Pandia Search Engine Weblog October 2003

(November 1 2003) Special guest writer Daniel Bazac gives a thorough introduction to Web searching, with tips on how to formulate search queries, narrow searches, evaluate sources and much, much more.

This is an article packed with practical hands-on advice on how to become a better searcher.

Learn how to search the Web more efficiently now!

Yahoo Europe switches to Overture

(October 31 2003) Yahoo! sites in Europe (Germany, UK, Spain, France, Italy) are now replacing Espotting pay-per-click listings with Overture text ads.

This was to be expected, given that Yahoo! has acquired the Overture company. Nevertheless, it is another blow for Espotting, as it is loosing one of its most important customers.

FindWhat, the American company that is buying Espotting, may count this as additional reason for abandoning the acquisition altogether.

However, Espotting is not the kind of company that gives up without a fight.

In a press release the company notes that Espotting's volume base of queries has grown to 1 billion in September 2003, up from a previously quoted figure of 850m per month.

The 1 billion figure excludes the volume of queries that originate from Espotting's Yahoo! Europe deal. The reason for this high figure is the fact that there is still a large number of smaller sites that deliver Espotting text ads.

Google buys Sprinks

(October 25 2003) Search Engine Watch reports that Google has acquired Sprinks, the pay per click search engine that is powering the About portal.

The Sprinks pay per click system will most likely be replaced by Google's own Adsense service.

It is unclear whether Google will retain the other distribution deals made by Sprinks, including the text ad feeds to Dogpile and other metasearch engines.

Search inside the book with Amazon

(October 25 2003) Amazon.com adds full text search to its online bookstore, giving librarians, researchers and book lovers a new powerful search tool.

Pandia has more on the new Amazon book search service.

Google to sell shares

(October 24 2003) According to the Guardian Google is planning a £9 billion (US$ 15 billion) float in March next year. The idea is apparently to sell the stock online, bypassing Wall Street.

Investment banks will not be happy about this, as they will loose some lucrative fees.

The Financial Times reports that Google executives, led by chief financial officer George Reyes, discussed an IPO with leading investment bankers last week. Hence it is quite possible that Google will go public the traditional way.

New search engine: Mooter

(October 23 2003) Competition spurs innovation, and it is good to see that there continue to be entrepreneurs out there that are willing to challenge big actors like Google, Overture and Microsoft.

Mooter is an Australian search engine that is to be launched later this year. You may, however, test a beta version of the service right now.

Unlike other search engine, the goal of Mooter is apparently not to serve as many search results as possible. Instead the company is working on fine tuning the search algorithm, giving users more targeted and relevant results.

According to the company Mooter employs "unprecedented 'artificial intelligence' based on psychological modelling to process and understand the information users seek."

"Users shouldn't have to work hard to find what they want," Ms Liesl Capper, CEO of Mooter, says. "Mooter sets out to solve the problems of most search engines by understanding the psychology of how users interact with information." And yes, she has a bachelor degree in psychology.

Mooter presents results graphically, as a cluster of balls (i.e. targeted topics) that you may click on to get the most relevant results. A search for "pandia" will for instance bring up topics like "internet," "search engine," "news" and "resources". The same topics are listed in the left hand column of the result pages.

The database used by Mooter is mainly based on metasearching (results from other search engines), but the search engine is also using its own spiders (i.e. gathering data by crawling Web sites).

Thanks to Search Engine Blog for drawing our attention to this new search engine.
Australian Mooter takes on Google (ZDNet).
Webmaster World discussion.

Ask Jeeves introduces new advanced search page.

(October 18 2003) Gary Price reports that Ask Jeeves has added a page for advanced searching at ask.com.

The new search page is menu based, meaning that you focus your search query using various forms and pull dowm menus.

You may narrow your search along the following dimensions: all words/exact phrase, Boolean AND/OR, where the phrase is found on the web page, language, domain or site, geographic region (meaning continent), and time for the latest page modification.

Ask Jeeves is partly powered by the Teoma search engine, which is owned by Ask Jeeves. The Ask Jeeves advanced search page is based on a similar feature that has been available at Teoma for quite some time now.

Ask Jeeves advanced search tips.

ExactSeek makes use of Alexa ranking.

