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Google Starts Auto Stemming Searches

Since the most recent Google Dance started around Nov. 15, this update of the Google database nicknamed Florida has created quite a stir in the ecommerce Webmaster community. The major complaint has been the significant change in the ranking of results and many pages no longer show up in the top of the search engine results. For those with time, read the thousands of postings about it in the Update Florida discussions at WebmasterWorld.

Certainly, the ranking changes will also have an impact on searchers, but even more significant to me is the experimentation that Google is now doing with automatic stemming. Discovered first in the Cre8asiteforums, Google changed its Basic Help page to announce that it is now using stemming.

Basically, Google now takes search terms and looks for grammatical variants of SOME of them. Unfortunately, Google does not make it clear which terms it stems and which it does not. I found no plural or singular variants but did find some examples of verb variants. For example, a search on drink water matches pages with 'drinking' and 'water' while run linux also finds 'running.'

You may be able to identify when it happens by looking for the highlighted terms in the search results, but it is not always obvious when this occurs especially if the hits do not rank high enough to appear on the first page. The stemming does not seem to occur on single word searches or on phrase searches (yet another reason to use quotes for phrase searching whenever possible).

Does this help relevance? Maybe for some searches and searchers, but for precision searching it can also be frustrating. Plus, the searcher is not given the choice of when to use it and when to turn it off. MSN Search has offered a stemming check box on its advanced search page for years. Since Google does not say when they will turn on the stemming and when they do not, they could at least give searchers the choice of when to use it (at least for those of us that use features like the preferences and advanced search options).

Overture sales, advertisers up

Overture Services on Wednesday reported better-than-expected second-quarter revenue as it signed up more advertisers willing to pay for placement in search results.

The commercial search company reported second-quarter net income of $7.6 million, or 12 cents per share, on revenue of $265.3 million. That compares to net income of $17.5 million, or 29 cents per share, on revenue of $152.5 million during the same period of 2002. Analysts had expected the company to earn 6 cents in the second quarter, according to a survey by First Call, which tracks analyst forecasts.

Overture attributed the sales boost to a larger number of "paid introductions"--or the number of times Web surfers clicked on an advertiser's ad--and a rise in the average price advertisers paid for those introductions. The company has also focused on expanding internationally and developing new services for advertisers.

"Our second-quarter results provide clear evidence that we continue to drive the core business while rapidly transforming Overture from a one-product company to a multi-product enterprise operating successfully on a global scale," Overture Chief Ted Meisel said in a statement.

The earnings announcement comes nearly a week after Yahoo said that it will buy the company for about $1.63 billion. With the acquisition, Yahoo will shift from being one of Overture’s biggest portal and search distribution partners to becoming a major player in search-related advertising. Yahoo has reported that Overture provides roughly 19 percent of its revenue.

Overture said its advertisers' links were clicked on 646 million times in the second quarter, compared to 515 million in the comparable period a year ago. In addition, advertisers paid the company an average of 40 cents for each paid introduction during that time, up from 30 cents a year ago and 37 cents in the first quarter of 2003.

The company also said it added 7,000 advertisers in the second quarter, for a total of 95,000. That's up 42 percent from the same period last year and up 8 percent from the first quarter.

Overture has $113 million in unrestricted cash and liquid investments, including cash payments made to complete acquisitions of the Web search unit of Fast Search & Transfer and AltaVista.

Source: Business Week

Top 100 Web Sites Invisible to Search Engines

Report finds Top 100 NZ company websites are a waste of money. Shock New Zealand survey reveals how firms are 'sabotaging' their own ability to be found on the Internet.

Christchurch, 23-Jul-03 - Respected search optimisation company Web Rank has today launched a study on the search engine compatibility of the websites of the country's leading organisations. The study reveals that every website belonging to New Zealand's Top 100 businesses contains significant design flaws that make it harder for them to be found in search engines, thereby negatively impacting the potential revenue of the organisation.

"In designing their sites as they have done, nearly all of New Zealand's top performing companies are sabotaging their own ability to be found by their target market(s)," says Director Kalena Jordan. Most Internet users rely on search engines to find product and service providers. Unless they know the exact website address (URL) or search by the company or brand name, they will try to find what they are looking for by using keywords that describe a product or service's features, benefits or attributes.

Web Rank's extensive analysis, which is available at www.webrank.biz/Top100NZ.htm, reveals where major New Zealand corporations have overlooked search engine visibility in designing their websites. The report also advises how these websites can be improved to help potential customers find their sites easier and increase business generated online. Amongst the many findings, the report revealed that:

Every top 100 Kiwi company website had defects that hindered their ability to be found in search engines. A quarter could not be found for their chosen search terms in either US or New Zealand search engines. 34% are not listed in popular New Zealand search engines. Almost a third are not listed in popular US search engines, and one-in-eight use techniques that could get their site penalised on search engines for "spamming."

The authors say it is amazing that firms may spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on website design and related marketing, but that they often overlook search engine compatibility. "What is the point of paying so much money for a web site that will never be found?" asks Ms Jordan.

Why is search engine optimisation important? Search engine compatibility is loosely defined as employing design elements that help search engines index a website and "understand" it's relevance to a search query. To make a site more compatible with search engines Web Rank, and other Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts correct design flaws and implement techniques to ensure a website attracts highly relevant, targeted traffic via those engines.

"Search engine optimisation is the technique of attaining a higher ranking in search engines and directories for relevant search queries, via changes to a site to make it more search engine compatible," explains Ms Jordan. UK studies by Forrester Research show that four-fifths of people find websites by using search engines. According to Australasian market research firm, RedSheriff, four of the 20 most popular New Zealand websites are search engines. In addition, 55% of online purchases in the US are made on websites found through search listings.

How to improve the search-ability of a website
Every effective website should include within the HTML code for each page a TITLE Tag, a META Description Tag, a META Keywords Tag and text-based content. Search engines rely on this information to determine how relevant a website is to any given search query. These elements are often overlooked by webmasters, or are too short and generic to be effectively picked up by many search engines in connection to a search query. Search engine optimisation of a website involves changing the code to include more keywords and phrases that relate to the products and services offered by the business, as well as changes to the site's structural design to ensure it can be indexed and matched to relevant searches.

