Pandia Search Engine Weblog July 2002

(July 29 2002) The Register reports that BT LookSmart has bought the British directory UK Plus. BT LookSmart will replace the UK Plus search directory with its own, complete with paid Payola results at the top

Espotting to deliver paid results to Lycos Europe

(July 29 2002) From September on Espotting will deliver pay per click results to Lycos sites in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Building a search engine optimized Website

(July 21 2002) In "Building a search engine optimized Website" SEO expert Jono Craig lays the foundation for any search engine optimization strategy, giving an overview of what is needed to get high search engine rankings.

He underlines, for instance, the need for thorough planning, relevant content, knowledge of tags and technologies, testing and more.

Top Meta Tag Myths

(July 21 2002) In this article Jono Craig debunks nine myths about metatags, among them the idea that you should add as many metatags as possible, or fill them with a large number of keywords.

These very myths separate professionally optimized sites from the amateurs, and knowing about them can mean the difference between success or failure in the search engine optimization race.

Preparing Your Site for the Search Directories

(July 21 2002) In order to get listed in search directories like Yahoo! and the Open Directory you must convince the editor that you have a professional, useful and informative site.

In the new issue of the Pandia Post newsletter Pandia teaches you how to think like a search directory editor.

Ask Jeeves leaves Overture for Google

(July 18 2002, update July 20) Ask Jeeves will present Google Adwords text ads on its site in September. Overture is left out in the cold.

Pandia has more on the Ask Jeeves/Google deal.

Inktomi cuts 40% of workforce

(July 18 2002) Inktomi, which provides search engine results for MSN, iWon and other portals, plans to lay off about 270 workers, or 40% of its present work force. Last year the company let go of some 350 workers.

The company will concentrate future activities on its Web search and enterprise-information retrieval operations. As a part of this new tactic it will acquire Quiver Inc., a privately owned software company producing categorization and taxonomy software.

Inktomi has been trying hard to win back the role as additional search engine results provider for the Yahoo! directory, although it is doubtful if they will be able to do so.

See Quicken and Inktomi press release for more on the staff reduction. There is also a press release on the Quiver deal.

WebPosition Gold 2.0

(July 16 2002) FirstPlace Software has released version 2.0 of WebPosition Gold, its tool for tracking and improving website rankings on the major search engines.

Version 2.0 includes more than 100 enhancements, according to the company. Among these are:

A new "slow submit" and "slow report" feature in version 2.0 allows the user to be more courteous to the search engines while offering improved emulation of manual submissions and position reporting.

Go to the WebPosition Gold home page

Even more search engine conferences

(July 16 2002) Who said search engine marketers were anti-social nerds and librarians shy and introvert? Well, it is certainly not true! They travel all over the world to meet friends and colleagues.

Pandia can tell you about yet a few search engine conferences.

Search Engine Pub Conference returns to England

(July 15 2002) Search Engine optimization experts meet in London in October for another collective brain storming.

German version of Wordtracker

(July 15 2002) According to the German Web site @-Web Wordtracker is preparing a German version of its online keyword finder service. It is unclear when the new version will be ready.

Wordtracker is used by webmaster to pinpoint which search queries they should optimize their Web pages for.

The Doorway to Optimization Disaster

(July 11 2002) Using doorway pages to enhance the search engine ranking of your website, will not benefit your company in the long-term, SEO expert Andy Beal argues.

Read his article on the search engines' attitude towards doorway pages.

Yahoo! extends Google deal until September

(July 11 2002) As reported by Pandia, Yahoo! is negotiating with Fast and Google on the delivery of additional search engine results to the Yahoo! directory.

According to News.com Yahoo! has now extended its deal with Google until September this year. We may see Fast results on Yahoo! yet.

See also Webmaster World discussion.

elgooG htiw beW eht hcraeS

(July 9 2002) Life's too short not to have fun. Comedy site All Too Flat has made its own Monthy Pythonesque version of a well known search engine. A worthy competitor, indeed!

Thanks to David McDonald and the Google Weblog for the tip about elgooG. Here are the search results for Pandia.

