Pandia Search Engine Weblog July 2003

(July 27 2003) As part of the continued series "Getting Back To Search Engine Optimization Basics", Andy Beal takes a closer look at search engine submissions.

Click here to find out how to you get your site listed in the search engines.

Ask Jeeves adds "Smart Search" shortcuts

(July 24 2003) While Pandia is back in Greece, taking a holiday (Greece being the goddess birthplace and allΣ), Gary Price has been busy adding more search engine news to his ResourceShelf site.

He reports that he has now got a full list of keyword phrases for activating the feature called Smart Answers. These are in essence certain phrases that let you limit your search to certain specialized databases.

Following the philosophy of Ask Jeeves, these are "natural language" phrases, meaning that the search will look like a regular question:

Hence "What is the weather in Paris?" will give you -- ah, well -- the weather in Paris. You may also shorten the query: "weather paris".

There are phrases for weather, pictures, news, zip codes, maps, directions, baby names (!), software, music files, song lyrics, the Oscars, recipes, holidays, capitals, synonyms and more.

See ResourceShelf for the full list of phrases with the relevant query syntax.

AlltheWeb indexes Excel and Powerpoint files

(July 24 2003) Gary Price also reports that AlltheWeb now lets you search for the content in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint files.

You can limit your search to these file types by using the following search query syntax: "filetype:excel" and "filetype:powerpoint"

For more AlltheWeb search queries, see our AlltheWeb Q-card.

Stay tuned for the next Pubconference

(July 24 2003) Its soon time for another round of pints at the Cittie of York in London.

The Pubconferences are rather informal gatherings of search engine marketers and experts organized by the people behind the Webmaster World discussion forum.

Pandia has been to all of the London conferences so far, and have first hand experience of how useful these events can be.

It's all about socializing and getting new contacts. If you mingle you may get all that juicy information the search engines do not dare to tell you in public.

Maybe we can share a pint on September 20th?

The sign up fee is US$ 99 before September 1.

PubConference home page.
WebmasterWorld discussion thread.
Press release
Pandia's report from the 2002 London Pubconference.

Google launches new advanced news search form

(July 24 2003)ResearchBuzz reports that Google is beta testing a new search page for advanced news searching.

You may now search within a story for exact phrase matches, limit searches to specific news sites, US states or countries or specific parts of a news story Web page (headline, body, URL), or restrict the search to a specific time period.

US Google Advanced News Search

New Lycos Sidesearch plug-in

(July 24 2003) Search Engine Watch reports that Lycos has launched a new Internet Explorer plug in that adds Lycos search results to searches done when using Google, Yahoo! and other major search sites.

The Lycos search results (which are -- by the way -- fetched from the AlltheWeb search engine database) will appear in a separate side panel in the browser window.

"The basic appeal is a second opinion for a search site," says Tom Wilde, general manager of search services for Lycos.

If you click on a Lycos search result in the left hand frame, the relevant Web page will open in the main frame, replacing the search results from the original search engine.

Well, if you cant beat them, join them.

Search Engine Watch article
Lycos Sidesearch

Yahoo! buys Overture

(July 17 2003) Yahoo! will acquire Overture, thus adding the pay-per-click search engine as well as the AltaVista and AlltheWeb search engines to its arsenal.

Read Pandia's comment!

Kelkoo tests new shopping search engine

(July 11 2003) It seems Internet users are slowly starting to trust well known Internet stores, meaning that Internet shopping is finally becoming what the dot com entrepreneurs hoped it would be: a business adventure.

However, in the same way Internet users find it hard to find relevant information on the Web, they are also struggling to find the best bargain. In comes the shopping search engines.

Traditionally, this part of the market has been dominated by so-called comparison shopping search engines, i.e. online facilities that gather data from a selected group of online shops and compare products and prices.

Last year, however, Google launched a more general shopping search engine that allows a broader search for products, services and vendors. It combines data delivered by merchants with information gathered from the Google Web database.

Froogle, as it is called, is still in its beta testing phase, and it remains to be seen how efficient and successful it will become. That hasn't stopped the other shopping search engines from taking notice, however.

Kelkoo, one of the major European players in the comparison shopping field is now testing its own shopping search engine, preparing for the coming battle with Google.

You may test a preliminary version of this new service at the British and French versions of Kelkoo. Kelkoo is asking for user feedback. Pandia will come back with a review shortly.

Freeserve dumps Google

(July 6 2003) Britain's' largest Internet service provider, Freeserve, is no longer using Google as the default search engine on its portal.

Instead it is using pay per click listings from Overture coupled with regular search engine listings from AlltheWeb.

We love Google, but it is good to see that they get some competition, also in the UK.

Freeserve is part of the French Wanadoo group. Apparently all of Wanadoo's sites will switch to Overture/AlltheWeb.

Source: WebmasterWorld and net4nowt

New Pandia Metasearch

(July 1 2003) Some of our regular users will have noticed already: Pandia is testing a new metasearch engine.

A metasearch engine is a search facility that lets you gather results from several search engines at once. In this way you can get the best of all worlds, and a broader mix of search listings.

The new metasearch engine, which has been named after our all-in-one search engine gateway, adds several new features to the toolbox:

With a click you may hide the summary or page description, hide the source or group results according to site. Moreover, each result page has a form for advanced searching near the end, with menus letting you select type of search (Web, news, actions, music files etc), country of origin (based on domain), language, Boolean match and more.

Pandia Powersearch also supports regular Boolean expressions, including phrase search ("-"), AND/+, OR, and NOT/-. See the help file for more information.

Note also that the result pages are free of advertising -- at least for the time being. Yes, we know, it is probably too good to be true, so you'd better test it as soon as possible!

The new metasearch engine is powered by CurryGuide, a division of the British Highfield Business Corporation.

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

Search Engine News Weblog Archive July 2003

Submitting your site to the search engines