Web Rank's report "Search Engine Compatibility and the Top 100 New Zealand Company Web Sites" offers businesses comprehensive suggestions on how to improve the search-ability of their website. Using case examples, Web Rank highlights typical mistakes and advises on how these could be improved. The report considers how to use graphics, correct tagging, the right keywords in text, how important links from other sites can be and how firms can avoid being penalised in the search rankings from the inadvertent use of "spam" techniques.

"By ignoring the most important method used by people browsing the Internet, these companies are sacrificing an enormous opportunity to attract more traffic to their websites," says Ms Jordan. "Websites are often a very large expense for these companies, ranging from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. To invest such a massive amount of time, money and effort into an online presence and not ensuring it can be found is like constructing a storefront without any doors."

She continues, "It is obvious from the findings of this study that New Zealand companies need to invest in search engine optimisation services to ensure their sites are more search engine compatible and therefore visible to their target markets."

Source: High Search Engine Ranking

Google boosts headline search

Visitors to Google's news-search site can now look up stories by date, location, exact phrases or publication.

Google on Monday unveiled refinements to technology for searching daily news, in its latest effort to become the Web's hub for headlines. Google's new service, called Advanced News Search, allows visitors to scour headlines by date, location, exact phrases or publication. People can use it retrieve articles from more than 4,500 news outlets publishing on the Web.

Advanced News Search adds to the company's ever-expanding set of Web navigation tools and improves on its specialty index, Google News, which was introduced last autumn. For example, Google released a new browser toolbar last month that lets people block pop-up ads and easily update their blogs as they surf the Web. For its part, Google News has proved immensely popular, with roughly 2.5 million unique visitors in June, according to Nielsen-NetRatings.

Advanced News Search lets visitors search for headlines using several parameters. Among other features, people can locate stories that contain an exact phrase, within the Unites States or abroad, or written by a specific publisher such as The New York Times. For now, it only allows people to search by date from June and July 2003.

Still, Google's news update follows advancements at rival search sites. AltaVista, for example, allows visitors to search by region, time frame and publication. In addition, specialty sites such as NewsNow search more than 10,000 news sources, in comparison to Google's 4,500.

Source: ZD Net UK News

Yahoo, AC Nielsen measure retail sales

Yahoo on Monday introduced a specialty research service that allows retailers to track offline sales spurred by online ad campaigns, the Web portal's latest invention to woo advertisers.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Net giant partnered with AC Nielsen, one of the United States' biggest media measurement companies, to introduce Consumer Direct, a market research tool. The service taps a panel of Yahoo Web surfers to divulge how effectively online advertising from companies such as Kraft Foods and Unilever drives people to buy in stores.

Consumer packaged goods companies "care about how much they sell (offline), but there's been a question in their minds about how effective their online programs are," said Robert Tomei, senior vice president at VNU, the parent company of ACNielsen. "This program allows them to put the two together.

"This is the first (service) in the industry that really links offline purchase behavior to online site visitation."

Yahoo's research fits into a broader industry offensive to prove the value of Web advertising, a still-hobbled industry after the dot-com fallout. Trade groups including the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Online Publishers Association have organized research on the viability of the medium in the last year. In addition, Net publishers have adopted technology that helps them evaluate the backgrounds and preferences of site visitors to better sell ads.

Yahoo itself employs a research team and technology underpinnings to pinpoint prime audiences of interest for advertisers. By partnering with Schaumburg, Ill.-based ACNielsen, the Web giant will be able to tie retail sales back to types of people that saw its online ads, thereby helping marketers find their best target markets.

Consumer Direct, the first major partnership between Yahoo and ACNielsen, will track the Web surfing habits of 15,000 to 17,000 Yahoo users. These people also are part of ACNielsen's Homescan program, in which they scan the products they buy in stores. ACNielsen will tie both activities together to come up with its research. The company will use the data to determine the return on investment for an online ad campaign, including finding its effect on retail sales and brand loyalty.

Article by Stefanie Olsen
Source: C-Net News

Submitting your website to DMOZ

Today more than ever, in the field of search engine optimization (SEO), there is a very important step that needs to be taken in order to help a website's visibility in the major search engines. That important step is to submit it to DMOZ, or sometimes called the Open Directory Project or ODP.

DMOZ provides a lot of search results for a good percentage of the most important search engines and directories, including Google. First, DMOZ is NOT a robot-driven crawler but rather a large, human-edited directory of the Web. For any submission to be successful, a few important points need to be taken ahead of time:

Step A)
Your full contact information needs to be there. Make certain that your full contact information is easily accessible, preferably with the help of a clearly identified contact button. An e-mail address is certainly not enough. Many ODP editors will tell you if they don't see a real physical or postal address or telephone number, then that website in its particular category is usually tossed away and probably will never make it inside the directory.

Most importantly, if you are wishing to sell anything, you need to build credibility and honesty with your clients. In such a case, giving proper and full contact information on the site is imperative.

Step B)
Do not attempt to SPAM the directory. You should only submit your site once and forget it for at least two to three months. According to DMOZ rules and regulations, you are only allowed to submit to one category. However, in certain isolated cases and if your website happens to be a very large one and offers lots of information, you may be able to submit a second section of it to a different category. As a rule of thumb, it usually takes time for most submissions to be processed.

This is especially true of categories where there are many daily submissions. It is not recommended to submit a website more than once, as it could end up on the lower bottom of the large list of sites to be reviewed and approved, since they are processed according to their submissions dates.

Step C)
Your website needs original and good content. During the course of your work, if you are only trying to publish an assortment of affiliate links or if your site happens to be a "mirror-site" of other websites that are plentiful on the Internet, then you are increasing your chances of your submission being rejected.

If in fact you really have to deal with affiliate products or services, we recommend that you add lots of new content, perhaps a product review category, an industry news section or any other additional information that will tell the DMOZ editors that your site has something original to offer and has lots of great content that will be of good use to their users.

