competitors, including Smarter Living's BookingBuddy, Travelzoo .com's SuperSearch, TripAdvisor's QuickCheck and OneTime .com, require travelers to do more of the work by choosing which sites they want to search, then scrolling through the results on the providers' own sites."
But do you really get good deals?
Article lists pros and cons of 7 services.
Thread at HighRankings.com about what Near Me at the new MSN really does. Msn's "near Me" Search Button, Optimizing for geographic proximity
+ will look for results near your location based on your settings. Only applies in the United States.
+ looks for address information on web pages preferably in the footer
Searching your thoughts "Mooter CEO Liesl Capper’s psych background helped her make a search engine that cares how you feel." Red Herring (Nov 16)
Excerpt:
Q. What is personalized algorithmic search technology?
A. We have built our algorithms from the human side of the search equation, and use human sciences to predict what a person wants to see. Our information amplifier learns from current interest patterns, and amplifies implicit search interests. We do this within a session, so we don’t need to track a user beyond that. We can also analyze the true meaning of a single piece of information you land on, and bring you more info with similar themes.
Vendors Rush the Desktop Search Field By Matt Hicks, E-Week,
November 17, 2004 - Ask Jeeves will be releasing a desktop-search product in December that will include integration with MyJeeves. Google has one, MSN is part way through developing one, and Yahoo has plans.
Will desktop search change search-engine marketing? People interviewed in this article think not, but the trend to multi-word searches and the new feature at MSN for tweaking rankings will.
MSN Desktop Search Images Surface (November 15, 2004)
Superpages Adds Shopping and Web Search By Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ (November 17) Superpages.com has partnered with eBay, Shopping.com, and Fast Search & Transfer to create a new shopping portal. "Through deals with those vendors, the local search provider is preparing to roll out a tab-based search system on its site. New capabilities include shopping comparison, bidding and Internet search."
This is for the US market. This all-in-one center has the Yellow Pages for a place - local search; comparison shopping online for merchandise; offerings up for bid at eBay; and a web search done by Fast (previously the search engine for Alltheweb). The web search will group results by keyword. This will be excellent for product research and comparison even for people outside the United States.
Basis Technology to Enhance Multilingual Search in New MSN Search Engine Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Nov 17)
"Basis Technology today announced that Microsoft Corp. has chosen the Rosette Linguistics Platform to support Web searches in its new MSN search engine." ... "The Rosette Linguistics Platform uses state of the art Natural Language Processing techniques to improve information retrieval, text mining and other applications and apply them to global markets. Rosette provides capabilities like identifying the language of incoming text, providing a normalized representation in Unicode, and locating names, places and other key concepts."
Google adds engine By John Markoff The New York Times via International Herald Tribune -- Google will be adding a search service aimed at scholars and academics.
"Google Scholar, which is already online at http://scholar.google.com, is a result of the company's collaboration with a number of scientific and academic publishers, and is intended as a first stop for researchers looking for scholarly literature like peer-reviewed papers, books, abstracts and technical reports."
Also see -- Google Offers Google Scholar ResearchBuzz (Nov 18) - notes that there are some difficulties in searching a combination of pdf files, book titles and citations.
Web Search Google - Big News: "Google Scholar" is born by Sheri Kennedy and Gary Price. ResourceShelf - describes in full. This database is created from selecting from the Open Web material Google deems is scholarly. Some citations will be to for-fee material. Reminds readers that "specialized databases are still valuable for many types of seaching, including searching for "scholarly material.""
Andrew Goodman - as always insightful - Google Scholar vs. Real Scholarship -- "No doubt the introduction of tools like Google Scholar will push the various academic subscription services and libraries to standardize their protocols for making obscure information available to students (particularly grad students) and researchers. But for the foreseeable future, you're going to get a lot farther, faster, by talking to a professor or librarian who can help you figure out where to look for the actual material you need."
