Pandia Search Engine Weblog August 2002

(August 28 2002) Virtual Acquisition has found another new Japanese search engine, this time from Hitachi.

One of the strengths of GETA (Generic Engine for Transposable Association) is apparently its ability to include pages with other relevant terms in addition to the ones found in the search query.

The research project is sponsored by the Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA), a government agency under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and among the other participants we find the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and the National Institute of Japanese Literature. The Human Genome Center at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science is already using the search engine's associational search module.

Hitachi news release (automatic translation)
JCN News

Forthcoming: Special Teoma UK

(August 26 2002) Gary Price reports that Teoma will launch a separate U.K. site in the near future. According to an article in Marketing (subscription based), "No timescale has been set for the launch of teoma.co.uk as a standalone UK-specific search engine, but it could go live before the end of this year." The present Teoma UK is but a clone of the US original.

The article also mentions that jeeves.co.uk will alter its site, "the biggest revamp since its launch." Price also reports that Teoma is planning several enhancement for its regular search engine.

PageRank for sale

(August 24 2002) SearchKing has started selling text ads on its network of independent portals, with prices based on Google PageRank. This controversial move has led to intense discussions in the search engine marketing community.

Jono Craig has made an exclusive interview with SearchKing/PR Ad Network's Robert Massa for Pandia.

New version of Scirus

(August 22 2002) Elsevier Science and Fast has announced a new release of Scirus, the Web search engine dedicated to science.

The new version improves the user experience with more subject-specific content and features like expanded information types, dynamic teasers which highlight the search terms within the search result list, and improved relevance ranking.

The index now contains over 107 million science specific pages, with new full-text additions like NASA reports, CogPrints pre- and postprints, and preprints from the Chemistry and Mathematics Preprint Servers. Most of the content listed is free, but Scirus also offers over 17 million proprietary records that cannot be found using generic search engines. You pay for each of these documents individually.

Scirus now also includes a news feed with the latest science headlines provided by the Lexis Nexis Web Publisher News Database.

More about Scirus.
Press release.

New wireless search engine

(August 22 2002) Summus, Inc. will develop a search application for wireless phones utilizing FAST's technology platform. This new application will provide users with the ability to use their wireless phones to search the World Wide Web for a wider variety of multimedia.

It is not the first time Fast has been used on mobiles/cell phones. Fast once had its own search engine for WAP phones.

The Google quiz

(August 22 2002) Yesterday Google offered a Google quiz, asking visitors to use the Google search engine to find answers to various questions. The prizes: Google merchandise.

We suspect too many Googlers tried to access the competition at the same time. It was at times hard to gain access to the quiz.

Yesterday, Europeans could test the quiz as well. Now it has disappeared from the Google home page in Norway, but we can still get to it at the quiz home page. The competition is for US residents only.

Overture's controversial Match Driver

(August 21 2002) High Search Engine Rankings reports that pay per click search engine Overture has launched a new Match Driver tool

Overture says that "Match Driver is a tool that takes search term misspellings, singular/plural combinations and other variations, and maps them to a primary term. When we say 'primary term', we mean the common form of the word (singular, non-punctuated, non-hyphenated, and spelled correctly) or a term that is believed to reflect the user's intent."

Webmasters are not amused. This means that lower bids for variations of search terms (which is popular way of getting "cheap" bids at Overture) will be raised to the highest relevant bid of the advertiser.

Trellian's search engine analysis and ranking tool

(August 20 2002) Trellian has launched a special search engine optimization and analysis tool, called BeOnTop. According to Trellian it will help you identify significant patterns, find problems areas and help you fine-tune your own pages by comparing these to the top results.

BeOnTop lets you check where your site appears in the search results of the major search engines. The software then compares your and your competitor's standing in the search engines. A free trial version is available.

Trellian is known for its SubmitWolf search engine submission software.

Search engine customer satisfaction study

(August 19 2002, update August 20 and 21) Online customer satisfaction management firm ForeSee Results and the University of Michigan have published an e-business satisfaction report that also takes a look at the search engines.

Among the findings from this American study:

MSN is leaving rival portal AOL behind in terms of customer satisfaction.

Yahoo! remains at the top of the portal category.

Google is far and away the dominant search engine, a long way ahead of its closest rival, Ask Jeeves.

ABCNews.com is on top among news sites in customer satisfaction, but MSNBC and CNN are not far behind.

When asked why Fast and Lycos are not included, Sara Allen of ForeSee says that The University of Michigan selects the companies to measure in the ACSI [American Customer Satisfaction Index] based on the companies' impact on the economy (based on revenues), or in the case of websites, on the number of hits to their site. "The ACSI is not intended to be a ranking of every company in the space, but a measure of the satisfaction of those that are leaders in the space," she says.

Download commentary by Larry Freed, ForeSee
Commentary by Professor Claes Fornell
(Source: Virtual Acquisition).

PageRank ads

(August 19 2002, update August 21) SearchKing is selling text ads prized on the basis of Google PageRank. Will this undermine the reliability of the Google ranking algorithm?

Read Pandia's comment on the PageRank text ads.

Inktomi in trouble?

(August 19 2002) The search engine to watch this fall will be Inktomi. It has for a long time been one of the majors, delivering data to AOL and MSN. The search engine company recently lost AOL to Google, leaving MSN and as its major search engine results outlet. Winning back the Yahoo! account would mean a lot, but Yahoo! is still in discussions with several search engines.

