Search Engine News Weblog Archive January 2002

Below find older entries to the Pandia search engine news weblog 2002.

For the latest search engine news, go to the Pandia Search World page or the Pandia Search Central home page.

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• Archive 2001
• Archive 2000
• Archive 1999

LookSmart Launches Search Targeted Marketing Partner Program

(Jan 24 2002) Search directory LookSmart has announced the launch of its Search Targeted Marketing Partner Program, which enables certified resellers to submit their customers' URLs directly into the LookSmart Featured Listings index. At many portals and search sites Featured Listings are placed at the top of LookSmart search results.

The program, which includes search marketing firms Performics, TrafficBoss, TrafficLeader, Inceptor, International Crossing and WebGenius, offers more than 3,000 businesses prompt inclusion into the LookSmart Featured Listings index.

It is interesting to note that LookSmart is actually willing to give up editorial control over the Featured Listings, turning them into pure text ads. The regular directory entries will continue to be controlled and edited by LookSmart. However, according to LookSmart, "Select resellers will also be invited to work with LookSmart sales and editorial teams to include their customers in LookSmart Directory Listings."

Yahoo! includes Northern Light article collection

(Jan 23 2002) Northern Light has been bought by divine. The company will provide Yahoo! with "Premium Document Search", giving Yahoo! users access to Northern Lights special collection of over 7100 sources.

Pandia has more on the Northern Light/Yahoo! Premium Collection.

Pandia poll cheating?

(Jan 21 2002) Pandia would like to thank all visitors that have taken the time to vote in our search engine poll (see box in right hand column).

If you look at the result page you'll see that although Google has got most of the votes at the moment (151), the search engine is only listed with 13 percent. The reason is found behind the "Other" category. There are more than 500 votes for the Mamma metasearch engine (we gave up counting). Someone is obviously trying to influence the Pandia Awards by spamming the poll or by organizing a campaign.

Pandia will not be fooled. Keep on voting!

(Note that Webmaster World has a discussion on the Pandia Awards 2002!)

New stricter guidelines from Overture

(Jan 21 2002) Fantomaster reports that Overture has introduced new stricter guidelines for advertisers buying pay-per-click search results.

Overture is clearly trying to improve the quality of its search results, most likely in order to avoid accusations that Overture's paid listings lack relevance.

From now on the URL listed in the search result must take the user directly to the specific content page that qualifies the site for the search term. Moreover, according to Overture's Listing Guidelines for January 2002 titles and descriptions must be "well-written, objective, clear, and concise". Using superlative words, such as "best," "biggest," or "lowest" are no longer acceptable.

Overture will begin reviewing existing listings on February 1, 2002 to ensure compliance with the new guidelines

MSN the largest US search engine?

(Jan 20 2002) Microsoft now claims that the MSN Search site is the most popular search engine in the US, with 36.6 million unique users in November, surpassing Yahoo! Inc, which had 31.9 million unique users.

Ask Jeeves integrates Teoma results

(Jan 10 2002) In spite of its presumed ability to answer natural language questions, the Ask Jeeves search engine has never impressed Pandia that much.

This may change, however, as the search site has now started integrating search results from the newly acquired Teoma search engine. Teoma is an advanced Google-like search engine with results ranked on the basis of -- among other factors -- subject-specific popularity.

The Teoma results are found on Ask Jeeves in the "You may find my search results helpful" section. Gary Price reports that Teoma's "Pages by Topic" and "Expert Links" sections are not available via the Ask Jeeves interface, but that they will be added after a site redesign later this year.

The database is quite small, with some 150 million pages, and is refreshed on a monthly basis. The Pandia Post No. 10 has more on Teoma.

Espotting wins Yahoo! UK and Ireland

(Jan 9 2002) Overture recently made a deal with Yahoo! delivering paid search results (text ads) to the yahoo.com website. The European pay-per-click search engine Espotting will now do the same in Britain and Ireland, proving that Overture actually has a serious competitor in Europe.

Espotting Media will deliver Yahoo! Sponsored Matches, a placement programme that allows Espotting to feature its top five pay-per-click search listings on Yahoo!’s UK and Ireland's search results pages.

The pay-per-click results are clearly marked as "sponsored matches".

Northern Light closes its public search engine

(Jan 8 2002) Northern Light will no longer uphold the free version of its search engine, and has decided to focus on paying enterprise customers.

Pandia has more on this latest development.

AltaVista People of the Year 2001

(Jan 5 2002) 2001 was a year of terror and -- let's not forget -- magic. Nostradamus tops the AltaVista most searched for people chart by more than 30% margin. Pandia has already given its explanation for this peculiar phenomenon. Britney Spears and Harry Potter are not far behind, however, but then again, they are also a bit out of this world. The true opponents in the war of terror trail behind, at numbers 4 and 5.

Top Five Names Queried on AltaVista post September 11 2001 (Rank/Candidate):

Overture feeds pay-per-click results to MSN.com

(Jan 4 2002) The Overture pay-per-click search engine is now delivering paid results to another large search site: MSN.com. Recently also Yahoo! started including Overture results.

Why is it that the major search sites choose Overture as a pay-per-click partner? Surely there must be other paid inclusion search engines out there?

Indeed, it seems a new one is born every day. None of them have as many paying customers/advertisers as Overture, however, meaning that there are fewer bidders in the keyword auctions and consequently lower prices.

Search sites desperately looking for revenue will go to the PPC search engine paying the most. Hence we got something close to an Overture monopoly.

Go to weblog search engine news entries for 2001
Go to news messages for 2000.
Go to news messages for 1999.
Back to the Pandia Search World front page for current search engine news.

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