Pandia Search Engine Weblog 2001

(Dec 30 2001) Commercial sites paying Yahoo! to get listed in the popular Web directory must now pay an annual fee of US$ 299 to keep their entries.

Read why Pandia does not like this new development.

Google breaks the 3 billion documents barrier

(Dec 11 2001) Google launches a new and bigger search engine index and adds fresh news headlines to results.

Pandia has more on the search engine arms struggle.

Google opens German ad sales office

(Dec 10 2001) It is ironic that while Yahoo! gets a lot of heat for selling clearly marked paid results on its result pages, Google get praise for not selling pay per click listings. The fact is that Google do sell such listing. However, they are clearly marked as "Sponsored Links".

Google has now opened an office in Germany that is to sell text ads on its German language web site. This site is targeting audiences in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Google press release (in German)

AltaVista launches new search index

(Dec 1 2001) AltaVista has announced the launch of its new combined search engine index, intergrating global and regional databases. The UK proportion of this index currently lists 49 million pages and provides users with more search results than any of its competitors on country-specific searches, according to AltaVista. The German proportion of the index has been doubled from 42 to 82 million documents.

The UK version of AltaVista as well as the German one have been given more simplified designs.

The end of Excite as we know it

(Nov. 30 2001) Infospace will take over the Excite.com portal from Excite@Home. The portal lives on, but the Excite search engine goes to the place where all search engines go when they die: the large back up tape in the sky.

Pandia has more on the fall of Excite.

Google accepts stop word searching

(Nov 30 2001) One problem with the Google search engine has been that it has dropped stop words from search queries. Stop words are common words like "the", "of", "in", "where", "how", "Web" etc. Google will now automatically accept stop words i phrases.

Pandia has more on Google's interpretation of stop words

AllTheWeb will be intergrated into Opera

(Nov 28 2001) The Norwegian Fast AllTheWeb search engine will be intergrated into the Opera Web browser. There will be no need to download a separate search engine toolbar.

Since the launch of Opera 5 for Windows in December 2000, more than six million users have installed the browser. With its new Opera 6 browser, the company is trying to challenge the dominance of Internet Explorer. Opera is also a Norwegan company.

New search engine for the Usenet

(Nov 26 2001) High Regard Inc has launched a beta test version of a new search engine for Internet newsgroup forums called Gripe.com. The Usenet is an Internet based system containing a vast number of discussion forums ("newsgroups") outside the World Wide Web itself.

The search engine can be compared with Google Groups, which also lets you submit messages to the Usenet through a normal Web browser. However, Gripe adds a new and more advanced quality control and additional message management features.

Thousands of newsgroups are sorted into a handful of simple categories. At the same time, Gripe analyze the text of new postings in order to be able to recommend relevant messages and suitable forums. The actual newsgroups themselves move into the background, and the service sort messages from various forums into new lists according to the interest of the user. Moreover, search results are sorted by quality, and articles below a certain quality threshold disappear from view.

The Gripe database includes messages archived since April 2000. Pandia will take a closer look at the service in the forthcoming issue of the Pandia Post newsletter.

Google is testing voting toolbar

(Nov 20 2001) Google is testing a special version of its browser plug-in toolbar that lets surfers vote for the sites they are visiting.

Open Directory breaks the 3 million sites barrier

(Nov 19 2001) A search directory is an index of web sites collected and categorized by human editors, as opposed to search engine databases which are built by robot programs surfing the Web. The most famous search directory is -- of course -- Yahoo!, but chances are you have also used the Open Directory, as it is the hand made catalog used by Netscape, HotBot, Dogpile, AOL search, Lycos, Pandia Plus and others.

The 42,000 unpaid volunteer editors of the Open Directory Project has now managed to index more than 3 million sites, making it the largest search directory on the Web. Unlike the Yahoo! and Looksmart directories, all sites included in the ODP are listed for free.

Fast feeds European Tiscali

(Nov 16 2001) The search engine Fast will deliver search results to the 51 European portals of Italian-based Internet access and broadband company Tiscali. Fast CEO John M. Lervik compares the deal with their recent agreement with the German ISP and portal T Online.

Tiscali and T Online pay Fast close to 2 US$ per thousand searches. Tiscali is reported to have some 13 million unique users everyday across Europe.Until now it has used its own search engine, Janas.

Fast inngår avtale med Tiscali (Dagens Næringsliv, Oslo)
Tiscali chooses Fast as Pan-European search partner (Fast press release)

Euroseek for sale

(Nov 15 2001) The European search engine Euroseek filed for bankruptcy in September, and has now put up a "for sale" sign on its home pages: "For sale: Euroseek.com, Traffic, Trade Marks and Domain Name Rights. 1 million unique visitors, 80 million page views. For inquires, please call..."

Well, it is certainly more exciting than a tie.

