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Search Engine News Weblog Archive September 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. Vivisimo is testing new search site(September 30 2004) The metasearch engine company Vivisimo is testing a new search site at Clusty.com. The search engine makes use of Vivisimo's clustering technology, sorting search results into more narrow categories, helping the searchers target their queries more accurately. Read more about the Clusty metasearch engine and its more advanced features. UK version of Google's Froogle(September 30 2004) Google has launched a UK version of its shopping search engine Froogle. It is still in its beta testing phase, and there is no link to it on the Google UK home page. You may visit it, though, at www.google.co.uk/froogle. The Froogle database is partly based on data fetched by Google's spiders, crawling the Internet, and partly by data feeds provided by online merchants. Google does not accept payment for such listings, although companies may buy text ads that accompany the regular shopping search results. Merchants that want to supply a data feed (i.e. a feed including information about products, prices and URLs) may sign up for this. Google censors sites in China(September 25 2004) This week we have seen some disturbing news from the East. Google has apparently given in to Chinese pressure and excluded some sites from the news listings its presents Chinese searchers. Looksmart buys Furl.net(September 25 2004) This week AskJeeves launched its new MyJeeves service, making it possible for users to store their bookmarks online. Furl users have been able to do this for quite some time now. Looksmart has now bought Furl, clearly hoping to achieve some of the same effects as AskJeeves. Newsletters and search engine marketing
Newsletters are definitely relevant from a search engine marketing perspective, and for several reasons. They make your sites more popular, bringing in more visitors, and -- not to forget -- inbound links. However, they also generate a lot of valuable content, exactly what Google and Yahoo! ask for. Read part 1: Search engine marketing benefits of an email newsletter The new Ask Jeeves (Update)
We guessed we would face a slimmer version of Jeeves, probably a bit like the man found on the Japanese site (see picture). We were right. So what's new? A new service for searching local listings is already accessible. This service includes listings from CitySearch. Ask.com has also added a "My Jeeves" feature that stores and organizes favorite search results chosen by users. Visitors may also add comments to these online bookmarks. Users that choose to register may access this information from any computer. At a later stage, Ask Jeeves will make it possible to search the bookmarked webpages. Moreover, in the future it may also be possible to save the content of the pages, not only the links to the relevant pages. John Batelle reports that AskJeeves forthcoming desktop search software (which will make it possible to search for files on your own computer as well) will be integrated into MyJeeves. This software should be ready to download late this fall. Furthermore, there is also a "search history", a list of the searches you have done, automatically organized chronologically. MyJeeves requires Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher or the Firefox browser. Opera is unfortunately not supported. AskJeeves is powered by Teoma, which the company owns and operates. The new AskJeeves is using version 3.0 of the search engine, which now has a database containing some 2 billion English language pages. Search Engine Watch reports that selected sites are now spidered several times a day, to ensure that the database stays fresh and up to date. Teoma will now index PDF and Flash files. Shortly Teoma will also supply links to cashed versions of webpages, much in the way Google and Yahoo! do now. AOL with new comparison shopping search engine(September 20 2004) AOL is determined to compete with Google, Yahoo and Shopping.com in the field of comparison shopping, i.e. with a search engine that compares product prices from different shopping sites. The new site is called in-Store, while the search engine is named Pinpoint Shopping. Pinpoint Shopping is accessible on the net in a beta version. The in-Store site can also be visited. Unlike the Pinpoint search site, in-Store is more like a shopping portal with category listings and selected product presentations. We searched for an iPod MP3-player and got a large number of results, sorted according to different models. A "more info" button gives you additional information on the product, and a list of online stores that sell the product, together with price and product ratings and store ratings. Listed stores will be paying AOL per click-through. At the moment data is fetched from some 48,000 merchants. AOL on the Pinpoint beta. See also Search Engine Watch (Gary Price also searched for "iPod". A great gadget, isn't it?) Make your own Jeeves
