Pandia Post 26: Recent search engine news and articles

Here are some recent search engine news items and articles from the Pandia Search World column.

Copernic Desktop Search wins benchmark study

(May 02 2005) The UW E-Business Consortium “Benchmark Study of Desktop Search Tools” evaluated 12 desktop search tools. The study evaluated each application along six attributes: usability, versatility, accuracy, efficiency, security, and enterprise readiness. And the winners are:

The analysis reveals that while the desktop search tools show great promise for significant productivity gains, the technology is still immature due to a lack of security and overall manageability.

The “Benchmark Study of Desktop Search Tools” is available to the public free-of-cost through the UW E-Business Institute Web site.

In their press release, The University of Wisconsin emphasizes that the study was conducted solely by the UW E-Business Consortium and was not funded nor supported by desktop search companies or institutions.

Want to know more about desktop search? Check out Pandia's own survey.

Optimize for "Returning Customer" Keywords

(April 28 2005) There are search engine optimization techniques that not only bring in new visitors, but that also encourages them to come back to your site.

Tansy O’Bryant and Mark Schurtman has more on returning customer keywords.

RSS: Cool Tool for Search Engine Marketing

(April 26 2005) More and more sites are syndicating their content by the use of RSS feeds, i.e. text files that list headlines and links to new webpages.

Site owners use RSS feeds to get you content, while web surfers use RSS newsreaders to keep track of their favorite web sites.

Paul J. Bruemmer tells you how to make use of RSS and get new visitors and inbound links.

Log file analysis for search engine optimization

(April 18 2005) An important part of search engine optimization is analyzing the web server log files in order to study the effects of the campaign.

If you own or manage a website, you are probably already aware of the importance of your log files or site statistics. Such data can give you insights about your site's usability, errors in your HTML code, the popularity of your site pages and the type of visitors your site attracts.

But did you know it can also highlight the success or failure of your search engine optimization campaign?

Read the whole article by Pandia Guest Writers Kalena and Jerry Jordan.

Do you still need meta tags?

(April 14 2005) Years ago, meta tags were the magic bullet for achieving high search engine rankings with organic search engine optimization. Today, most meta tags are not as powerful as they once were -- except for the Title and Description Tags.

Used in SEO and web site development, a meta tag is the hidden HTML code containing text describing web page content information for search engine spiders. Meta tags exist behind the scenes and are not ordinarily seen by site visitors unless they click on View Source.

Read Paul J. Breummer's tips on how to write compelling meta tags and more.

What is Google Q&A?

(April 9 2005) Google has introduced a new service called Google Q&A. In their own web log, they write: "We've pulled together facts from all over the Web to help give you the fastest possible access to the quick bits of information you need every day; just type a query into the search box, and you'll get back the answer at the top of your search results."

This works by entering a natural language query into the regular Google search box.

At the moment, there seems to be more questions than answers: Is this yet another copyright-infringing feature? Why does it not work at all from Pandia's Macs? And how is the quality of the answers controlled?

At WebmasterWorld you can read that to the question "Who is prime minister of Britain", one searcher gets the answer "Margaret Thatcher" and another "John Major".

It is certainly an appealing idea, but it seems Google Q&A was launched prematurely. For the time being, Pandia will stick with Answers.com.

Google adds satellite photos

(April 5 2005) It is all very James Bondish really. We can now all get access to those secret satellites that spy on us every hour of the day.

To get access to the images, you should do a search using Google Maps or Google Local.

The Google blog says that "...when you type an address into Google Maps, you can click the 'Satellite' link and see a view of the area. You can zoom, move the view by dragging, and even resize the window just like the normal 'Maps' view."

As search engine expert Chris Sherman points out the feature is based on technology acquired from the Keyhole company.

This service is limited to North America for the moment, and no, there is no death ray included.

Submitting your site to search engines and directories

(April 5 2005) Guest writer Kalena Jordan looks at how to prepare your search engine and directory submissions.

" Now there is such a huge amount of misinformation on the Web about search engine submission," she says: "I thought it was high time I wrote a basic tutorial to help webmasters sort fact from fiction."

How to succeed using pay-per-click text ads

(April 2 2005) Chet Childers look at how you can create a successful pay-per-click campaign that brings in visitors as well as money.

Read more about pay-per-click text ads.

Google doubles GMail storage (and beyond)

(April 1 2005) Google's free online email service is still in the beta testing phase, meaning that it is not available to all. That being said, the number of invited users is increasing fast and Google is for all practical purposes competing with existing service providers like MSN HotMail and Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! recently announced that they will increase the amount of online storage space to 1 gigabyte for free accounts. Google can't afford to be left behind and has now decided to double its storage space from 1 to 2 GB.

Google has also announced that it will add a yet-to-be-determined amount of extra storage daily beyond this, with no plans to stop. This is called the "top secret Infinity+1 storage plan".

Hm. We should probably keep today's date in mind. On the other hand, Google announced GMail on April 1st 2004, and that was no joke. Hence SE Expert John Battelle argues that Google actually does plan to increase the limit to the sky.

Pandia gives away GMail accounts

If you are among those who does not have a GMail account and would like to get one, Pandia has more than 50 invites to give away. (We have already given away 50 invites to readers of our weekly newsletter).