Step D)
Double-check your website for spelling errors or typos. As much as the DMOZ editors are looking for great content, all are only human and will probably be irritated by some typos or spelling mistakes. Our experience with the ODP tells us that professionally written and carefully built websites with great content, usually always make it into the directory eventually.

Step E)
Keep good records of your submission to DMOZ. We strongly recommend in keeping a complete record of the date a website was submitted to the Open Directory Project and to which particular category it was submitted to. If the category you want to submit to has an editor, you should always make a note of who that editor is. Such information would be useful if later you need to inquire about the status of your submission.

Some of you might ask: "How long does it take to get listed?" Recently, we had one site listed within three weeks of submission and, on other less fortunate occasions, we waited over six months for other sites. It is extremely hard to predict anything.

Step F)
Select the proper category for any submission. In Google or Alta-Vista, when people submit a URL to such robotic search engines, there really is not much to think about, since their crawlers or "spiders" will visit and index your site automatically, normally over a rather short period of time. However, when submitting to a directory such as DMOZ, a critical part of that submission process is choosing the right category. One good thing that is recommended is to go online and look where other websites similar to yours have been placed in the directory.

When you get to the category that you think is best, press the "add URL" button. In other categories, sometimes the DMOZ editors might put a note mentioning certain restrictions to that category. It is recommended that these notes be read carefully and that you don't submit to these restricted categories if your site doesn't meet the parameters mentioned.

Step G)
Always contact DMOZ through the proper channels. Finally, a word of caution: if the category where you want to submit does have an editor, it will usually be written at the bottom of the page and you normally should be able to send that editor a message. There is another way to contact the DMOZ editors through their online forum.

Once there, you can ask about the status of your submission, but you must always give them the category and submission date of your last attempt. Additionally, you can always ask a few questions about general DMOZ procedures and rules.

Try your best to meet their rules and regulations and normally your site should eventually be included in their directory.

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Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Nine steps to better marketing for the engines

If you need to write for the search engines and your site visitors too, the following nine tips can be of good help. Always remember that all search engines are like humans: they want good relevant content that will help everybody in the end.

Step No. 1:
First, start by writing attention-grabbing tag lines, written using H1 or H2 tags. This will help you a lot with the search engines. Google gives additional importance to title tags in bold H1 or H2 tags. Additionally, most people are overwhelmed with information from just about everywhere they look, so they "scan read", particularly on the Web.

Always remember that if your headline doesn't get their focus and attention, everything else you write may go unread. Your title and headline must highlight the features and benefits of whatever product or service you are trying to sell on that particular page.

Step No. 2:
Choose just one and unique benefit of your product or service that you wish to underscore above everything else. This is your basic selling mission. In order to help you make the best choice of what that unique benefit should be, you should ask yourself what particular benefit makes your product or service different from your competition.

What truly makes it better or unique? Is it of better quality? Is it easier to purchase? Is it less expensive than competing products? Does it have a longer warranty? What value-added features or benefits does it incorporate?

Step No. 3:
Always remember that testimonials sell. People want to hear from other users our customers that are already using your product or service. Honest, serious testimonials from real humans will help increase your sales, particularly on the Internet where building good credibility is a daunting task.

If you would like additional credibility, ask permission to your testimonial clients if you could include their contact information along with their experience in using your product or service. That last step should really convince your visitors to buy.

Step No. 4:
On your first paragraph, start with your strongest selling features and benefits. The first few paragraphs are particularly important, not just for your users but also for the search engines. When Google spiders a web page, it tends to read the first two paragraphs more and will usually give them increased importance than the rest of the page. Write these paragraphs to initiate a strong desire for your product or service by briefly describing the major features and benefits it will deliver to your client. Don't make the mistake of going into too much detail up front.

You will have plenty of time for explaining these benefits in more detail later. Get your "main artillery" out early if you truly want to succeed.

Step No. 5:
You should write a complete list of all the features and benefits of your product or service, then you should translate each one of them into a direct benefit for the customer, one that he or she will really be able to relate to. One way to effectively accomplish this is to look at each feature, one by one, and then ask yourself: "So what?" Put yourself in your customer's shoes: Why should you care about this feature or benefit? You should ask yourself: "What's in it for me?"

For example, just saying that your product is fast, an underlying feature in itself, you should tell your customer that it will provide them with more free time, hence, a real benefit they can all relate to. You could effectively empower that mental image by putting a picture on that page of people enjoying themselves, reading a book, going to the movies, relaxing or whatever.

Step No. 6:
Always write marketing text and copy that truly underlines the real benefits in a way that makes a strong emotional connection. For example, if your company is trying to sell auto insurance, instead of using sentences such as: "Our company is one of the oldest in the industry", try using: "Avoid the financial risk and uncertainty of insufficient collision coverage, insure your car with us".

Step No. 7:
Try to carefully detect and identify who it is you're writing for and why... What would be the best "tone" to convey, ie: serious or light hearted? Will there be any level of technical terms discussed or more detailed technical topics that will be written? If so, will your audience be able to understand it? What if their level of knowledge is only basic? You should always adapt the language used to your intended audience.

If there are technical terms or topics on your website, it might be a good idea to create a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) or a Glossary of Technical Terms Used.

Step No. 8:
You should always write with as much a natural style as you possibly can. However, never try to be over friendly or pretentious! Simply just write your text the way you would say it if you would be in front of your client or prospect.

Step No. 9:
Lastly but not least, always end your page or section with a clear call to action, one that will also give them perhaps a sense of urgency, such as: "Click here to order now" or "Call us toll free to reserve now". Some site owners and webmasters even include calls to action earlier in the page and get some very good conversion results too. Do whatever you think is appropriate. Your ultimate goal here is to have your prospect order or buy your product or service.

Conclusion
In retrospect, and by reading these nine tips, it would appear to some people that good and efficient website marketing techniques involve "manipulating" in a certain way the emotions of your visitors. Well, to a certain degree, we think it does too, but always remember that selling is a basic form of emotional control that implicates convincing your prospect that they really have to buy your product or service, as it will truly make their life better and that they want to do it now!

Could this be looked at as unethical? Well, it could be, depending on where exactly you draw the line. If you look at step nine, we said that your sales message could perhaps include a sense of urgency. Some would tell you that an often-used practice on the Internet is to include a statement such as: "This offer closes today".