On the 21st Jeeves is expected to be back with some new features -- one of them probably a kind of localized search. In the meantime search engine bloggers all around the world write about the missing butler, Pandia included. Now Ask UK gives you the opportunity to select your own version of Jeeves, including Marilyn and Brad Pitt versions. You may even give the site a new name! Using hyperlinks as a search engine optimization tool(September 16 2004) Hyperlinks in text paragraphs: are they distracting or SEO-enhancing? Pandia Guest Writer Jennifer Dennis takes a look at the use of hyperlinks in search engine optimization. New blog from Search Engine Watch(September 16 2004) Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman and Gary Price's site on search engine marketing, Search Engine Watch, is launching a new web log. The new blog will not replace the site's newsletters and news articles, but will give additional short news snippets. As Danny says it: "It's easier in my view to blog a news tidbit and not feel compelled to dive into an entire article about the subject. The format and style of blogging also lends itself to more informal reviews of topics and provides a more personal tone than a regular article allows." It seems Gary Price will be the main blogger at Search Engine Watch. He is already well known for his excellent Resourceshelf web log, a blog devoted to library resources and research. Resourceshelf will not be abandoned. Metasearch engine Dogpile gets a new name(September 16 2004) The metasearch engine Dogpile is changing its name in Europe. Obviously some of the company's marketing people has found that Europeans associate the name with dog manure, and that this may give the wrong impression. The new name is Webfetch.com. It is not as distinct as the old one, but it will probably do. Arfie, the dalmatian, is still there. In the Americas, the name remains Dogpile. The Americans are apparently not that sensitive to smell as the Brits and the French. Or it could be that they interpret the word differently. Dogpile is often understood as a term for a bunch of kids climbing all over each other. A metasearch engine is a search engine that combines search results from several other search engines, in Webfetch's case Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, teoma and pay-per-click search engines Overture, Mirago, WebFinder and Espotting. The A9 search engine is ready(September 15 2004) Amazon's Google-based A9 search engine is now out of its testing phase, and the site has been relaunched with some new features. What makes A9 different from other search site is its focus on history. It keeps track of what site you have visited and why, and even lets you store your web bookmarks. The search engine result pages include some very useful information:
If you use the A9 toolbar, you get the following additional features:
A9 has a complete list of features. A9 is not a part of the Amazon.com shopping site, but the search engine does provide information on relevant books from Amazon and site information from Amazon's own Alexa service. Moreover, users may log in using their Amazon identity. This will apparently also earn them a 1.5& discount at Amazon! Business 2.0 has more on the new version of A9. Jeeves goes to the Himalayas(September 14 2004) Jeeves, the Ask Jeeves butler is apparently travelling in the Himalayas. He has definitely left the home page of www.ask.com and will according to reports also leave www.ask.co.uk shortly. Jeeves was created by the British author P.G. Wodehouse as the highly intelligent servant of Bertie Wooster, a bewildered and not too bright upper class playboy. The books should be read not only for the humor, but for their style and the author's use of the English language. Jeeves will be back on September 21, together with some new search engine features. Search engine marketing and branding are not mutually exclusive(September 14 2004) Search engine marketing is more than generating good search engine rankings, Pandia guest writer Pete Larmey argues, it is also about increasing brand recognition. Read about how to use search engine marketing for branding purposes. Spammers hijack web site listings in Google(September 13 2004) A large number of web masters are facing their search engine nightmare: Their Google listings have been taken over by another site. Pandia takes a look at this search engine hijacking phenomena and wonders why Google isn't doing anything to stop it. Lycos UK adds virtual hard drive(September 12 2004) Lycos is slowly moving away from being a search portal to becoming an online web toolbox and community for internet surfers. Lycos UK will now add a "virtual hard drive" for its email customers, making it possible to store up till 1 gigabyte of files on the Lycos servers (10 MB for free). This means that travelling customers may access their files anywhere in the world, and from any internet-connected computer. Pandia has used a similar service provided by Apple (.mac idisk) for some time now, and can confirm that this tend to become an essential tool for people using more than one office. For instance: This article is written at a wifi zone at the Icelandic spa "The Blue Lagoon", far away from the Pandia Oslo office. Google and Yahoo! are currently offering 2 gigabyte of storing space for their GMail and Yahoo! mail customers. However, that is for mails and email attachments only. That hasn't stopped some hackers from developing tools that lets you use the GMail space as a virtual hard