Send a mail to

with the headline "I need a GMail account". Include your full name and email address in the mail.

Pandia adds Search Engine Detective

(March 28 2005) Pandia has added a new service to its search engine intelligence toolbox: The Pandia Search Engine Detective.

We have combined our list of search engine oriented blogs and sites with our search engine news search engine in order to give you a gateway to everything search engine.

The gateway should be of use for anyone who needs to keep track of the latest developments in the search engine industry, new search tools and services as well as the latest SE gossip.

Visit the Pandia Search Engine Detective.

Ixquick metasearch engine gets some new features

(March 24 2005) Metasearch engine Ixquick adds an international phone directory, shopping search and other useful features.

Yahoo! buys Flickr

(March 21 2005) The search engines continue to add new services to their portfolio.

The trend in the late nineties was to provide portal content -- news, games, horoscopes, you name it. Now the search engine companies add file sharing utilities and desktop search tools, gradually blurring the dividing line between your computer and their servers.

Yahoo! is buying Flickr, a site for online photo sharing.

With Flickr you can publish your own photos on the web and blog the photos you take with a camera phone.

Yahoo! already has its own photo site, called Yahoo! Photos, and this one will probably absorb features from Flickr.

Answer search engine Brainboost relaunched

(March 19 2005) The answer search engine Brainboost has been around for a couple of years, but was recently revamped and relaunched. Here is why you should take a look.

Brainboost is not a regular search engine. You can enter your search queries in natural language and the results will not be rendered only as links to web sites that might contain a relevant answer.

Instead Brainboost presents you with a series of answers to the question you entered. The answers form complete sentences stating facts that are relevant to your question.

Google Desktop Search is out of beta

(March 9 2005) The Google Desktop Search Tool lets you search for files and emails on your own computer (see our desktop search page for reviews of this and other desktop search tools).

Google has now removed the beta -- i.e. test period -- status from the name of the software, indicating that they now feel confident that the tool is working the way it should. Indeed, it does.

The 1.0 release also adds new functions.

You can now search the full text of PDF files and the meta-information stored with music, image and video files. Moreover, the tool now supports the Firefox and Netscape browsers, Thunderbird and Netscape email clients and new Chinese and Korean language interfaces.

"Google Desktop Search brings the power of Google search to information on the computer hard drive," says Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of Product Management at Google.

"It's like having a photographic memory of everything you've seen with your computer, right at your fingertips. We're proud to take Google Desktop Search out of beta, and we will continue to extend the utility of desktop search for users worldwide."

Google now also delivers application programming interfaces (APIs) for the desktop search tool. This means that software developers can make new plug-ins based on the desktop search product, in practice expanding its functionality.

Search Google for weather forecasts

(March 5 2005) The Google blog reports that Google has a new search feature. You can now type "weather," followed by your location in the search form to see weather conditions and a four-day forecast for your area. Zip codes work too.

The forecast is illustrated with cute little weather icons. This feature will only work for U.S. locations, though. You can also send your query as SMS to 46645 (GOOGL).

Read about this feature in Google’s help pages.

Overture gets a new name

(March 3 2005) Yahoo! has decided to rename Overture, its famous pay per click text ad company. The new name will be Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions, and the switch will take place this spring.

"Our mission is to be essential to marketers of all types around the world," says Yahoo senior vice president Ted Meisel according to TechNewsWorld.

"Unifying all of our search marketing and related products under one banner and one common approach reflects our commitment to integrate and simplify online advertising, allowing businesses of all sizes to take advantage of the Yahoo Search marketing solutions that best fit their marketing goals."

All right, but we are still not convinced that this is such a good move. The first argument against such a change is, of course, that Overture has become a well known brand. The company has already switched names one time before (from GoTo to Overture).

Secondly Yahoo!/Overture is selling Overture pay-per-click text ads to other portals and search destinations. They might feel a little bit uneasy about announcing that they are delivering data from one of their main competitors, the portal company Yahoo!

That being said, the move might strengthen the Yahoo! brand.

China's search engine censorship continues

Google and Yahoo in unholy alliances.

(February 27 2005) For several years the Chinese regime has been oppressing their citizens by censoring what they get to access online. Now internet giants like Google and Yahoo help facilitate this oppression in order to gain access to the Chinese market.

One of the strategies of the Chinese regime has been to cut off access to international search engines like Google and Altavista from time to time.

Now they also censor in a way that makes it impossible to get results for certain search phrases. This is not only the case with government approved search engines like the popular Baidu.com.

The scary thing is that the regime has succeeded in putting such pressure on global search engines like Google and Yahoo that they have conceded to make certain information inaccessible in some of their Chinese versions.

Read the whole story by guest writer Lars Våge, from InternetBrus.

Google movie search operator

(February 24 2005) Google has added another operator to its search syntax. Add movie: to a search query in order to get to webpages covering the cinema, when using the regular Google search engine.

The Google blog gives a few examples that show that you can go beyond searches for particular movie names (movie: Matrix).

Hence you may search for movie: Tom Hanks talking to a volleyball, movie: awesome car chase or movie: good chick flick. (Yep, these are Google's examples, not ours!)

In the US you may also use movie: followed by a U.S. zip code or city/state to find theaters and show times in your area.