Pandia Search Engine Weblog April 2002

(April 27 2002) Greg Notess of Search Engine Showdown has made a review of major search sites, finding that only Google and Inktomi (represented by MSN and HotBot) include pages less than 1 day old.

On AltaVista he found no pages younger than 12 days, on AllTheWeb 16 days, Teoma 54 days and WiseNut 247 days.

It should in all fairness be added that both AltaVista and AllTheWeb have additional news search engines that are updated more than daily.

Yahoo! stays with Overture

(April 27 2002) Yahoo! has decided to keep Overture as its pay-per-click text-ad provider for the North American market. The announcement ends speculations on whether Yahoo! would develop its own program or switch to Google's AdWords program. The new agreement is for three years.

Experts are now eagerly waiting for news on Overture's future with America Online. The present Overture/AOL deal ends in May.

Pandia adds new metasearch engine

(April 26 2002) Pandia's Metasearch Engine and Directory remain, but we have added an alternative metasearch engine for more advanced searching to the Pandia Powersearch all-in-one list of search engines.

Use pull-down menus to select languages, countries and type of query. You may search for MP3 music files, jobs, auctions and jobs. Moreover, you can use true Boolean search terms.

Webmaster World adds Google FAQ

(April 24 2002) Webmaster World moderators have added a new Google FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for search engine optimizers. There's a lot to learn, also for people with a general interest in search engines.

Fast and Infospace agreement

(April 24 2002) Infospace, one of the Web's leading metasearch sites, will start including FAST's Web search listings in its search results.

Unlike Google, Fast has never tried to stop metasearch engines from harvesting results from its AllTheWeb index. What's new is that there is an explicit agreement between Fast and the metasearch company.

InfoSpaceís meta-search products power search results at Dogpile and MetaCrawler, as well as Excite, among other Web sites.

The new Google Answers feature

(April 19 2002) Google does it again. Now the search engine is testing an online research answering service, where you may enter a question in a special form, hit the Ask button and wait for an answer from one of Google's paid researchers.

You specify how much you're willing to pay for an answer and how quickly you need that information. A Researcher will send you the information you're seeking, as well as useful links to web pages on the topic. If you're satisfied with that answer, you pay the amount you specified.

The reply will be published on the Google Answers website so that registered users may learn from your search and add their own comments.

Google Answers has implemented a strict process for screening Researchers. Each applicant must write an essay explaining why he or she wants to take part in the program and successfully answer a number of test questions.

Read the Google FAQ for more.

The value of professional search engine marketing services

(April 19 2002) Pandia's Guest Writer Steve Winkler argues that hiring a professional is much more cost efficient than building up your own competence in the search engine optimization area.

Click here to read his article on professional search engine marketing.

The TagLine newsletter

(April 19 2002) Heather Lloyd-Martin of RankWrite fame and Detlev Johnson, the editor of the I-Search email discussion forum, has started a new weekly newletter called the TagLine. It is published by their new company: The Ascendant Group.

They will report on the latest SEO case studies, and open up for readers' questions.

The quest for perfect search

(April 19 2002) Susanne and Per Koch, the editors of Pandia, have written an article for CNET on the future of the search engine optimization industry.

(And yes, the picture is of Susanne, not Per...)

Google forced to remove links

(April 18 2002) The German railway operator Deutsche Bahn has filed a lawsuit against Google forcing the company to remove links to online articles.

Pandia has more on this threat to Internet searching.

Yahoo! will not stop changes in privacy policy

(April 18 2002) Yahoo! has been criticized heavily for changing its privacy policies. Yahoo! email users may choose whether to receive advertising from Yahoo! partners. The selections used to be turned off by default. Now, however, even existing users must deliberately turn off this feature to avoid this kind of spam.

In an email sent to Yahoo! mail users yesterday, Yahoo! says the company has created a new Marketing Preferences page within the Account Information area.

"It is designed to make it easier for you to manage the marketing communications you receive from Yahoo!," the email says, "and ensure you get the latest relevant information to meet your needs. We have reset your marketing preferences and, unless you decide to change these preferences, you may begin receiving marketing messages from Yahoo!..."

Members of the Internet marketing industry are appalled, as this tactic may undermine the trust of the surfers. Who will subscribe to online services when a non-spam policy can be changed so quickly? Needless to say, Pandia will never send spam to newsletter subscribers.

Intellectua publishes SEO tutorials by Pandia editors

(April 17 2002) The editors of Pandia, Per and Susanne Koch, have written two new ebooks on search engine optimization for the Intellectua ebook company.

The two books, How to Get Good Search Engine Rankings and How to Get Listed in Yahoo! and Other Search Directories are available at the Intellectua website.

Intellectua is known for concise and easy to understand ebooks targeting Net entrepreneurs.

Google is the largest search engine

(April 17 2002) According to the Dutch website analysis software company Onestat.com, Google is the largest search engine in the world with a global usage share of 46.5 percent.