Yahoo! picks up Overture paid listings

(Nov 14 2001)Although there are a lot of pay-per-click search engines out there, Overture/GoTo is the king, delivering paid results to all but two of the major search sites (Excite and Google). Overture has now won another grad prize: Yahoo!. From November 15 Yahoo!ís search results pages will feature Overtureís top five pay-for-performance listing, as submitted by Overture advertisers.

In order to differentiate between paid and editorial placements within Yahoo!ís search results, paid listings will be distinguished in clearly demarcated sections.

Overture will deliver paid results to Yahoo! until April 2002, at which time Yahoo! will either offer its own Sponsor Matches program or extend its agreement with Overture.

Overture press release.

LookSmart closes all offices in Continental Europe

(Nov. 12 2001) According to the Dutch search engine oriented site Voelspriet, LookSmart will close its offices in Continental Europe. On November 30 it will close its offices in Amsterdam, and the London office will take care of the English, French and Dutch LookSmart sites. The Dutch site is leading visitors to the UK LookSmart site at the moment. The French site is still available.

Fast AllTheWeb adds fresh news to search engine index

(Nov. 10 2001) Fast will add near real time searches of over 3000 news resources to its AllTheWeb search engine on Monday.

Fast will also add linguistic analysis of search queries, expanded customization options, and introduce a feature that lets you group search results by topic.

Read our article "AllTheWeb adds updated news searching and topic oriented grouping of search results". See also our story on "The future of Fast"

iWon takes over Excite

Excite@Home will sell its Excite search portal to the iWon Web portal, CNET reports. It is unclear what iWon will do with the new assets.

AltaVista adds listing enhancments

(Nov. 7 2001) If you take part in the AltaVista paid Express Inclusion program, you may now pay a fee to get a more creative result listing.

You may add your company logo, a descriptive icon, a custom tagline with up to date information and offers, as well as extra text links to important pages on your site.

AltaVista has more information. Prices vary from US$ 18 to 50 for six months depending on the type and number of enhancements.

The new design of the Lycos search portal

(Nov. 5 2001) Lycos has gone live with its new search portal interface. The site has become cleaner, leaner and more easy to use.

Pandia takes a look.

Google adds more file types to index

(Nov. 1 2001) Google has added more file types to its search engine index, including Microsoft Office documents.

Google is testing webpage snapshots

(Nov. 1 2001) CNET reports that Google is testing a new feature that offers snapshots of Web pages alongside ordinary search results. Google has not yet decided to implement the new feature. If they do, they must make sure there is a way to turn it off. Images like these will add time to page loading.

Google considers subscription services

(Oct. 26 2001) According to CNET the Google search engine is pondering the inclusion of specialized subscription based search services.

Pandia takes a look at what Google can do to increase its income.

AltaVista update lags behind

(Oct. 24 2001) AltaVista's search engine index hasn't been updated since July, according to AltaVista spokeswoman Kristi Kaspar. The main exception are pages from sites that are paying AltaVista for a regular update. This has led someone to speculate that this is a deliberate ploy to encourage webmasters to enter AltaVista's paid inclusion programs.

AltaVista claims that the late update is caused by technical difficulties, and we are prone to believe them, as AltaVista cannot afford this kind of bad publicity right now. The search engine is constantly loosing more users to the very popular Google search engine. Their spiders have been crawling the Web quite actively, however, and a major update is expected in November.

AltaVista's process of integrating the old regional indexes into the global database has also been delayed. Some of these listings have not been updated since April.

IDG.net: AltaVista serves up outdated search results
MSNBC: AltaVista serving up dated listings

Upcoming search engine optimization conferences

(October 21 2001) Pandia takes a look at upcoming search engine optimization and marketing conferences in Europe and the US.

Fast stock up 147%

(Oct. 18 2001) The value of Fast Search and Transfer ASA stocks at the Oslo Stock Exchange increased by 146.6 percent from September to October. It seems the Norwegians have finally understood that Fast is on the right track.

Not only is Fast becoming the dominant search engine result deliverer for European portals and search sites. It has also had success with its corporate search technology, and that's where the money is. The news network Reuters recently decided to use Fast Data Search technology to power its online services. The same applies to the major online auction firm eBay.

More paid results at Ask Jeeves

(Oct. 17 2001) The leading pay-per-click search engine Overture (previously known as GoTo) has announced that it will provide additional search results for the Ask Jeeves and Direct Hit Network. The Ask Jeeves search engine is known for its ability to answer natural queries formulated in an everyday language.

Under the new implementation, up to five of Overture's search results will now be available in a more prominent position on the Ask Jeeves results page. These results will be presented under the heading, "You may find these sponsored links helpful." Previously, Overture results were featured in the Metasearch section at the bottom of the Ask Jeeves results page, which is an area that features results from other search services.

