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The Pandia Post Newsletter No. 17, May 2003 - Part 2

Click here for part 1 of this issue of the Pandia Post newsletter!

Search Engine World News

Below find selected news items from our Search Engine World column. This section of the site is updated several times a week. You may also get these stories in you mailbox on a weekly basis by subscribing to our Search Engine World newsletter (http://www.pandia.com/post/)

///New version of Ask Jeeves

Ask Jeeves has launched yet another version of its search site. Like Yahoo! and AlltheWeb it is following in the footsteps of Google, introducing a less complex lay out.

Ask Jeeves is now trying to include more information in regular search results, adding, for instance, pictures and news headlines if relevant.

If you search for "photos of Volkswagen", you will actually get pictures of such cars. Search for "new on Iraq", and Jeeves will present selected headlines near the top of the page.

You will find related search queries in the right hand column.

All in all, this looks like a positive upgrade of Ask Jeeves.

http://www.ask.com/

///New features on AlltheWeb

There is a new version of the AlltheWeb search engine. This has apparently nothing to do with the fact that Overture is to take over AlltheWeb from Fast.

In January AlltheWeb introduced true Boolean searching. This time the changes are more cosmetic. There is a leaner front page with a new color palette. The result pages have been simplified and the banner ads have been removed.

Search engine marketers would probably find the "AlltheWeb URL Investigator" interesting. By entering the Web address (URL) of a site into the search box the results will tell you who owns the domain, what language the site is written in, its sub domains and size, the date it was last updated, and a link to see how the site looked in the past.

AlltheWeb now links each query term and phrase to a dictionary lookup on dictionary.com. The link is not that easy to find, actually. Click on the underlined search query in the blue bar near the top of the result page.

Windows users may now enable keyboard shortcuts to replace mouse movements. You activate this feature in the customize section.

http://tinyurl.com/avtr

AlltheWeb has also added a "what people search for" page, presenting the last ten queries performed at AlltheWeb. Offensive terms are filtered out.

http://www.alltheweb.com/recentqueries

You may also use the search field as a calculator. Enter, for instance, 365*24, hit enter, and AlltheWeb gives you the answer (8760).

The following functions are supported:

• Multiply: *
• Divide: /
• Add: +
• Subtract: -
• Exponent: ^

///Overture joins scumware company

The Overture pay-per-click text ad company has signed an agreement with "scumware" deliverer Gator. Kalena Jordan and other search engine optimization providers are mighty upset about Overture's move.

Read more about the Overture/Gator deal: http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/12-scumware.html

///New version of Yahoo!

Yahoo! definitely fears the rise of Google on the search engine scene. They are now launching a new version of their search site -- and yes, it is becoming more like Google.

Read more about the new Yahoo! search engine: http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/11-yahoo.html

///Search Engine Marketing Done Right

Having difficulty obtaining fair ranking in Yahoo? Are you puzzled with why you cannot find your site through a search on AOL?

Whether you are a newbie to marketing online or you’re a seasoned veteran these problems may perplex you. Read on to see that it may not be a lack of effort or intellect but a simple and easily corrected error in your marketing syntax.

Pandia Guest Writer Steve Winkler takes a look at the order of search engine optimization operations. This is the first in a series of Pandia articles, and you will find three of them by following this link:http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/10-seo.html

///LookSmart plans daily Wisenut update

ZDNet reports (http://tinyurl.com/8g52 ) that LookSmart is hoping to use some of its newly acquired technology to refresh its Wisenut search engine database every day.

In January LookSmart bought Grub, an US company that has developed software that lets people give their computers' unused processing power to others.

This has been done by others before them. SETI, a project that is looking for extraterrestrial life is one of them. Some users of the Google toolbar may donate their computers' unused processing power to a scientific research project at Stanford University.

It is unclear what you will get in return for giving LookSmart access to your computer. Webmasters cannot, for instance, force the software to crawl their own sites first. However, LookSmart/Grub plans to continue to make the crawl data available to the Grub community of users more directly (through an XML API).

• http://www.grub.org/
• http://www.looksmart.com/
• http://www.wisenut.com/
• Google Compute Project: http://toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html

///Optimizing the title tag

As part of the continued series “Getting Back To Search Engine Marketing Basics”, Pandia guest writer Andy Beal turns his attention to the much talked about meta tags. This week he takes a closer look at the title tag.