Behind Google we find Yahoo! at 20.6%, MSN Search at 7.8%, AltaVista at 6.4%, and Terra Lycos at 4.6%. Metasearch engine Ixquick, at 2.4%, is actually ahead of AOL Search (1.6%) in this study.

AltaVista renewal continues

(April 17 2002) SearchDay reports that AltaVista is testing a new paraphrase tool in the US. The tool will present searchers with alternative queries and more categories to help them refine their searches.

"We have also instituted a freshness and relevancy initiative whereby we crawl the Web four times a day (every six hours) to discover new, non-commerce-based and editorial Web sites," says Krista Thomas, AltaVista's Director of Marketing-Communications to SearchDay.

This summer AltaVista will start re-spidering frequently updated sites on an hourly basis, in order to make the search engine database as fresh as possible.

In this respect AltaVista is following in the footsteps of Google and Fast, who are revisiting sites like Pandia every day.

The new LookSmart PPC program

(April 10 2002) LookSmart has now finished the transition from being a pay for inclusion to becoming a pay per click directory.

Commercial sites will have to pay US$ 49 to be registered and another 15 cents per click through. There is a minimum deposit of US$ 150.

Pandia has more on the LookListings Small Business Program.

Overture files patent infringement lawsuit against Google

(April 7 2002) Pay per click giant Overture has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google.

Overture argues that Google's new Adwords Select pay per click program is in conflict with an Overture patent protecting various features and innovations relating to bid-for-placement products and Overture's Pay-For-Performance search technologies.

Overture is serving all the major portals in the US with pay per click text ads, the only exception being -- you guessed it -- Google. This only proves that Overture considers Google a very serious competitor, as indeed they should.

At the same time pay per click search engine FindWhat charges that Overture has misled the patent office and that it did not file its patent paperwork within the proper time frame.

Overture press release.
Internet.com on the FindWhat claim
The Overture patent

Ask Jeeves closes Direct Hit

(April 5 2002) On April 1st Ask Jeeves closed the Direct Hit website.

The Direct Hit search engine based its rankings on click-through popularity, i.e. it measured to what extent visitors clicked on a certain listing and whether they stayed at that site for long (if they came back to Direct Hit, that was taken as an indication of low quality or relevance).

Ask Jeeves will integrate the Direct Hit technology in other search facilities like Ask.com and Teoma.

Yahoo! adds PDF-files

(April 4 2002) ResearchBuzz reports that Yahoo! has started adding Adobe Acrobat PDF files to its index.

"As long as it adds more value for our customers, we will include it," says a Yahoo spokesman to ResearchBuzz. "We are definitely going to expand on what we have now, but only when it makes sense."

LookSmart becomes your affiliate

(April 3 2002) A lot of commercial sites run affiliate programs, where other sites can sign up and get a percentage of every sale that is a result from someone clicking on a special affiliate link.

The Planet Ocean Search Engine News newsletter reports that LookSmart has started signing up as an affiliate of customers that has paid to be listed in the LookSmart directory.

LookSmart then changes the URL of the relevant directory listing to its own special affiliate link, generating some extra revenue in addition to the fee this customer has paid for inclusion!

Planet Ocean has more (subscription needed).

New Espotting site

(April 3 2002) European pay per click search engine Espotting has renewed their site. New features include Espotting's keyword generator tool and an auto-bid management tool.

As part of the Espotting's "Optimisation Package" (which costs #149 + VAT), Espotting's optimization team will analyse advertiser accounts and create targeted search listings. As with all Espotting listings, users will be directed to the relevant pages of the website, not the homepage.

LookSmart goes pay per click

(April 3 2002) Search Engine Watch reports that LookSmart will introduce a new system were most commercial directory listings will be sold on a pay per click basis (instead of a one time fee). Non-commercial Zeal listings will remain free of charge.

LookSmart clients should note that the change also applies to "old" customers.

Teoma is out of beta

(April 2 2002) The Teoma search engine, recently acquired by Ask Jeeves, has now been officially launched.

Teoma uses Subject-Specific Popularity to rank sites. This technology ranks a site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it, not just general popularity, to determine a site's level of authority.

Teoma now has a database of some 200 million pages compared to 90-100 million prior to this full launch. Teoma expects to have a database of 500 million pages by the end of the year.

Google reveals ranking system

(April 2 2002) Google has made the technology behind its great results, the PigeonRank (sic!) system public at the Google site.

We quote: "Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms." It's spring time everyone!

Microsoft buys the Open Directory -- or not

(April First 2002) Microsoft turns the Open Directory Project into the Microsoft Open Directory, but then again: maybe not. At the same time, ODP editors launch a new public discussion forum.

Pandia has more about Gates Open Directory (GOD)

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

Search Engine News Weblog Archive April 2002

That fresh smell of Google