Inktomi is loosing money -- a lot of it. SFGate.com now reports that the company may have to pay US$114 million for the Foster City headquarters it now leases. The company is being forced to buy the building for failing to satisfy the terms of its lease.

According to AFGate.com Inktomi will probably begin violating the terms of a US$6 million loan used to buy equipment, software and furniture on Sept. 30.

Inktomi has also loaned its chief executive, David Peterschmidt, US$2.1 million in the second quarter. Inktomi had previously loaned him $5.6 million. Peterschmidt has paid back at least $2.8 million, leaving an outstanding balance of $4.9 million, AP reports.

AlltheWeb's new Alchemist design competition

(August 14 2002) Fast is announcing a design contest for users utilizing the Alchemist tool to customize the presentation of search results from the AlltheWeb search engine.

Read our article to win the US$ 750 gold prize.

The new Lycos InSite AdBuyer

(August 13 2002) SearchDay reports that Lycos will add an additional pay per click text ad service to its regular Overture listings. Web sites may buy special keyword based ad panels to be displayed at Lycos and HotBot.

This auction-based service lets you set your own price and manage your campaign. Bidding starts at US$.05 cost-per-click/keyword, and there is a minimum of US$50 to open account.

The new service will be based on technology delivered by the FindWhat pay per click search engine. This is good news for FindWhat, who finally gets access to one of the major portals. FindWhat used to deliver pay per click results to Excite before the death of the original Excite search engine.

Lycos has more. See also FindWhat press release.

Further search engine optimization myths dispelled

(August 10 2002) Jono Craig takes a look at more search engine optimization myths that may lead webmasters astray.

TopDog is back online

(August 7 2002, update August 12 and 13) Topdog.com is now back online, as the court Receiver has given the domain back to DC Micro.

Pandia has more on the recent developments in the TopDog controversy.

Inktomi reaches 2 billion Web pages

(August 9 2002) According to a company spokesperson Inktomi is now "searching more than 2 billion web pages."

However, some Web masters continue to grumble.

Read Pandia's reaction to the enlarged Inktomi database.

Google toolbar security risk

(August 9 2002) The Register reports that Israeli security outfit Grey Magic Software has discovered a series of attacks based on a flaw in the Google tool bar. Apparently it has been possible to use URLs to alter browser settings.

The Google toolbar has an auto update feature, and all users of the toolbar will automatically get the latest fixed version.

The Google toolbar is a piece of Windows software that lets you search Google from a special bar in the Explorer browser window. It is very popular among search engine marketers, as it gives you the page rank ("the Google importance factor") of various Web pages.

NTT develops high speed search engine

(August 7 2002, update August 8) Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp has developed a large-volume Internet search engine that works at high speed, Ananova reports.

The technology apparently speeds up the search by simultaneously carrying out such operations as data collection, organization and classification, providing results considerably faster than existing consecutive searches.

An experimental version is available at the Japanese Goo site. The search results are -- not surprisingly -- dominated by Japanese sites.

To test the new search engine, go to http://infobee.ne.jp/mogi2
or you may use the Goo home page. Fill in the search form and click on the button marked NEWS.

Google on the New York Times

(August 7 2002) Virtual Acquisition reports that Google search results has appeared on the New York Times Web site.

When a user conducts a search on NYTimes.com, a page of article results is generated with links to current and archived articles.

Google's search results appear below these links, together with Google pay per click text ads.

LookSmart renews old listings

(August 6 2002) US LookSmart has decided not to remove old directory listings for customers that have not "activated" their accounts (i.e. paid the additional fee required under the new LookListings program).

Instead, LookSmart will automatically credit all past Express Submit and Basic Submit customers with 100 free clicks per listing each month through December 11, 2003.

Ah well, 100 "free" clicks a month for a service you have already paid for -- how generous!

Tiscali relaunches Excite in Europe

(August 6 2002) Internet service provider Tiscali has taken over the Excite brand in Europe and is in the process of relaunching Excite sites in several countries. The new portals are powered by Overture (paid text ads) and Fast (regular search results).

See for instance the new UK version of Excite.

AOL and iWon start using the Google search engine

(August 5 2002) As announced earlier the US version of AOL has now switched from Inktomi to Google for regular search engine results.

Inktomi is a decent search engine, but it is not in the same league as Google, so this means that AOL searchers will get better search results.

Click here for Pandia's article on AOL, iWon and Google.

Fast uses Dell computers

(August 5 2002) Fast reports that it has exclusively used Dell servers and storage systems on its AlltheWeb search site.

The Norwegian search engine company has built a data center using more than 1,000 Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell PowerVault storage systems providing nearly 200 terabytes of storage.

This is not much of a news story, really. Still, it is interesting to note Dell's central role in search engine development. AltaVista once started as a showcase for Digital computers.

Ask Jeeves launches new toolbar

(August 5 2002) Following in the footsteps of Google Ask Jeeves has launched its own browser toolbar plug in for Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP, Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher.

Among the features included are Web search (Ask Jeeves and Teoma), kids, news, markets and weather search. There is also a marker that highlights your search terms as they appear on the page.

On how to find search engine news

(August 4 2002) The always reliable Brett Tabke of Webmaster World has written a very useful article on how to find relevant search engine news on the Web.

You can read it at Webmaster World.

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

Search Engine News Weblog Archive August 2002

New search engine from Hitachi