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Search Engine News Weblog Archive December 2004Below find older entries to the Pandia search engine news weblog. For the latest search engine news, go to the Pandia Search World page or the Pandia Search Central home page. Alternative desktop search tools(December 31 2004) 2004 has been the year of the desktop search tools, software that lets you find files and emails on your own computer. Google, MSN, Copernic and Ask Jeeves have been dominating the press coverage, and you may read about their desktop search products in our resource section. However, there are other players out there, and Pandia looks at some of them in the latest issue of the Pandia Post newsletter. Search Engine Trends 2004(December 31 2004) In the latest issue of the Pandia Post newsletter, Pandia takes a look at what happened in the world of search engine this year. Read about the most important search engine trends of 2004. New version of the Santy worm(December 28 2004) Last week we wrote about Santy.a, a web worm using Google to identify and deface sites using the vulnerable PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) software. Google stopped it from spreading by hindering it from using the search engine. Now there is now a new version called Santy.e or PhpInclude.Worm that uses AOL Search and Yahoo! to spread. According to InformationWeek the new version of the worm can exploit any site that's left allowed arbitrary file inclusion into PHP scripts. Again: Worms like these does not attack the users of the search engines. See also Dev Shed: PHP security mistakes. Google Scholar advanced search interface(December 28 2004) Gary Price reports that Google has added an advanced search interface to Google Scholar, Google's search engine for academic papers and publications. The first section of the search form presents menu based replacements for Boolean operators like AND, OR, AND NOT, exact phrase, and field searching (for now limited to "all of the article" and "title"). The second section lets you specify the name of the author, the name of the publication and the date of publication. This is the minimum of what should be expected from a scientific search engine. Note that there exists a regular search query term that can be used instead of the author menu selector: Hence: Write author:price to find papers written by Price. For more information see Google Scholar advanced search tips Pandia launches search engine search engine(December 27 2004) You can get a long way by reading Pandia and Pandia alone, but there are other search engine oriented sites out there. By use of Gigablast's Custom Topic Search feature we have developed a search engine that searches the best English language sites on searching and search engine marketing. Among the sites included are Pandia, Search Engine Watch, Traffick, Search Engine Showdown, Researchbuzz, Resourceshelf, the search engine's own weblogs, search engine forums and many more. In fact, we have included most of the English language sites listed in our resource section. Visit Pandia's Search Engine Topic Search Engine! Behind the scenes at MSN desktop search(December 27 2004) Microsoft's Channel 9 site presents a lot of interesting information on the development of Microsoft software. Pandia takes a look at two online video interviews with the teams developing the Microsoft Toolbar Suite for desktop searching. Internet Explorer rapidly loosing ground(December 23 2004) There is a new web browser war going on, as the Microsoft Internet Explorer is rapidly loosing ground to the Mozilla Firefox browser. Pandia takes a look at alternative web browsers and their effect on Internet searching. Worm uses Google to attack sites(December 22 2004) A Web worm is using Google to identify sites using the vulnerable PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) software. News.com believes that as many as 40.000 sites may have been infected. The Santy.A worm uses a vulnerability in older versions of the PHP scripting language, which is underpinning the phpBB open source software, and defaces bulletin boards using this program. The worm fills the relevant web pages with the text This site is defaced!!! NeverEverNoSanity WebWorm generation 15. This worm will not attack personal computers, and your do not risk infection by using Google. Google is now blocking the worm from searching for vulnerable bulletin boards. Karspersky.lab: Net-Worm.Perl.Santy.a threatens Internet forums Seekport launches UK search engine(December 20 2004) In June Seekport launched its German search engine. Now this European search engine company adds a British search site, focusing on web pages relevant to the UK searcher. Pandia has more about Seekport UK and its support for advanced searching blinkx launches TV and radio search engine(December 15 2004) blinkx has launched a new video and audio search engine called blinkx.tv. blinkx captures and indexes video streams published by TV and radio company web sites, letting you search for news, movie trailers, popular multimedia spots etc. Moreover, it actually makes an analysis of the audio track of any transmission in order to understand the words spoken. Pandia has more on the new TV and radio search engine. Yahoo! Video Search Beta(December 15 2004) Yahoo! has silently launched the beta test version of its new video search engine. Google to scan books(December 15 2004) Google is intensifying its efforts towards academics and scholars. The company is now planning to scan books owned by the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford, and the New York Public Library. Ultimately the texts will be included in the Google search engine index. This will give searchers access to a large number of rare and out of print books. At the same time Google will include links to booksellers that sell some of the more recent publications. Google already does this for some publishers, and includes scanned material through its Google Print feature. "Our work with libraries further enhances the existing Google Print program, which enables users to find matches within the full text of books, while publishers and authors monetize that information," says Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products. Clicking on a title link will bring you to a Google Print page where you can browse the full text of public domain works and brief excerpts and/or bibliographic data of copyrighted material. See also: Google press release Ask Jeeves launches desktop search tool(December 14 2004, update December 15) In our recent article on desktop search tools Pandia discusses the reasons why all the search engine companies our launching "total search" tools, i.e. software that lets you search the web, your own computer