However, most people will also tell you that if you go back to the site the following day, week or month though, that same offer will usually still be available! For most people, being tricked by such a statement does not give much confidence, now does it?

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Optimising for Inktomi

Everyone is aware that Inktomi is soon likely to grow in importance due to it having been being bought recently by Yahoo! Although no firm date has been given as to when Inktomi results will be integrated in to Yahoo's search listings, it is pretty much accepted that the time is drawing close.

In addition, MSN are likely (despite the recent launch of their own MSNBOT spider) to be at least 18 months away from being in a position to launch their own search engine's results, which seems to tie-in to the surprise announcement earlier this year of a lengthy extension to MSN's contract with Inktomi. Over the past few weeks, Inktomi has also been gaining new partners - most notable being the prestigious contract for the supply of results to the BBC web site (www.bbc.co.uk). Although the future now looks quite bright for Inktomi, they have spent the last few years fighting off (and losing to) the ever growing Star of Search, Google. People tend to forget that in 2000 (a mere 3 years ago), Inktomi seemed to rule the roost in terms of search. Their results were used by many leading search destinations, from AOL to Yahoo! For a webmaster, if you couldn't get listed on Inktomi - you were condemned to almost total invisibility on the web.

Most SEOs had to cut their teeth on preparing client sites for Inktomi's spiders (Slurp - in its' various forms), as well as those of AltaVista (Scooter) and other engines. Googlebot (Google's spider) was an interesting new spider and Google a search engine with "potential" - but was largely ignored for day to day SEO purposes. Now the situation is reversed! The majority of webmasters are focussed on optimisation for Google and many are bemoaning the fact that optimisation for Google doesn't seem to work on Inktomi (or other engines).

Fortunately, those of us who knew how to design pages for Inktomi had learnt early on, that those pages worked very well for Google (and other engines) provided the off-page factors that Google use in their algorithm were taken in to account. In all my years of doing search engine optimisation across the widest spectrum of site themes imaginable, I have never had to prepare a different page for Google (or any other engine) to the one I prepared for Inktomi first. This rather cuts across the argument put by Ammon Johns in a recent article (sorry, Ammon) - but is my experience after the production of many thousands of pages and hundreds of sites.

So, people have asked me, why optimise for Inktomi first? Why not chase the ultimate goal of Google before turning to the others? The simple answer is PFI. By optimising a page for Inktomi and using PFI, I can adjust the page to get a decent ranking on Inktomi within a matter of days. I then know that provided I can get decent links to the site on which that page resides (Yahoo, DMOZ, and Joeant etc.) - I can be fairly certain that I am going to get a first page listing on Google without having to adjust anything for Googlebot! The rankings on Inktomi give an indication of the ultimate positions on other engines. This is far better than having to wait weeks or months to see what the results are going to be like on Google first. Due to this, Inktomi has been my "secret weapon" for SEO for all the years that people have been ignoring it! Like any SEO procedure, optimising for Inktomi is not rocket-science. Inktomi looks for on-page content laid out in a manner which allows it to understand the page content comprehensively. The facts laid out below are "back-to-basics" SEO, but they work - pretty much every time! A page should consist of:

a) Title Tag - I normally use around 10 words incorporating as many keyword variants for that page as I can, while making it a compelling title. An example for a car hire site could be: "Car Hire Las Vegas, Rental Cars from Auto Rentals Specialists". The above is focussed on all forms of ways that someone is going to search for looking for car rentals Las Vegas and should appear for: Car hire las vegas, rental cars las vegas, auto rentals las vegas, hire cars las vegas etc., etc.

b) Meta Description Tag - I use around 15-20 words re-emphasising the keywords used in the title tag. Example: Great rates on car hire in Las Vegas. Check our rental cars and choose your auto rentals from the specialists at MMT Rental!

c) Meta Keyword Tag - Inktomi still recognises this - just! If in doubt, leave it out - but I (usually as the last thing I do) add the tag for the core phrases I want the page to rank for. Example: Car hire las vegas, rental cars las vegas,auto rentals las vegas,hire cars las vegas.

Note the use of commas and no spaces after the commas. I was always a strong proponent of not using commas in a keyword meta tag - but Inktomi guidelines state this is the way to do it - so who am I to disagree!

Now we move on to the visible body text. I usually design a page so that there is a visible page heading appearing close to the top of the HTML in an H3 Tag. This is a repeat of my Title Tag. Example: H3: Car Hire Las Vegas, Rental Cars from Auto Rentals Specialists H3.

The first sentence of the first paragraph is an edited repeat of my description in Bold. Example: Bold: We have great rates on car hire in Las Vegas. Use the information below to check our rental cars and choose the auto rentals for you from the specialists at MMT Rental!

Then the page should have around 200 words of text describing your services. If you are mentioning models e.g. car types, I put these in list elements (li), with a possible link to the appropriate site section relating to descriptions of the model. This would re-emphasis that the site was about a specific type of car hire in a specific location with words in the list element getting a boost along with the use of the phrase in anchor text.

All images on the page should use alt tags with a single phrase in the tag e.g. the first image may have "car hire las vegas", the second "hire cars las vegas" etc. At the end of the text, I add a final sentence in bold which is a rehash of the first sentence I wrote at the beginning of the body text.

The page is done - well almost! Make sure that the page is user friendly and makes sense. It is pointless obsessing about the absolutely perfect page if it becomes meaningless to the surfer in the meantime! The idea is to incorporate the rules of optimisation in to the overall design of the site. Make sure the page is linked to by the appropriate index page.

Do not be tempted to create doorway pages using garbage content as "filler" around your key phrases. It won't work in the long term for two reasons: Inktomi has the most sophisticated grammatical parser I have seen for detecting auto-generated content. I know, years ago I tested ways to get around it - and couldn't.

Inktomi checks for incoming links -even on PFI pages. If a page is deemed to be an orphaned doorway page with no incoming links, it will drop like a stone! My next step is to put the page in to PFI and 48 hours later it should appear on sites like MSN. 9 out of 10 times - there it is, on the first page of the search results. If it isn't, I adjust slightly and wait another 48 hours. When satisfied, I leave it alone.