Read about how to optimize your title tag for the search engines: http://www.pandia.com/features/beal3-titletags.html

///More European search oriented sites

Pandia asked its readers for tips on more European sites devoted to Internet searching and search engine marketing. And yes, we did get the response we hoped for.

Read about more European search engine oriented sites: http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/08-european.html

///Special Pandia offer from Kanoodle

Pandia has made a special agreement with the Kanoodle pay per click search engine. Kanoodle is offering readers of Pandia a free $5 account. A deposit is not required.

This gives you an excellent opportunity to try out keywords and queries for free.

Kanoodle may not be the largest service for pay per click based search results on the Web, but it will deliver your listings to thousands of search enabled sites on the net, CNET and Galaxy included.

///New MSN Search is out of beta

MSN has implemented a new and leaner interface on its Web search pages, which is good. Pandia believes, however, that MSN should reconsider the way it mixes results.

Read more about the new MSN Search: http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/07-msn.html

///Pandia is "cooled" by the Open Directory

The Pandia Powersearch all-in-one search engine section is designated a Cool Site in the Netscape Open Directory Computers/Internet/Searching category.

We send our heartfelt thanks to the ODP team. We can also inform our readers that we have moved the search field on the Powersearch page to the very top of the page for improved usability. This change has been made on the basis of a suggestions sent us by one of our readers. If you have any ideas on how we may improve our site, do not hesitate to contact us!

• http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/
• Pandia Powersearch: http://www.pandia.com/powersearch/

///Overture acquires AltaVista and AlltheWeb

Pay-per-click search engine company Overture will acquire the classic search engine AltaVista for US$140 million in cash and stock.

AltaVista was once one of the leading search engines on the Net, with the most advanced search technology, the largest database and a loyal user base. However, that was before AltaVista tried to become an all encompassing Web portal, and before Google arrived with their new approach to searching.

Since its fall AltaVista has done a lot to improve their services. it remains a good search engine with excellent features for advanced searching. However, the visitors have not returned to extent AltaVista probably have hoped for.

Overture, on the other hand, has become an Internet success story. The company sell pay-per-click text ads that appear as "sponsored listings" on other search sites, AltaVista included.

It seems that Overture has decided to buy AltaVista of several reasons:

It plans to "enhance AltaVista's paid inclusion products and offer its advertisers additional high-return marketing vehicles intended to drive targeted customer leads". That's press release speak for "we will continue to use AltaVista to sell Overture text ads, but maybe in a new way".

The main reason is probably that it will use the AltaVista Web site in order to test new services.

Overture will make use of AltaVista's search engine technology, and may offer portals and search sites a package combining Overture pay-per-click results and regular search results from AltaVista. In this way Overture may become an even more formidable competitor to Google, who also combines text ads with regular results.

This move will also make Overture more independent of Yahoo!, who recently acquired Inktomi, the search engine that provides the back-fill (i.e. results that appear if there are no available text-ads) at Overture's site.

Yahoo! is using Overture text ads at the moment, but may develop their own pay-per-click program in the future. By buying AltaVista Overture may be preparing for a scenario without Yahoo! as a major customer.

• http://www.altavista.com/
• http://www.overture.com/

Overture has also bought Fast's Web search division.

Read more about Overture's acquisition of the AlltheWeb search engine: http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/04-fast.html

///Making sense out of link popularity

Mike Grehan is known for his guide to search engine marketing, called Search Engine Marketing. The Essential Best Practice Guide (honorable mention in the Pandia Awards 2002).

He has now written an ebook on topic distillation with the mysterious title Topic distillation: hits, clever, discoweb then teoma.

In this paper Grehan making a very good attempt at explaining the concept of link popularity and what that means for search engine positioning. It is a little bit technical, but anyone trying to make sense out of search engine rankings, will definitely benefit from reading it.

And yes, the enigmatic title will be explained in the paper.

You can download it at http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/topic_distillation.pdf for free. (PDF-file, 800 KB)

///Rank Rage

Special Guest Writer Steve Winkler takes a look at the proliferation of search engine spam, the consequences for the marketer, and what to do about it.

Read more about search engine spam: http://www.pandia.com/features/rank-rage.html

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