drive, however. Some speculate that the advent of the online virtual hard drive may be the beginning of the end of the laptop computer. If there are computers in all hotel rooms and offices, and you may load software from your virtual hard drive as well, you really don't need to carry a laptop around. Netimperative has more on the new Lycos service. Yahoo! is betatesting a new travel search engine(September 8 2004) FareChase is Yahoo's new project in the field of shopping search. The new test site lets you search more than 50 travel web sites for flights, hotels and rental cars. The new search engine is based on technology developed by the Israeli based FareChase company. This company was bought by Yahoo! in July. Enter you city, your destination and the relevant dates, and Yahoo! fetches relevant offers. The result pages lets you compare prices and select the offer that best fits your travel needs. All fares are converted into US dollars. This does not mean that the search engine is limited to the Americas, however. We had no trouble finding tickets from Norway. Wotbox goes local(September 5 2004) Last year we presented the new search engine Wotbot. The search engine is still going strong, although under a new name: Wotbox. Wotbox has been known for its ability to pinpoint a site's country of origin. "The logical next step on from this was to create a fully localized version of Wotbox for each country." says Director Mike Nott, "We're trying to give international users more choice by providing another local search option for them. We also wanted the interface for non-english sites to be in the native language, making it easier for local users." Hence there are now country-specific sites for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, United States and the UK . Search engine conferences and workshop(September 3 2004) The Webmaster World discussion forum is organizing a new conference on search engine marketing -- this time i Las Vegas on November 16 - 18. Pandia takes a look at this and many other upcoming search engine conferences, workshops and seminars -- in the US as well as in Europe. Copernic gives away desktop search tool for free(September 1 2004) Today Copernic has released a free desktop search tool that searches Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, Acrobat PDFs, Outlook emails, and all popular music, picture and video formats. Copernic also searches your browser history, favorites, and contacts. Pandia has more on the Copernic Desktop Search tool.
Nextaris -- smart search related web application from SurfWax(September 1 2004) The company behind the advanced metasearch service SurfWax has released a free web based search and information management tool called Nextaris. Lars Våge has tried out the online new search tool and information manager. MoreGoogle with thumbshots(September 1 2004) Chris Sherman has drawn our attention to MoreGoogle, a small piece of software that enhances your Google search engine results. MoreGoogle, which is made by Andreas Pizsa in Vienna, Austria, adds thumbnails -- i.e. small pictures of the relevant web pages -- to Google results. Thumbnails are actually a very efficient way of enhancing search results, as the snapshots give you a general idea of the quality and the relevance of the page at hand. MoreGoogle will also add site info links (giving access to data from the Alexa service) and links that lets you open the result pages in new windows. If Google includes pages from Amazon in its search results, MoreGoogle will add prices and user ratings. The program is free, but Pizsa will add his own affiliate code to Amazon links, meaning that he get's a small percentage if you buy something from Amazon after having found a product by using MoreGoogle. That's more than fair! MoreGoogle: System requirements: Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later. AdSense pages dropped by Yahoo?(September 1 2004) The highly recommended Search Engine News newsletter from Planet Ocean has noticed a tendency for Yahoo! to drop web pages with AdSense ads. "This month, after adding AdSense ads to one of our sites," Planet Ocean says, "we also noticed the complete disappearance of those specific pages. Coincidence? . . . perhaps." The AdSense program ads allows web site owner to add context sensitive pay-per-click AdWords text ads to their web pages, thus getting some additional revenue. AdWords is owned by Yahoo's main competitor, Google, and if Yahoo! is truly punishing Google partners by dropping web pages with the AdSense code on it, this is close to a declaration of war. Pandia finds it hard to believe that Yahoo! would do such a stupid move, as it would undermine the company's credibility and its search engine's trustworthiness in a serious way. We would therefore like to see some more evidence before we accept the theory. Pandia has AdSense ads on quite a few of its web pages, and these have not been dropped from the Yahoo! index. Please note: The links on archived search engine news pages will not be updated! | |||
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(September 21 2004) Today we start a three part article series on the use of newsletters in web marketing, written by Pandia Guest Writer Garrett French.
(September 20 2004, Update September 21) 