and your own emails. The main reason is that they want to achieve a positive lock-in. If you use their desktop search tool, you may also use it to search the web, using their search engine. Ask Jeeves won't be left behind and has launched a beta version of their own Ask Jeeves Desktop Search. Ask Jeeves Desktop Search is a small application (some 750K), but is nevertheless able to search your hard drive for Microsoft Office files, Outlook emails and various text, image, music and video files. The technology is based on a desktop search tool developed by Tukaroo, a company Ask Jeeves bought in June. According to Search Engine Lowdown this desktop tool gives users more control over the software than some of the competitors. Hence users can define how much of their hard disk they want indexed, as how much processor power should be allotted to this task. The search form is integrated into various Windows dialog boxes, including "Open file". Results are presented in a window with two panels, where one give a preview of the relevant file. MSN launches new Toolbar Suite(December 13 2004, updated) MSN has now announced its new MSN Desktop Toolbar Suite. The toolbars add new search forms to the Outlook email program, the Internet Explorer and the Windows Explorer. Pandia has more on the new search tools and Microsoft's overall strategy. New from Google: automatic suggestions(December 10 2004) Google is testing a new feature called Google Suggest. An equally suitable name would probably be Google Guess, as Google tries to guess what you are trying to find in real time. As soon as you have started typing Google will try to guess what you are looking for, offering you alternative search keywords and queries with an estimate of the number of pages containing the relevant search keyword phrases. Yes, Google already has a similar feature in its "Did you mean?" links. However, you will have to click on the relevant link to get those suggestions. These ones are produced automatically. How do they do it? Google says that they -- for instance -- use data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers. They add that Google Suggest does not base its suggestions on your personal search history. Google Suggest can also be used as a tool for generating alternative search queries for search engine optimization. The technical requirements for using Google Suggest are: Internet Explorer 6.0 (or newer), Netscape 7.1 (or newer), Mozilla 1.4 (or newer), Firefox 0.8 (or newer), Opera 7.54 (or newer), or Safari 1.2.2 (or newer). JavaScript and cookies must be enabled. Source: xcandyman at Webmaster World Google adds more national news search site(December 10 2004) Google's news site has got seven new incarnations. There are now separate sites for Argentina, Chile, Canada (in French), Mexico, Austria, Switzerland (in German) and Switzerland (in French). Unlike most news portals Google News is not edited by humans, but is generated by computers based on a secret algorithm. Again, the popularity of the news sources is an important ingredient. The same technology underlies Google's news search engine. The 4500 sites included on this special search engine index are reindexed several times a day. For a list with more local versions, see About Google News Search the Web and win a prize!(December 8 2004) The world has given birth to a new search site called Blingo. Hadn't the domain name already been taken, we guess the name would have been Bingo, for this is all about winning prizes. Each time you click "Go!" and send them a search query, you are part of a lottery where you can win cameras, iPods, movie tickets and more (US citizens only). iWon has tried a similar approach before, with some success. What makes Blingo interesting from Pandia's point of view is not the sweepstakes, but the fact that it is powered by the Gigablast search engine, founded by Matt Wells. Gigablast has slowly built up its technology and web coverage, and is now hiring new people. Gigablast's goal has been to become a search engine results provider to search sites and portals. The Blingo contract proves that they are capable of delivering. Gigablast data is also used by the metasearch engine Clusty and the new incarnation of the Snap search site. See also: John Battelle's Searchblog The new Accoona search engine(December 7 2004) The Accoona search engine is now a reality. It is based on an American/Chinese cooperation as the search engine headquarters are in New Jersey while the main owner can be found in the Peoples' Republic of China. The main focus for this search engine is business related information. However, Accoona is building its own search engine index, which includes other web sites as well. Accoona claims to be using artificial intelligence to let your "super target" your search queries. The idea being to alter the the balance between search terms in order to make to results more relevant. Accoona also includes extra business company information for some search results. Gary Price has an interesting review at SEW: Accoona Launches, But Isn't Ready for Prime Time. His main point is that this is an interesting search engine, but that the results are unimpressive. Trouble at Webmaster World(December 6 2004) Webmaster World is probably the most extensive and informative webmaster discussion forum on the Web. It is definitely number one as regards search engines and search engine marketing. The number of knowledgeable moderators and members is impressive, and many of the interventions are examples of high quality journalism. However, during the last couple of months the forum has been loosing several of its moderators. Pandia takes a look at Webmaster World and the loss of moderators. Disclosure of paid placement and paid inclusion(December 5 2004) More than two years ago Pandia reported that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had demanded that search engines should distinguish clearly between sponsored and regular search results. Lars Våge presents the recent Consumer WebWatch study on disclosure of paid search results. Creative Commons search engine in the new FireFox(December 2 2004) With a Creative Commons license you can allow others to copy, distribute, quote or develop what you have made available online. You keep your copyright, but at the same time you make it possible for others to profit from it, provided they stay within the limits set by you. The latest version of the FireFox browser has got a new search engine for searching such public license documents. Lars Våge has more about the Creative Commons FireFox search engine. Go to search engine news for November 2004 Please note: The links on archived search engine news pages will not be updated! | ||
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