I then concentrate on ensuring the site I am working on gains the off-page factors necessary to help it in other SEs like Google. Submissions are made (if the site is not already included) to Yahoo, ODP and other directories including those which are specific to the industry being targeted. I do not look for "un-natural" links like guest books or link farms. I never, never ever crosslink - tempting as it may be! I also don't submit to Google. In fact I haven't used the Google submit button for years. The site will be found (provided you are successful with your directory submission) by all the major crawlers - and in 6-8 weeks time will start to appear on other SEs, with the full strength of the off-page factors kicking in about a month after that.

I have been successfully using this method for the past 3 years and it has worked consistently. There should be no surprises really, it is just laying out content in a manner which search engines like. It is just that on Inktomi, you can test the results of your efforts a little quicker. Try it - it should work for you to!

Article by Barry Lloyd
Source: Search Engine Watch

Overture, HP Strengthen Ties

Overture Services has added an additional year to its contract to provide paid placement search results on Hewlett-Packard notebooks and PCs shipped to U.S. customers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The company, which is being acquired by Internet portal giant Yahoo! (Quote, Company Info) for $1.6 billion, also expanded the scope of the deal to include computers sold in Canada. Those listings will begin in late summer. Overture senior vice president Bill Demas said, "This agreement underscores Overture's commitment to building deeper, more strategic relationships with existing partners in new and exciting distribution channels."

The previous U.S. agreement was also a one-year deal, Overture spokesman Al Duncan said. Overture listings are generated from 88,000 advertisers who bid for placement on keywords relevant to their business. The company screens the listings and distributes them to its partners -- Yahoo!, MSN, CNN, and Lycos.

HP users can access the pages through a "Search the Internet" keyboard button or a "Search the Web" box on the default homepage of HP Pavilion PCs. Also, users may access Overture results via the search icon on their Web browser toolbar. HP, which boosted its presence in the PC market with the purchase of Compaq Computer, shipped 2.29 million machines in the United States during the second quarter, according to preliminary research released today by IDC.

The strong quarter gave the company a 16.2 percent U.S. market share, second only to Dell, which holds 17.8 percent. Figures for Canada are not yet available, an IDC spokesman said. In addition to the United States and Canada, Overture operates commercial search networks in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and South Korea.

A spokesman for Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP could not be reached to comment on whether the company's relationship with Overture might be expanded to other countries. Additional distribution deals could significantly boost the potential viewers of Overture's paid placement links. Overture's Duncan declined comment on possible future expansion of the deal outside of North America.

Source: Silicon Valley Internet.com

Shopping Search Engines Starting To Click

In the early days of the supposed dot-com revolution, online retailers promised to save you a trip to the mall. Now a crop of new services promises to save you a trip to even those Web sites.

In what has become another lucrative niche on the Web, price-comparison shopping sites, also known as shopping-search sites, are simplifying life for bargain hunters — and making a tidy profit in the process. "We're Consumer Reports and the Yellow Pages on steroids," said Iggy Sanlo, chief revenue officer for privately held DealTime.com Ltd. It's the No. 1 shopping-search site, with 6% of the market in Web site visits, says researcher Hitwise.com.

"Shopping search is the nexus of search and e-commerce," said Sanlo. Buoyed by the key holiday season, it was profitable in the second half of 2002. DealTime, Pricegrabber.com and MySimon are among shopping-comparison services that say they're profitable. And while the all-important holiday shopping season is six months away, many merchants are already factoring these sites into their retail plans.

Think of it as shopping in reverse. Instead of clicking through a morass of retail Web sites, online merchants come to the consumer. The shopper types in what he's looking for, and gets a list of vendors. The sites often compute sales tax and shipping prices, and show how other shoppers rated the product. From there, the user picks one and is taken to the checkout area of the seller's site, which pays a click-through referral fee. Some sellers pay extra to be listed higher as a "featured merchant."

Such sites have been around for years. But consumers, who don't often have personal shoppers offline, are only starting to get used to the idea of virtual aides for online buying.

Shopping-search sites are often lumped into the $1.4 billion paid-search market with sites such as Google, so it's hard to measure their growth. But according to researcher I.think Inc., nearly 60% of online shoppers start at so-called aggregators — which include shopping-search sites, portals and big retailers like Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) — rather than individual stores. And half of those shoppers use search engines or shopping-search sites. The appeal to consumers is clear. But search sites are also a marketing deal for merchants.

According to a May study by Forrester Research, shopping-search sites have become the Web's fastest growing marketing tool, as measured by the number of merchants using them. Twenty-eight percent of sellers use them, and 86% found them to be very effective. That beats banner and pop-up ads, e-mail promotions and deals with shopping portals. Smaller merchants can go head-to-head against giant rivals without the huge marketing budget of a national brand. And since buyers can do all their product and merchant research on the site, most who click through one of the listed prices are ready to buy.

"We're winnowing out the browsers," Sanlo said. "We only send the shoppers." Most of those shoppers come for the bargains, analysts say. The sites make plain which merchants offer the best deal and can alert users when an object of desire falls within reach.

That could squeeze online retailers' already tight margins. "The classic argument about the Internet is that improved transparency drives down price," said Matthew Berk, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "The more visibility you have into pricing, and the easier it is — literally, in a single click — to go to one merchant vs. another, the more price is a consideration."

Price isn't the only issue. Kamran Pourzanjani, president of Pricegrabber.com, says that despite the site's name, 70% of the site's users don't click on the lowest price. Most look at the seller's feedback from other users and often favor better-known vendors. "People don't have a problem paying a little more for a recognized name or highly rated vendor," he said. That's especially true of the site's business users, who make up 55% of Pricegrabber's audience. They use the site to cut costs, but can't afford to deal with late shipments or lousy service. DealTime kicks off merchants who don't maintain ratings of two stars (of a possible five), and Pricegrabber.com has booted dishonest vendors.