Rita Vine does a thorough analysis of the tool and content. She found many links to for-fee content. She does like the Cited-by-X feature. Lastly, what will the implications be for public libraries who have been creating federated searches of databases for their patrons? -- A first look at Google Scholar Beta
Danny Sullivan describes how it operates and some features - especially the citation extractions. Google Scholar Offers Access To Academic Information
Thomson Releases Study on Open Access Journals Press release (Nov 2) "Thomson Scientific, a business of The Thomson Corporation, has released a new White Paper entitled: "Open Access Journals in the ISI Citation Databases: Analysis of Impact Factors and Citation Patterns." "
Rocketinfo Adds Innovative Personalization Features to RocketNews Search Engine MarketWire via CBS Marketwatch [registration] RocketNews has new personalization features for saving seaches, having a personal page, and ranking results based on what else you've looked at.
RSS Edges Into the Bureaucracy by Daniel Terdiman, Wired (Nov 16) RSS being adopted at all levels in government to disseminate information.
Will Google Ban Affiliate Bidding? Traffick.com (Nov 16) - helps to explain why there are so many EBay advertisements everytime you run a search.
"So, from the standpoint of the poor user, it looks like too many advertisers are in there choking the system with dictionaries full of keywords that lead users only to a big-company site like eBay. And they're doing so using the keyword replace function for maximum coverage with minimum work. In other words, they're using generic ad copy and hoping to use the automated tool to make it seem somewhat personalized."
Please, Google - do something to stop this.
The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Robert McHenry, Techstation (Nov 15)
Former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Robert McHenry has damming words to say about Wikipedia, the grass-roots Internet Encyclopedia. There's a full description of its origins at Interpedia to a project that now has 30,000 contributors and 1.1 million articles. But the process for creating the articles is open to wild inaccuracies and bias. He gives the example of an article about Alexander Hamilton rife with grammatical errors and blurry on some of the facts.
Closing words -- "The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."
The free vs. subscription debate Commentary: Did the online ad model win? By Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com (Nov 16) [Registration required] Ratio of online ads to paid-for content is about 10:1.5. ONline ads are growing faster and vastly outweighing subscription fees as a way to make money on the Web. Maybe the Globe and Mail and CanWest will regret moving to the paid models.
OCLC and Yahoo! Offer Joint Toolbar By Barbara Quint. Newsbreaks (Nov 15) "Today, OCLC (http://www.oclc.org) and Yahoo! officially launch a free co-branded toolbar that provides one-click access to Open WorldCat as well as Yahoo! Search’s Web search engine. The free toolbar plugs into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. A whirligig OCLC logo to the extreme left on the toolbar clicks to a subset of Open WorldCat (currently 2 million of the 57 million records available in the full WorldCat, reflecting the holdings of some 9,000 libraries)."
Google Makes Deal with Another Yellow Pages Provider Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 12) Google is getting yellow-page content from Dex, who supplies Qwest in 14 states.
More Sources at Topix.net, Advanced Search Too! Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov ) Topix.net now has 9,000 sources (up from 7,000) and supports limiting the search by several parameters.
Blinkx fills Smart Folders with search results "Search software creates folders and automatically populates them with documents from users' hard drives and the Internet" By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service (Nov 15) Blinkx 2.0, the desktop software that does MS formats, Adobe, and Eudora has three new noteworthy features: smart folders - auto classification of documents; SIS - stuff I've seen - recently viewed files; and peer-to-peer networks. Works with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Don’t Let ‘Phishers’ Steal From You by Reid Goldsborough. LinkUp Digital (Nov 2004)
"Don’t click on links in any e-mail messages you receive that ask, or demand, that you update credit card, bank, Social Security, or other financial information or verify your password at eBay, PayPal, or other e-commerce Web sites. If you do, in all likelihood you’ll wind up spending many tedious hours trying to recover your stolen identity."
Points on what to watch for, what not to do, and what you should do.
Yahoo takes on spam, boosts e-mail storage by Jim Hu, CNet (Nov 15) - Yahoo has boosted storage allowances for email and added some anti-spam guards.
Anti-spam comes from the use of Domain Keys to authenticate outgoing email from Yahoo. Full protection depends on the receiving end recognizing the keys.