(October 18 2003) ExactSeek, a newcomer to the search engine scene, has announced that it is now using the Alexa ranking for a site for determining the position of a listing in search results.

Alexa, now owned by Amazon.com, is a search bar that tracks user activity. Based on the information gathered, it ranks sites according to popularity. Users of this browser plug in can therefore at all times see how popular a site is among the users of Alexa.

(To see a site's "popularity" without downloading the toolbar, go to Alexa.com and use their Google-based search engine. Click on the link named "site info" next to the relevant search listing.)

"With the exception of Google, the major search engines have offered little in the way of innovation," says Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen.

"Factoring user popularity into a ranking algorithm is ground-breaking. Link popularity, keyword density and content relevancy are subject to manipulation by savvy webmasters and SEO specialists. User popularity is a far more reliable indicator of where web sites should rank and gives the surfing public some input on the search results they see."

ExactSeek is definitely one of the smallest search engines around. The database contains some 2 million web pages, but the site receives and indexes some 30000 new site submissions daily. Unlike most search engines ExactSeek actually makes use of meta tag data.

On multiple domains and site redirection

(October 14 2003) There may be many reasons for having several domains pointing to the same web pages -- some are kosher, others are not accepted by the search engines.

In any case you may face the need for redirecting visitors from one domain to another automatically, without loosing your search engine ranking.

Planet Ocean has kindly given us permission to give you free access to the article "Managing Your Internet Traffic Funnel" from their excellent Search Engine News newsletter for free.

The hidden features of Google

(October 14 2003) In the latest issue of the Pandia Post newsletter Pandia presents the hidden features of the Google Labs.

The Key to Proper Directory Submissions

(October 14 2003) Part of the overall process of submitting one's web site to the search engines is getting your site listed in the top web directories.

The submission process to a directory differs from that of submitting to regular crawler based search engines. Here are some tips and tricks on how to do it right.

Pandia guest writer David Wallace explains how to get listed in web directories.

AOL renews Google deal

(October 9 2003) The huge American Internet service provider American Online (AOL) has decided to keep Google as its search engine results provider. That is probably a wise move.

AOL would like to keep its own paying customers as its own site as much as possible, partly to build up brand loyalty and partly to be able to serve them ads. Hence it is better to serve the visitor Google results at the AOL site rather than having them leave for the Google site.

Unlike Microsoft, AOL has no plans towards developing its own search engine technology.

The external AOL search service (for non-AOL customers)
See also Danny Sullivan's article on AOL Search

Yahoo!/Overture merger complete

(October 8 2003) Yesterday Yahoo! announced the completion of Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture. As a result of the merger, Overture is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!.

This means that Yahoo! is now the proud owner not only of its own directory (Yahoo!) and search engine (Inktomi), but also of a pay-per-click text ad provider, Overture, and Overture's two regular search engines, AltaVista and AlltheWeb.

Overture is expected to merge AltaVista and AlltheWeb into one search engine shortly. It is unclear, however, whether Yahoo! would like to joint the Inktomi and AltaVista/AlltheWeb teams, in order to develop another unified search engine.

Overture's headquarters will remain in Pasadena, USA, following completion of the acquisition. Ted Meisel will continue to lead Overture and will report to Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo!'s chief operating officer.

LookSmart in big trouble

(October 7 2003) LookSmart may be near its end, as it looses its main source of revenue: the MSN account.

Read what Pandia has to say about the future of the LookSmart directory and pay per click service.

LookSmart to compete with Overture

(October 2 2003, updated October 3) LookSmart will compete with Overture in the regular pay-per-click text ad marked.

Read what Pandia has to say about LookSmart's move.

New search engine for business articles

(October 2 2003) ResourceShelf reports on a new search engine for business documents. The search engine has been developed by Professor Lee Giles and his team at the SMEAL College of Business at the Penn State University.

It is called SMEALSearch and does, according to SMEAL, crawl "websites of universities, commercial organizations, research institutes and government departments to retrieve academic articles, working papers, white papers, consulting reports, magazine articles, and published statistics and facts."

So how does the search engine rank the papers? Well, SMEALSearch actually does a citation analysis of all the articles and lists them in order of their citation rates in academic papers.

Most of the articles can be downloaded for free.

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

Search Engine News Weblog Archive October 2003

Search the Web more efficiently!