These, by no accident, are often sellers with the lowest price. Pourzanjani won't detail sales or earnings for the privately held firm, but says it's profitable and is growing more so. Despite starting with a small pool of angel investment, it's already bringing in enough to pour money back into better technology, advertising and more staff. Still, comparison-shopping sites face e-tail giants such as Amazon.com, which also offer a range of products through a bevy of outside vendors, plus better name recognition and marketing muscle.

Alternative To Amazon, EBay
"Amazon and eBay are still larger than any of the aggregators," said Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Lisa Strand. "And when people think of online shopping, often eBay and Amazon are the first names that come to mind." Another challenge is e-commerce portals, such as Yahoo's Inc. (YHOO) shopping site. Like DealTime and Pricegrabber, these multistorefront virtual malls offer quick product searches and, in some cases, vendor comparisons.

Big retailers, shopping portals and shopping-search sites may not seem to be direct rivals at first, Strand admits. They appeal to different types of shoppers and have distinct business models. They don't even act like competitors. Pricegrabber advertises on Google, for instance, and counts eBay as a featured vendor.

But as time goes on, they're copying many of each other's features and vying for the same audience. Standing out will become even more important, Strand says. She won't have to convince CNet Networks Inc. (CNET)-owned MySimon, ranked by Hitwise as the No. 6 shopping-search site.

MySimon aims to stand out as a "warm and familiar environment," said Tom Jones, CNet's senior vice president for shopping services. The effort includes the friendly face of its namesake mascot, Simon, and reviews and other content from CNet's other sites. That's helped it, more than any other site, attract women shoppers, a prized retail constituency. This month it's beefing up its technology by adding soon-to-be-announced features. It also plans to promote the site more heavily through its network of news and review sites.

CNet also runs comparison-shop site Shopping.com, targeted to a different, more technical audience. The firm doesn't break out financials for its units, but officials say MySimon is profitable. General-purpose search engines are dipping their toes in the market, too. Google is tweaking Froogle, a product-centered version of its search engine. It lets users search printed mail-order catalogs scanned and indexed by its system.

But Jupiter's Berk doesn't see search engines taking the place of shopping sites soon. What makes them good for searches — finding a needle in a haystack — makes them ill-suited for broad product and vendor comparisons. New entrants, however, could pose a bigger problem. It doesn't take much money to get a shopping-search site up and running, which could prove a big headache for firms that have spent millions to join the big leagues.

Many have already turned to print and online ads to build their brands. Though setting up a Web site is easy, gaining critical mass is the real challenge. As DealTime's Sanlo points out, the market is a virtual "pet cemetery" of failed brands, including RUSure and Productopia. "If it were that easy, AOL, MSN, AltaVista, EarthLink, ATT, Excite and iWon wouldn't outsource their shopping searches," he said.

Source: Investors.com

Google and Switchboard Strike AdSense Deal

Switchboard To Integrate Relevant Content-Targeted Advertising Into Local Search With Google AdSense.

Switchboard Incorporated, an online yellow pages portal, today announced an agreement with Google, developer of the largest performance-based search advertising program, that integrates content-targeted advertisements through the Google AdSense program into the Switchboard Yellow Pages.

As one of the pioneers of local search, Switchboard provides a highly optimized platform for integrating content-targeted advertising with local content. In addition, Switchboard will share in the revenue generated when their users click on Google advertisements. Using Switchboard’s enhanced merchant information - - rich data about a businesses’ product and service offerings - - Google will serve relevant content-targeted advertisements on yellow pages results and a variety of other pages throughout the popular online directory.

The alliance will provide Google’s advertisers with broad exposure to Switchboard’s more than 5 million unique online users executing local searches each month. “Content-targeted advertising has been typically targeted at editorial and informational content. With Google AdSense, we are moving content-targeted advertising to a new level of performance and relevance, because Switchboard’s users are ready-to-buy," said Dean Polnerow, president and founder of Switchboard Incorporated.

“Our extensive local merchant content and the local orientation of our users’ searches provides Google with a unique opportunity to target content-targeted advertising on our local business search results pages." "Switchboard’s extensive local content enables Google’s advertisers to reach a very targeted audience through relevant yellow pages results," said Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations for Google. “By adding Switchboard to our growing network of AdSense website publishers, we continue to validate the effectiveness and importance of content-targeted advertising as a medium to reach qualified customers.”

Google's other high profile AdSense partners include Blogger, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, Amazon.com, and BurstMedia.

Source: WebAdvantage.net

The scope of a search engine's patent portfolio

Dominance in Web search may be determined by the scope of a company's patent portfolio, rather than its ability to shuttle people to Internet sites.

At least, Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel seems to think so. With the Web portal's proposed $1.63 billion buyout of commercial search specialist Overture Services on Monday, Yahoo would acquire 60-plus patents related to technology and processes for indexing the Web, as well as for pay-per-click and bidding systems to grant sites higher placement in search results.

In his brief comments to investors Monday, Semel highlighted the role intellectual property (IP) played in his decision to buy Overture instead of building a rival system to replace its two-year partner. "We'll add...to our technology assets Overture's impressive intellectual property portfolio of both algorithmic and sponsored search patents," he said. "These are some of the key reasons we have opted to acquire Overture. We believe that the advertising industry is in its earliest days of a great future."

The search market is expected to be reap $4 billion in revenue by 2005, according to researchers. As the industry matures, the competition for a piece of that large pie could lead companies to bulk up their IP legal teams, much like in other industries such as online advertising sales during the dot-com bust. "Yahoo has been giving this issue more weight than others," U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy said.

Overture has already filed two lawsuits against rivals Google and FindWhat, and plans to "vigorously protect its patents," the Pasadena, Calif.-based company said Wednesday. Overture, formerly called GoTo.com, claims the rights to a system and method for Web sites to influence their rankings within search results. The company auctions keywords, giving the top bidders the highest placement in searches that use those terms. Overture's system also uses a pay-for-performance model, under which advertisers pay the bid price only when someone actually clicks on a displayed link.

The business was ridiculed at first, but proved its worth in recent years, eventually attracting America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN as customers. AOL recently dropped Overture in favor of rival Google. Behind the scenes, Overture has long sought to protect its growing market dominance, having hired a staff of IP experts and aggressively wielded its portfolio of pay-for-performance search patents against rivals.