Free email users will get 250 MB of storage and be allowed attachments up to 10 MB. Premium subscribers can have 20 MB attachments.
Dow Jones to buy MarketWatch for $520 million by Steven Musil, CNet (Nov 14)
Dow Jones owns The Wall Street Journal. This purchase of MarketWatch (which owns CBS Marketwatch) will "expand its reach into the consumer financial news business."
"If approved by shareholders, the purchase will give Dow Jones access to a wider Internet audience and a bigger slice of the online-advertising market. Dow Jones' Wall Street Journal Online edition requires a paid subscription, and subscriber growth appears to have leveled off at about 700,000 users."
There is a beta version of the new MSN Search for Canada --http://beta.search.sympatico.msn.ca/.
- French language interface
- Check box for Only from Canada. Will pick up all domains.
- DOES NOT have the Near Me search, and does not have an option on the Settings page to enter location.
A9.com - My New Best Friend Mary Ellen Bates (October 2004) Concise description of A9. Closes with "A9 offers a toolbar for Mozilla, it's going to be an essential part of my search tools." - A9 has that toolbar for Mozilla now, and I love it too.
Crazy Like a Firefox by Rebecca Lieb, Clickz (Nov 12) Calls Firefox a "kick-ass browser", "light, stable, and almost infinitely customizable". Lots about the Spread Firefox campaign.
Acquisition of SuperPages Canada Completed Business Wire via Yahoo Finance (Nov 9)
"Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ - News) and Advertising Directory Solutions, a corporation formed by an affiliate of Bain Capital to implement the acquisition of SuperPages Canada, today announced that the acquisition of the company has been completed. Verizon Communications announced the definitive agreement to sell its directory operations in Canada to Bain Capital for $1.54 billion U.S. ($1.985 billion CDN) on September 8, 2004."
A Google-Microsoft War by John Dvorkak, PC Magazine (Nov 16) Predicts an all out war between Microsoft and Google with similiarities to the Netscape - Microsoft war. Who's Netscape in this competition? Google? Is Google trying to create a browser-centric online environment?
Search wars - which is the best? By Tom Geoghegan, BBC News Magazine (Nov 12) - test Google, Yahoo, the new MSN, Ask Jeeves, and A9 with three questions. The questions were not at all challenging. The first one was simply Raleigh. Check the article to get the verdict.
BlogSquirrel™ 1.0 — Blog Searching, Monitoring and Clipping Service. --"monitors 100,000+ blogs each day and delivers daily reports of new mentions of your company name, products, brands, issues."
New Meta Search Engine Launched at DonBusca.com URLWire.com (Nov 12) New metasearch engine from the Netherlands - searches Web, Blogs, News, and Software - DonBusca.com.
Web search uses AOL, Netscape, Alltheweb, Hotbot, Looksmart, MSN, Wisenut and three pay-per-click engines. Has some thumbnails and some clustering.
News - 7 news sources including BBC, NYT, CNN, Yahoo.
Software - this metasearch is interesting - Tucows, Download, Freeware, Webattack - could save some time.
Options for all results include cached version, Internet archive, site info and also FurlIt for saving the page, and MyYahoo It for Yahooers to save to MyWeb.
Has an odd image on the front page of a scroll, brown from age, with the profile of a haggard moustached man from the wild west - maybe a man who has panned for gold.
URLs. Part II: URL tips - how your knowledge of the structure of URLs can help when problems arise by Sue Eipert. - Things to look for when fixing links or in assessing whether authenticity.
Microsoft Unveils its New Search Engine - At Last By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Nov 11) Beta version of the new Microsoft search engine is available at beta.search.msn.com [except that the service was unavailable this morning].
- Has an index of 5 billion pages.
- Near Me - local search - for the US
- Search Builder - like an advanced search page
- Sliders to adjust settings for ranking results
- customization
- gets answers from Encarta
Also see -- Microsoft Web Searcher Isn't as Good as Google, But in Time It Could Be by Walter S Mossberg, WSJ Online (Nov 11) - formal release will be in January.