On the size of the World Wide Web

OCLC has made another survey of the Web and finds that the growth is slowing down.

Pandia takes a look at the size of the Web and the importance of language.

A new home for About.com refugees

SearchDay reports that Eric Ward, publisher of URLwire, has initiated a project trying to salvage the information that will be lost when About closes several hundreds of its theme based guide sites. At the About.com Closed Guide Relocation Directory and Assistance Links one will find tips on how to relocate sub sites.

GoTo is now Overture

Leading pay-per-click search engine Goto has now changed its name to Overture. In a mail to customers, Overture says that "we selected our name because an overture is an introduction and represents the one billion targeted introductions we made in the past year between advertisers and our affiliate partners' consumers."

We still doubt the wisdom of abandoning a snappy and well known name like Goto into a more huge-and-bland-multinational-corporation sounding name like Overture. Moreover, users are likely to misspell the name. Ouverture.com brings you to a crystal factory! In any case, Overture confirms that "beyond the name nothing else has changed." If you enter the URL www.goto.com, you will be redirected to the new Overture site.

Changes at Google

@-web.de reports that Google will open an office in Great Britain. The office will be led by Kate Burns, who has a wide experience from online advertising.

At the same time, Google had made a few changes to its world famous simplistic interface. It has added a few tabs to help searchers find relevant sub sections of the site (i.e. the Open Directory based directory, the Usenet newsgroup search engine and image search.

Changes at Yahoo!

Yahoo! has changed the way it presents search results. It will now list far fewer categories than before, and give priority to actual web sites. This means that the results will be even more influenced by the presence of relevant keywords in the site title and description and in the URL.

Fast dominates European searching

The Norwegian search engine Fast is becoming the major player in European searching.

About.com reductions

About.com, the popular search directory based on a wide array of theme based subsites, has laid off about 20% of its staff and axed more than 300 of its Guide sites, according to SearchDay.

About will merge some subsites and close others. Sites in the "Education" channel have for instance been deleted. According to Chris Sherman, a former About guide himself, a revamped version of the portal is planned for launch later this year. Known as About 3.0, it will place more emphasis on consumer reviews, ecommerce, and comparison shopping.

Ah.. Good news these days are hard to find...

I-Search becomes fee based

The popular I-Search email based discussion list on search engines and Internet searching will become fee based, as the owner, Adventive, no longer can afford to offer its various email publications for free.

A membership fee of US$19.50 will give you access to all the Adventive discussion lists for one year. Existing subscribers get away with $14.50 if they join by October 15. If Adventive does not succeed in getting enough subscribers, the lists will be closed.

Google conquers Latin America

The popular Google search engine has announced a partnership with Universo Online (UOL), which will start using the Google search engine on its sites. At the moment UOL is using a metasearch engine on its main site.

UOL, the largest online service and Internet Service Provider in Latin America, reaches almost 80 percent of the Brazilian online audience, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. There are also sites in Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia.

New Inktomi Search Submit Partner

Trellian, the people behind the SubmitWolf search engine submit software have become new distributors for the Inktomi paid inclusion program.

To get your pages included in search sites like AOL, MSN, GOTO iWon, HotBot and others, you pay US$ 29.95 for the first URL, US$ 14.95 for URL 2 to 20, and 11.95 for the rest. For other Iktomi parnters, see our submit URL page.

Excite@Home gives up

Not unexpectedly Excite@Home, the broadband and Internet portal/search engine company has met its fate. According to a press release the company has filed for relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in San Francisco. It will sell its broadband Internet access assets and related services to AT&T for US$307.

The Chapter 11 filing will enable Excite@Home to maintain operation of its Internet access services and other related services during the sale approval process.

It is unclear what will happen to the Excite portal and search engine, although it has been known that the company has been trying to sell this division for some time now. Most of the European operations have been closed. According to Cnet, a spokeswoman for Excite@Home has said it will maintain the Excite.com content site while it is in bankruptcy, but she could not guarantee it would survive long term.

Searching for the predictions of Nostradamus

In the midst of a national crisis, Americans search the Web for predictions made by Nostradamus.

Pandia takes a look at this peculiar search phenomenon.

The end of Infoseek -- again

Yes, we know that we have declared the Infoseek search engine dead and buried, and this is indeed the case for the American Disney/Go version. The German version, however, is still there. Ah, but not for long. Horizont.net reports that the owners have now decided to close the Infoseek.de site. Moreover, the German T-Online Internet service provider must find another search engine provider.

Dutch AltaVista includes pictures

The Dutch site Voelspriet reports that AltaVista Netherlands now includes pictures besides some of its search listings, in the same way as the British AltaVista site. Yes, it is possible to turn the function off for faster loading.