Overture sued FindWhat.com in February 2002 after FindWhat filed a summary judgment request in a New York federal court in an attempt to fend off any potential infringement charge from Overture. Two months later Overture filed a second lawsuit, charging Google with patent infringement in its pay-for-performance ad system. According to the Google lawsuit, Overture's patent covers 67 separate claims, including exclusive rights to a "system for enabling an advertising Web site promoter using a computer network to update information relating to a search listing within a search-result list generated by an Internet search engine."

Overture CEO Ted Meisel on Monday touched on the growing importance of IP to the company. "We…have been No. 1 based on (our IP), have engaged in some licensing of that," he said, adding that it’s "not at this point material, but I think it's just indicative of the value of the IP in that area." Google declined to comment on the IP issue.

Overture insiders say that when the company bought AltaVista and the Web search assets of Fast Search & Transfer, patents played a big role in the decisions. With respect to AltaVista, Overture owns some of the oldest patents on Web search. When Altavista was part of Digital Equipment Corp., it secured seven patents related to Web crawling technologies, seven on indexing and two on query processing. It has 16 patents pending related to forward-looking search technologies.

The push for patents
Overture and Yahoo aren't alone--all of the key players in search have been amassing patents lately. Earlier this year, Google was granted a patent from the U.S. Patent Office for a method of determining the relevance of Web pages in relation to search queries. Google founder Larry Page patented PageRank, its formula for calculating the importance of Web pages based on the number of other pages linked to it. Google also has three outstanding patent applications.

Meanwhile, Microsoft holds general search-related patents including methods for searching directory listing information, a system for improving search area selection and a third for "concept" searching using a Boolean or keyword search engine. Online retailer Amazon.com also has a patent application that could affect search-related advertising. In March, it updated a patent application for a method of auctioning advertisements that appear on a Web page to the highest bidder.

Business method patents, such as Overture's bid-for-placement system, are common but controversial within the computer industry. A U.S. appeals court significantly expanded the definition of business processes that can be patented in a 1998 decision in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group. The ruling opened the floodgates to patent applications from e-commerce companies seeking to protect their services. Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com and Expedia are among the major names to become entangled with patent suits, most of which ended in settlements.

Lately the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been curtailing its grants of various business methods patents because of criticism that the patented ideas were overbroad and obvious. Patent cases are notoriously hard to win. If patents are too broad they can become obsolete and if they're too specific it can be hard to prove infringement.

"No matter what, this industry is growing so large that if someone has a valid patent on a fundamental part of search or paid listings it will have a big impact on the industry," said Phillip Thume, chief operating officer of FindWhat.com. "But only when someone tries to enforce them do you find out if they are valuable." Because of the uncertainty over patent enforceability, companies often seek to secure patents as a defensive measure aimed primarily at preventing rivals from threatening them with infringement suits.

"Having patents on your own technology, business and inventions is invaluable in today's competitive market, even if you're not enforcing your rights directly against others, they become invaluable when you get sued or threatened," said Neil Smith, senior partner at Howard Rice and a specialist in IP litigation. "You can have counter claims for infringement of your own patents, or cross-license with" the plaintiff. "It gives you something to trade or helps you stay out of trouble when you're dealing with companies that are competitors."

But other legal experts said they are worried that advancements in search technology might be stifled due to patent conflicts. "If (search companies) turn around and offensively try to shut down competition then you could see significant lags in innovation and dimishing the quality of people's access to information," said Jason Schultz, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Story by Stefanie Olsen
Source: C-Net News

Web Giants Seek Fortune In Search Ads

People sneered in 1998 when Web ad pioneer Overture Services Inc. introduced the Web's first all-commercial search engine. The idea of moving advertisers' links higher in search results based on how much each advertiser was willing to pay outraged purists who said paid placement would spoil the search experience.

But in the serendipitous way the Web evolves, the search engine originally known as GoTo.com tweaked its strategy and soon became the Internet equivalent of the Yellow Pages. Its commercial links were presented as enhancements rather than replacements for Web search results, much as Yellow Pages list all businesses in alphabetical order and allow some greater visibility if they pay for special ads.

Rather than marketing itself as a stand-alone Web site, Overture offered its paid listings to big networks on which people already did a lot of searching, such as Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Yahoo. Thus was born the business that Yahoo said it plans to buy this week for $1.6 billion in cash and stock. The purchase is widely regarded as an effort by Yahoo to gird for competition with Google, the popular search engine that also was born in 1998 and has risen to become the top resource for searching the Internet.

Google last year developed its own advertising system to compete with Overture and began distributing sponsored links to America Online, EarthLink and other Web sites. One clever part of the two systems is that advertisers pay only when users click on their links and visit their Web sites. Another is that advertisers bid against each other for links, setting ad prices in dynamic auctions. The success of the innovation has not been missed by Microsoft. Nearly one-third of the 4 billion Web searches conducted in May were run by Google.com, compared with 25 percent by Yahoo, 19 percent by AOL and 15 percent by MSN. Google's share was only 25 percent as recently as January, according to market researcher ComScore Networks.

Microsoft has announced plans to create its own Web search engine, even as rumors flew that Microsoft was considering making an offer to buy either Google or Overture. Google and Microsoft have been mum on that subject. The jockeying feels so 1999ish, doesn't it? Overture's sponsored search results, after all, are so new that it's hard to explain exactly what the company does. And that, you may recall, was routine in the 1990s, when unproven Internet companies used their price-inflated stock to buy start-ups that were even younger and more unproven. Most investors didn't even understand what the big dot-coms did, much less what the peewees they spent billions to acquire claimed to accomplish.

One difference now is that Yahoo and Overture are profitable and therefore hardly unproven. Yet their pending marriage nonetheless shows how key questions about the Internet media business remain unsettled long after the dot-com bubble burst. It's still not clear, for example, which pieces of the Internet puzzle media networks really need to own, rather than simply "renting" from partners. At one time the hot asset was Internet access -- dial-up lines that propelled AOL to fame. At other times it has been traditional media content -- that stuff that led AOL to its disastrous purchase of Time Warner. These days the asset everyone is scrambling to control -- Web searching -- is the same one that was hot before the Web went commercial. During the dot-com frenzy, sites such as Yahoo that began by organizing directories of Web sites decided it was better to collect content to keep people on their sites longer. Yahoo and rivals paid other companies to display their search results, viewing search as a commodity they didn't need to own.