Microsoft Launches New Index and Search Interface Search Engine Lowdown - describes some features.
MSN Beta Search Engine Somewhat Launched Search Engine Journal - has clips from other blogs.
Detailed review by Andrew Goodman at Traffick.com -- As Promised, MSN Releases Sincere Search he likes it, especially the "personalization sliders". Conclusion -- "MSN's sincere little search engine should blow the lid off and cause Google to do a little bit of soul-searching about how its core product serves an ever-more-sophisticated user. But the MSN Search technology will have to be very good if it's to get through even the first year of its life without being shown up as just another easily spammable wannabe."
Google's index nearly doubles. Googleblog (Nov 10) Google nearly doubled overnight - from 4.3 billion pages to 8 billion.
It's questionable whether this is good. I've noticed that intitle search is not working as well - it returns results where the word is not in the title - and especially so if you attempt to look for a phrase in the title or for alternate words. Perhaps the weight of dealing with 8 billion pages is stressing the system.
It would be nice to know what this extra content is. How many are library records from the OCLC WorldCat? How many are journal titles from proprietary databases? How much is from deeper indexing?
Also see Billions and Billions Crawled, Andrew Goodman, Traffick.com - finds quality of results are better for "business law canada"
Many are wondering if Google will be rejigging algorithms and what this will mean to searchers (not to mention search engine marketers).
Dogpile Launches Enhanced Metasearch Platform with New IntelliFind Technology Business Wire (Nov 10) " Sophisticated Query Analysis Predicts Likely Intent Behind Every Search to Deliver Results from the Most Relevant Engines and Content Sources" -- Infospace claims to have added some query analysis intelligence to Dogpile, the popular metasearch engine. -- "IntelliFind(TM) technology utilizes sophisticated query intelligence to assess the likely intent behind every entered query, enabling Dogpile to return more relevant results from a wider array of content sources." It's going to limit the search to sources "most likely to contain the best-matched content."
Perhaps Dogpile will be analysing searches day by day to identify the popular questions, maybe the better matching algorithms will be tied to paid listings. It's a very commercial metasearch engine and the first 10 to 20 results can easily be sponsored (and only faintly labelled as such).
Dogpile says it will be adding content -- "specialized information on specific product categories, yellow pages content, movies, entertainment and more."
Not mentioned in the press release is whether these changes will affect the Infospace family of metasearchers - metacrawler, webcrawler. Likely yes - as well as other derivative metasearch engines such as Info.com. Note - Info.com is the only one of this set that puts paid listings in a separate column - easy to see and well marked.
INTELLICAST WEATHER http://www.intellicast.com has detailed weather reports and forecasts for the United States with radar maps and many alerts. Hurricane watchers will be interested in the 2004 Hurricane Track Summary. Can get satellite views of weather worldwide, with forecasts and travel forecasts for international cities. As well there are planners (golf, ski, garden, stargazing ...), services (forecast by email, desktop search ...), and educational material.
Preparing for the infoglut By: Andy Rowsell-Jones CIO Canada (01 Nov 2004)
"Within the next 10 years the convergence of multiple technologies will thrust people into a world where nothing is secret. "
Foresees "ubiquitous monitoring" - uncontrolled by policies or laws. Mentats, a term taken from Frank Herbert's Dune, will be the filter and analyst.
Of interest -- "But search engines have two agendas, one overt, the other covert. The overt agenda is to present information that's precisely relevant to the user's interests. The covert agenda is to present information that's relevant and for which advertising fees have been paid."
Microsoft ready to launch search engine Reuters via CNet (Nov 9) "Microsoft on Thursday will launch its long-promised Internet search engine, which will compete directly with market leader Google, sources close to the company said Tuesday."
Google, Meet Microsoft by Ben Elgin, Business Week Online (Nov 10) - thinks that it will be difficult for Microsoft to catch up to Google with web searching, but does say Microsoft may have the advantage whenever they come out with a desktop search.