The Nimda virus

On Tuesday the Net was flooded with emails and requests from a new virus or "worm" called Nimda. Unlike most viruses, this one attacks both PCs and servers running Microsoft software.

Wired: Scary Hybrid Internet Worm Loose
Cnet on Nimda
ABC News: Internet Attacked by New Worm
Webmaster World discussion

AltaVista cuts 160 employees

AltaVista has decided to reduce its staff by another 30 percent. Many of the cuts are caused by the phasing out of its comparison shopping service.There is also a new CEO, James Barnett from MyFamily.com.

AltaVista has fallen from the 14th most visited Web property in May, to number 50 today, according to Media Metrix.

New issue of the Pandia Post newsletter out now!

The Pandia Post is our free bimonthly newsletter on Internet searching, search engines and directories . We will give you the latest from the world of Web exploring and SE optimization, useful tips on how to search the Web, as well as information on the development of Pandia.

Issue 10 includes these and more stories:

The ambiguous Inktomi anti-spam policy
Two heirs to Go
WiseNut -- the new Google?
Teoma adopted by Ask Jeeves
Allthweb.com advanced search
Explorer AutoComplete
AltaVista Trusted Feed
Online magazine

We will never give your address to any other company or organization.

The ambiguous Inktomi anti-spam policy

Pandia takes a look at the Inktomi search engine's fight against spam, and its ambiguous attitude towards cloaking.

Is the relationship between Inktomi and search engine optimization companies like MediaDNA influencing search results?

Lycos Europe looses 300 employees

There seems to be no end to the search engine recession. Lycos Europe has announced that it is cutting 300 jobs, almost a quarter of its workforce, down to 1,00 in order to improve the company's profitability. Lycos Europe hopes to reduce its dependency on advertising revenues and to generate more income from e-commerce and mobile distribution. Lycos Europe has some 25 million users across Europe.

Moreover ends free newsfeed service

Moreover, the popular news search engine, has stopped offering free newsfeeds to commercial websites (like the one you see in the right hand column of this page). However, commercial user who has integrated Links created on or before July 10, 2001 may continue using existing integrated links until further notice.

It should be noted that the sites that deliver news headlines to the Moreover network pay as much as 20 USD a month to get their links distributed. Hence, Moreover has never been totally free. Like many content providers, however, Moreover will now target the business community.

Moreover's new terms and conditions

Ask Jeeves buys Teoma

Ask Jeeves has now bought the new and promising Teoma search engine.

Pandia has more on Teoma and the acquisition.

GoTo changes name to Overture

The world leader in pay-per-click search engines, GoTo will change its name to Overture Services. The company will start using the new name on October 8.

Pandia has more on the new name!

Lycos Europe brings in Espotting

Lycos Europe has asked pay-per-click search engine Espotting to provide paid results for the European Lycos sites. Result pages will include five so-called "sponsored links".

The system is up and running at Lycos.co.uk, where some of the paid listings appear at the bottom of the result pages and some in the right hand margin. Espotting results also appear on Ask Jeeves UK, UK Plus, and HotBot UK.

LookListings at Ask Jeeves

LookSmart has announced it has extended the distribution of LookListings to Ask Jeeves. Under the agreement, LookListings will now be featured in the metasearch results area of Ask Jeeves' search results. LookListings is LookSmarts offer to larger companies, giving them the opportunity to get more than five site sections listed in the directory's various categories.

Press release
Pandia on LookListings (June 2001)

Pricy Yahoo! Express Submit

It now costs USD 299 to get a commercial site listed in Yahoo!

Pandia takes a look at what it takes to get sites listed for free in the Yahoo! and LookSmart directories.

The financial woes of Fast

Norwegian search engine company Fast Search & Transfer ASA will sack another 60 of its employees. Two more are leaving the leader team.

Pandia has more on Fast's difficulties.

AltaVista drops local databases

AltaVista is now abandoning the system with special local search engine databases for national or regional versions of its search sites. At the moment local sites that have recently paid for inclusion are not included in local search results.

Pandia has more on the European AltaVista.

New features at Google Groups

Users of Google's newsgroup/Usenet search engine can now access each message in a discussion thread from a hierarchical list of links to the left of the screen. This enables users to jump directly to a message from a particular author. Google has also added the original header information for each posting.

Fast develops new and larger search engine index

Fast will launch a new and much larger version of its database this fall.

"Clean" Inktomi search engine

Inktomi powers quite a few search sites out there -- HotBot, AOL and MSN included -- but the results are always mixed with listings from other directories and search engines. If you want to search the Inktomi database only, you can now use a page offered by Inktomi partner Positiontech.

Visit Positiontech Pure Web Search.

Please note: The links on archived search engine news pages will not be updated!

Search Engine News Weblog Archive 2001

Fall 2001

Yahoo! introduces annual fee