Espotting on AltaVista Spain, France and Italy

(July 7 2002) European pay-per-click search engine Espotting has announced an extension of their partnership with AltaVista. Espotting search results will now also appear on AltaVista Spain and Italy. Espotting's current arrangement with AltaVista France has also been extended by another 6 months.

Espotting will display 3 paid-results on AltaVista Spain and 2 paid-results on AltaVista Italy. The results will be clearly differentiated from AltaVista's own search results and will be labelled as "sponsored sites". Now, that is interesting. AltaVista has elsewhere argued that the label "Products and Services" is clear enough.

Yahoo! Norway adds paid inclusion

(July 7 2002) Yahoo! Norway has followed in the footsteps of its Danish cousin and asks for a fee for inclusion of commercial sites.

The Express Inclusion is administered by the Norwegian SEO company Aktivt Søk. The question is whether the traffic delivered by the Norwegian Yahoo! justifies a fee of NOK 1500 (some 200 EUR/USD).

ResearchBuzz adds GooFresh and AltaFresh

(July 4 2002) ResearchBuzz has added two forms that let you search for webpages that have recently been added to Google and AltaVista.

You may use them to monitor for newly-indexed pages containing information you're interested in or to find sites that recently have put up links to your site.

Go to GooFresh or AltaFresh.

The next London Pubconference

(July 3 2002) Brett Tabke of Webmaster World has announced Pubconference 2, a web marketing and promotion event to be held in London on October 12 2002.

Pandia will get back with more information later on. For the time being potential participants can take a look at our report from last years conference and the conference home page.

Yahoo! introduces new front page

(July 3 2002) As planned, US Yahoo! has redesigned its home page. The new design will probably not cause too much confusion among visitors.

They have settled for a cleaner look. The CENTER-tag has been abandoned in favor of more colored text boxes. Yahoo! has increased the font size and refined the categories. Moreover, the design is wider than the previous one, and owners of small screen devices will probably have to scroll sideways.

If you are a registered user of Yahoo! (and have a Yahoo! email account) the home page will recognize you and add a link to your own Yahoo!-page.

Non-US versions of Yahoo have so far not been changed. The old American version can still be accessed for comparison.

AltaVista adds Webmaster search

(July 3 2002) AltaVista has added a separate service page for Webmasters trying to map their standing in AltaVista search results.

The page includes search forms for finding particular pages in the index, pages that link to your site, pages that use your name in a link and "similar sites". There are also links to relevant pages in the AltaVista FAQ.

AltaVista gets a larger index

(July 3) The AltaVista index now contains 1.1 billion pages, including more than 140 million video, image and audio files.

News search now gets content from 2,700 worldwide sources, updated every 15 minutes. AltaVista adds approximately 800 new news images per day to its Multimedia index.

AltaVista launches Prisma

(July 2 2002) AltaVista has launched a new search technology helping searchers refine their searches.

Pandia looks at Prisma and AltaVista's new innovation strategies.

FTC attacks search engines for unmarked text ads

(July 1 2002, update July 2) The US Federal Trade Commission sends a letter to the search engines, asking for "clearer disclosure of the use of paid inclusion, including more conspicuous descriptions of paid inclusion itself."

Pandia takes a look at the pay per click text ad problem.

Lycos Search 6.0

(July 1 2002, update July 2) Lycos has started using Fast's new 2 billion documents search engine index. Lycos now refreshes the database every nine days, "twice as fresh as the nearest competitor", according to the press release.

To PC World Tom Wilde, general manager of search services at Terra Lycos, says that one of the most exciting new features of "Lycos Search 6.0" is the News Search. Users can now access fresh content from more than 3000 news sites.

As Gary Price has pointed out a search of this news database retrieves a set of results that is different from the "old" new search engine accessed via the News button on the left side of Lycos.com home page. The "new" news search engine, which is accessed by clicking on the News tab, is based on the Fast news search engine.

There is also a new search tab for shopping.

Keywords will now appear as bold in search results. Moreover, Lycos will only present the most relevant pages from each Web site, in order to make the search results more easy to read.

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

Search Engine News Weblog Archive July 2002

BT LookSmart buys UK Plus