New Report: Search Engine Disclosure of Advertising Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 8) Consumers Union has examined the state of paid advertising on the Internet and published a 82 page report about it. In Search of Disclosure: How Search Engines Alert Consumers to the Presence of Advertising in Search Results [PDF] - This is a lot of reading. Gary Price has an excerpt. Or you can read the executive summary and the recommendations.
Here's what I pulled out.
- paid inclusion is not satisfactorily disclosed. (Is it disclosed at all?)
- meta-search engines don't "disclose paid placement". True - they have PPC engines embedded that don't label results as "sponsored sites". The Infospace family of meta-search engines are big offenders. I do think the Info.com one is better than others that are based on the Infospace metasearch because Sponsored Results are on the right and well marked.
- disclosures are hard to find. Ain't that the truth? Labelling is often in a faint grey colour.
Not noted in the executive summary (but maybe elsewhere) - sponsored listings on the first page are increasing - they may soon outnumber "organic" results. Search engines should be careful. They may kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Also, how "organic" or natural are the results? Search engine marketers set up popular keywords in the title and by other means to place well in results. They buy hits for those keywords. This is legitimate business, but sometimes it is over the top. Search on Vioxx nsaids "side effects" - there are sure to be -law firms who have optimized to be found with any mention of vioxx.
It's a problem, but Consumer WebWatch is watching out for us.
Searching For Images Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 8) Did you know that Google's image database is only updated twice a year? I didn't. Gary Price points us to Yahoo, Altavista, and four specialty image databases.
Alternative search engines have far to go to catch giants, Hitwise reports Internet Retailer (Nov 8) Hitwise has found an increasing concentration of searches at Google and Yahoo likely due to brand recognition.
"Collectively, five alternative search engines – Vivisimo.com, Clusty.com, a9.com, Alltheweb.com and Snap.com – claimed only one-tenth of a percent of total visits to search engines and directories during that week, Hitwise found. "
Why is anyone going to Alltheweb at all? It's a derivative of Yahoo. Clusty and A9 are the two major players there. Vivisimo should have exploited brand recognition for Vivisimo rather than setting out anew to develop Clutsy - oops Clusty. And A9 - I love it - Just as well it is not called Amazon but it needs a better name. Perhaps Amazon should have expanded Alexa instead, since it does have some history with web searchers.
Firefox browser drawing fans into its web BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Pioneer Press - Silicon Valley (Nov 9) Five reasons to switch to Firefox browser.
Mozilla releases Firefox 1.0 Paul Festa CNET News.com (Nov 9) Firefox is out of beta and into production. Things haven't been this exciting in the browser world since the early days of the Netscape browser.
Interestingly, - "Mozilla was the product of a bold--some said desperate--strategy by Netscape Communications to rescue its Netscape browser from oblivion at the hands of Microsoft's relentless marketing practices. "
Microsoft in response to the positive reception accorded the Firefox features now offers some add-ons -- Internet Explorer Add-ons. Maybe this will help IE, but it's easier to download Firefox and use their extension finder to dress it up.
Robs Blog compared Google/Copernic Desktop Search (Oct 27) Found that Copernic has more options for configuration and more features. Picked it over GDS - at this time.
Jerry's Take On What's Next in Search Yahoo Search Blog (Oct 28) Jerry Yang, CEO on Yahoo, see the future of search in personalization and communities.
"Because the Net is obviously a bigger part of people's lives than 10 years ago, we at Yahoo! also have an opportunity to integrate into people's lives more deeply than before. Yahoo! Local and the beta version of My Yahoo! Search are just two of the examples of how we're enabling people to manage their search content, search within locations of their choice, and build personal communities online. Users can connect to people with similar interests and they can gather and share search information at will."
The Hidden Cost of Buying Information by Sean Silverthorne, Editor, HBS Working Knowledge, Harvard Business Review (Nov 8, 2004) - examines study by Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School post-doctoral fellow in the Technology and Operations Management Unit. "She recently published a working paper, "Getting Advice from the Same Source but at a Different Cost: Do We Overweigh Information Just Because We Paid for It?" Her research so far indicates Yes!
The Yellow Pages are Dead! Long Live the Yellow Pages! by Pamela Parker. Clickz (Nov 5) Sweeping view of the changes in yellow pages services as search engines - especially Yahoo - get into the business of local search. Key bits are wireless, and social networking.
New Stuff From Feedster and Technorati Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 7) Feedster has a blogs-only search in order to separate those rss feeds from the news sources. Technorati has many new search options.
An Hourly Visualization of the News Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 5) There is a high WOW factor to this new tool that shows hour by hour photos and headlines from three big news feeds: Reuters, BBC, and NY Times. The site is 10 x 10 (tenbyten.org). A must see. Requires Flash.
Speegle Search Engine Talks to You RsearchBuzz (Nov 5) About Speegle ( http://www.speegle.co.uk), a search engine that speaks with a scottish accent. It also reads the news.
Yahoo looking at new arena Delivery of online entertainment may be portal's future Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle (Nov 8) -- Yahoo intends to be ready for the much foreseen shift to digital entertainment. Former chariman of ABC television, Lloyd Braun, "is charged with overseeing Yahoo's entertainment and media properties, including movies, music, gaming, sports, news and finance." Article reviews Yahoo's earlier efforts at this.
"Yahoo's entertainment properties include a movie site that features film trailers and reviews. There's also Launch, a music destination where users can listen to online radio and watch music videos." And it has special content about the Apprentice.
Mozilla Firefox: The Searcher's Browser By Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Nov 8) The first of a series this week by Chris in which he reviews "some of the native features that make it a compelling alternative to Internet Explorer. I'll also review my favorite browser extensions that enhance both search and browsing the web." This article covers the easy installation.
Are you Google hack-proof? By Ong Boon Kiat, CNETAsia (nov 5) With some well-turned phrases and syntax a person determined to find sensitive information on web servers will succeed. This article gives some examples and some pointers for foiling Google hacks.
New Options at Yahoo Shopping Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 5 ) - Describes new parameter search for products at Yahoo and points out that Snap.com and AOL have similar features for their comparison shopping products.
See Yahoo Launches Precision Browsing InternetNews (Nov 5) -- Describes improvements at Yahoo Shopping for presenting attributes of products for people to use to narrow their search. This has been available for some time for electronic consumer goods, but Yahoo has added attributes for general merchandise.
"Yahoo is looking for its best-ever holiday shopping season, having seen 40 percent growth year over year, growth Solomon attributes to comparison-shopping and search tools that make it easy for shoppers to find products at good prices."
Searching Television via Closed-Captioning Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 5) - tools and techniques for searching closed-captioning on TV programs and viewing television content online.
Using Google for African Studies Research: A Guide to Effective Web Searching http://www.hanszell.co.uk/google/[Pilot edition, September 2004] by Hans M. Zell -- Detailed guide to Google's web search and other search services. Works through 7 searches examining the results and showing the effects of choice of words on the success.
Internet Resources Newsletter (November) picked this as a "nice web site". "This is an excellent study of how to make the most of Google when researching into African Studies, which, at the same time, also highlights some limitations of Google. Hans Zell has done a thorough job, using practical examples to show the ins and outs of using the world's most popular search engine. "
There's a new directory -- LookDirectory. Claims to have 2 million sites and to use paid editors. Those editors likely spend their time reviewing submission for paid listings. The site is tied into Google - Sponsored Ads come from Google, and the Web search is of Google.
The directory and categories are well laid out and there are good local breakdowns for countries. But the commercial slant is clear. The Canada - Ontario category has a subcategory for Zorra Township (1) and Zurich Ontario (4). One wouldn't expect these to be hand-picked items.
The site also has tabs for Business and Shopping - listing services and online stores. Forums are a fifth part and would be useful for finding discussion groups on a huge range of topics. Visitors can write comments about a site or rate it. The one thing they can't do is search the directory.
On the whole - clearly commercial, probably most useful for the Forums and maybe the listings for Business and for Shopping.
Snoop-Google By Jim Meskauskas, Media Post (Nov 4) Google Desktop Search indexes your files on your computer much as it does the Web. Meskauskas sees this as opening the door wide for more pay-per-click advertising activated by what Google finds in your own files.
"But what is Google going to do with this tool? It does, after all, live on an IP address, so the results of a search on your desktop can be "seen," so to speak, at headquarters. Other than providing something for the altruistic good of the jumbled computer user, what does Google want to achieve with this tool?
Well, certainly it is going to be to extend the reach of the AdWords and AdSense program, first and foremost. "
And then, of course, there is the privacy issue.
Hunting what's hot in social networks By ADAM GIFFORD, The New Zealand Herald (Nov 5) Web sites are using Eurekster to improve relevance of results for their users through the community they build. Eurekster is the social networking search engine - created by Grant Ryan of Christchurch, New Zealand
Genie Tyburski found that Yahoo Search has a limit on the size of query. Her test suggested 100 characters, mine came in at 80 characters not counting spaces between words. At an average of 5 letters per word, the limit could be around 16 to 20 words.
See TVC Research News (Nov 5)
Ziggs.com searches executive profiles - those it harvests from the web presumably and those you register. This is in beta still. It claims to have 1,000,000 profiles across nearly 16,000 companies. The search interface allows for searches in countries around the world but I expect that at the present time all the companies loaded with be in the United States. Microsoft and Ford Motor and CISCO are there, Nortel is not - not in Canada or the United States. Profiles seem to be taken from Investor Relation web pages. We should probably check back in 3 to 6 months.
See Search Engine for Executive Profiles ResearchBuzz (Nov 4)
Happy Graduation to the Google Deskbar, Googleviewer.com Search Engine Watch blog (Nov 3) - Google Deskbar is ready for primetime, and rumours abound about the GoogleViewer.
FirstStop WebSearch Releases Free Open Interface FirstStop WebSearch Version 4.1 enables access to information resources on the Internet, intranets, and extranet. FirstStop has three versions: Standard, free for non-commercial use; Deluxe with more search engines, search capabilities, and connection with MS Office products; and Visual with thumbnails of pages.
Large Publisher Comments on Working with Google Search Engine Watch Blog (Nov 3) -- Reed Elsevier has come to some agreement with Google about indexing content - details are unclear. For web searchers it means they may find results that direct them to an article in one of the publishers e-journals or databases. Gary Price, in this posting, argues that it would be better for the seacher to use the Reed Elsevier tools directly.
Search Marketing Beyond Google and Overture y Dana Todd, SearchDay (Nov 4) Report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, August 2-5, 2004 about multitude of businesses selling pay-per-click ads.
"Google's network currently holds about 53% of the paid listings distribution on the Web, said Peter Hershberg, Managing Partner of Reprise Media, while Overture's networks holds 45%. That leaves only a fractional remainder, which is split between hundreds of Tier Two providers."
Local Search: Missing Pieces Falling into Place By Greg Sterling, SearchDay (Nov 2) More people are running Web searches to find for local services. "Regardless of whose numbers you accept, consumers' use of the Internet (and search engines in particular) to find local information is growing. That will only continue as search engines add and refine local offerings for consumers. And Yahoo! is now doing an extensive consumer marketing campaign around local, which has already boosted awareness and usage of its local search and related SmartView products."
Tara Calishain explains the syntaxes listed on Google's cheat sheet [ http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html ] and adds a couple of other undocumented ones -- Google's Cheat Sheet Reveals A Couple Hidden Syntaxes (Oct 28)
Internet Search Engine Update by Greg R. Notess. Online (Nov 3) - capsule accound of major changes for the period August - September (roughly)
Tuning up your Skills in the Web Search Garage By Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Nov 3) - Glowing review of Tara Calishain's new book on web search techniques and tools.
Google Brings Search Technology to the Desktop By Jay Wrolstad
NewsFactor Network (Nov 3, 2004) - Another review of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.
A Google-Microsoft War by John Dvorak. PC Magazine (Nov 16) Review of the accomplishments and intentions of Google vis a vis Microsoft. Has some information about Microsoft's "super search engine".
Surfulater - new tool for saving web pages or extracts, organizing and managing. Keeps it organized in a "knowledge tree" - similar to a bookmark list of major sections and indented items. Has a full-text engine. Tool is available for free trial right now. See Features and Benefits. Requires Internet Explorer browser. Customer support at Surfulater says that Firefox support is coming soon.
Dating the Web: The Confusion of Chronology Greg Notess, Online Magazine (Nov/Dec 2004) Examines the problems and weaknesses in dating web documents and their implications. "Exploring the Internet dating scene for the information professional means understanding the dimensions, deficiencies, and differences of the various dates associated with Web pages." The article itself is an example of the problem. It does not have an orgination date - just shows that it was in the Nov/Dec issue of Online.
Google Everywhere by Tara Calishain. PC World (Nov 16) Calishain describes way you can get Google to send you notices without you running the search in your browser. Methods covered are the email notices from Google Alerts on changes in a searchs, the non-affiliated-with-Google Google Alert (singular), send in a search by email with Google by E-Mail. There are also RSS feeds you can create. There is even Google by instant messenger through Yahoo. Still more.
Smart Web Changes World Reuters via Wired (Oct 31) - preview of some discussions expected at the ITXpo symposium. in France -- "The next cycle of connectivity, where all systems understand each other, has barely started, while the following cycle -- in which this intelligence is embedded in every device -- is still a dream." "Ubiquitous intelligence" is still a long time off.
Google's Desktop Search Could Change SEM Forever› › by Fredrick Marckini ClickZ November 1, 2004 -- Looks at marketing implications of desktop search, especially in view of the fact that Google Desktop application is so good.
"Desktop search will eventually increase the volume of Web searches without requiring an increase in Internet users. This profoundly benefits search engine marketing (SEM)."
A new Findory at Geeking with Greg (Nov 1) Announces improvements at the personalized news search engine - Findory.
Open WorldCat Pilot:A User's Perspective by Nancy O'Neill. Searcher (Nov/Dec 2004) Tells the story of the Open WorldCat project by OCLC to make books held in libraries visible to searchers at Yahoo and Google. Has some helpful search tips for finding these records. Still some kinks to work out.
This project has been on trial during 2004 and is expected to roll out soon. It includes libraries who subscribe to WorldCat on FirstSearch. "OCLC intends to make members' collections visible and available to information seekers, from library portals and on the open Web." Has links to information pages at OCLC.
A9.com Toolbar Now Available For Mozilla Firefox Press Release Amazon.com (Nov 1) - My wish has been granted - "A9.com users who prefer Mozilla Firefox for browsing the Web can now take advantage of A9.com's full set of innovative search technologies such as Bookmarks, Site History, A9 Lists and the A9 Diary, which are available through the A9 Toolbar."
Get it from http://toolbar.a9.com/ Requires Firefox 1.0 or later.
Be aware, however, that Amazon does collect information. From the end user license agreement:
"A9.COM'S TOOLBAR SERVICE COLLECTS AND STORES FULL UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATORS ("URLS") FOR EVERY WEB PAGE THAT YOU VIEW WHILE USING THE A9.COM TOOLBAR SERVICE. THESE URLS SOMETIMES INCLUDE PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION."
You'll want to read the agreement carefully.
A Busy Month for Froogle by Gary Price. Search Engine Watch Blog (Oct 29) - roundup of news about Froogle, Google's product search engine. Mainly - it will compare prices across merchants for a product. Has more filters for slicing and dicing products than I remember.
The Desktop Search Land-Grab Google's Desktop Search both validates and kills the 'local search' business. by Rafe Needleman [AlwaysOn] (Nov 1) Needleman "recently sat down with Suranga Chandratillake, co-founder of Blinkx, and asked him how Blinkx will survive the Google onslaught."
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