But after Overture and Google showed how effective ads could be when placed alongside relevant search results, the role of Web searching in Internet commerce seemed bigger. Consider, for example, that researchers at ComScore Networks recently found that people who click on sponsored links in search results are twice as likely to buy something as people who click on unpaid search results after running the same query. ComScore also found that paid search links had four times the click-through rate of unpaid search results for the same queries.

"It shows search represents a viable marketing opportunity that is well suited to the Web," said James M. Lamberti, a ComScore vice president. "It gives marketers an opportunity to communicate with the consumer at the very moment they express an interest or a need." Google and Overture have expanded their sponsored-link systems into areas besides search, attempting to show relevant ads based on what kind of Web page someone is viewing, such as sports scores, stock quotes or news about Chinese politics. That strategy was originally attempted by several big Internet ad networks that delivered banner ads to thousands of Web sites in the 1990s; most died when the stock market crashed.

Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, noted that both Microsoft and AOL, at least for now, have fallen far behind Yahoo and Google in the race to exploit the value of Web search to Internet commerce. "Google and Yahoo are creating a duopoly in Web search and going at it full force," Rashtchy said.

What a turnaround from just three years ago, when AOL was still king of Internet advertising, Microsoft was its key rival, Yahoo was perceived as an Internet lightweight and almost no one had heard of Google. But on the Internet, change regularly rolls through like a tornado and turns everything topsy-turvy. So hang on to your mouse; more twisters are coming.

Source: Biz Report.com

Q&A with Google News developer

Google News extracts articles from more than 4,500 sources worldwide, then automatically clusters them into groups by subject matter.

Krishna Bharat, the Google Senior Research Scientist who conceived of the idea, answers questions about the history and future of Google News.

"Relevance is determined by information retrieval techniques that look at the distribution of words in the article and surrounding pages on the web," he says. "If the article matches the query well it is deemed relevant and gets a high score. Other factors include the importance of the source, timeliness of the article, and importance of the news story, relative to other stories in the news currently."

Cyber Journalist.net

Yahoo drafts allies for portal tool

Yahoo struck deals with Oracle and with Internet content gatherer Moreover Technologies to bolster its product for building corporate Web site portals. Under the agreement with Oracle announced Tuesday, the database company will integrate My Yahoo Enterprise Edition into its 9i Application Server software.

The partnership with San Francisco-based Moreover should widen the range of information available through Yahoo's corporate portal application.

Steve Boom, senior vice president of Yahoo Enterprise Solutions, said that Yahoo is pursuing deals with companies that can supply information important to a wide range of business users. "The part of the market that is not being addressed is finding the right mix of content for the average knowledge worker," said Boom. "There's a lot of content out there for highly specialized workers, but we're working on content that has broad appeal."

My Yahoo Enterprise Edition is the Web giant's latest portal software, which is used by companies to consolidate and filter information from a range of sources into a single interface that can be seen by employees, customers and business partners.

The system offers an array of "portlets," which allow users to drop links to industry news, stock quotes and Web-based applications into their own portal sites. The Yahoo deal could help drive sales of Oracle's database, application server and business software. According to the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company, some 16,000 users are already using Oracle9i Application Server.

Yahoo has also formed relationships with business software companies such as BEA Systems, SAP, Sun Microsystems and Tibco Software. Boom said Yahoo is in partnership talks with a number of other portal software makers. Customer demand will direct Yahoo's ally-making decisions, he said, noting that users had been putting pressure on the company to establish a deal with Oracle.

A free demo of My Yahoo Enterprise Edition is available for download, and a 30-day trial version of the application will be offered for users of supported portal software platforms in August, according to Yahoo. The deals come as Yahoo continues to gobble up pieces of the Internet search market. On Monday, the company announced it would buy rival Overture in attempt to garner a larger slice of the online advertising market.

Story by Matt Hines
Source: C-Net News

Yahoo Declares War On Google

Yahoo! Inc. and Overture Services, Inc. today announced they have signed a definitive agreement under which Yahoo! will acquire Overture.

The last piece of the search battle has been put into place, but the war has only begun. All the competitors except for one are now in position and ready for the beginning of a serious and interesting battle between the titans of the online world. Here is the line-up of competitors that looks much smaller now with the battle really coming down to three companies Microsoft MSN Search (coming MSNBOT), Google and Yahoo. The AOL camp seems to be the glaring hole in the brewing battle. The other search players like AllTheWeb.com, AltaVista.com and HotBot.com are so far behind that they hardly register on the radar screen.

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have been battling for years to gain online users and some have even become partners. The best example is that Yahoo used Google results for many years and then Yahoo acquired Inktomi search technology. Google gained dominance from riding the back of Yahoo for years and ultimately drove Yahoo to be concerned about Google’s fast growth. I think Yahoo felt threatened by the fast growth of Google and that it would eventually capture all or most of Yahoo’s users. Yahoo was right in thinking Google could sink the Yahoo franchise. I think because Yahoo relied on Google so much that they may have lost millions of users to Google, but I also must say that Yahoo may not have made it through the last few years without the Google search technology.

Then you throw in Microsoft’s interest in keeping MSN an important online brand and their recent announcement that they are building a crawler-based search engine and sponsored link program.

AOL and MSN should have long-term worries about the online power of Yahoo and Google. It appears that the major dial-up ISP’s AOL, MSN and Earthlink are running behind Yahoo and Google. MSN appears to be the one in the lead in this battle to make the needed transition from being a dial-up ISP to a provider of online broadband services and content. In my opinion, Yahoo and Google are sitting in a much better long-term position than any of the major dial-up ISP’s to dominate the online space.

This battle will ultimately decided by high-speed cable and wireless Internet access providers. I just don’t see AOL keeping its present dominance. I do see a clear separation coming between Internet access provider and content provider. AOL and MSN will not hold on to dominance online as ISP’s but as content providers to wireless telco and cable TV providers.

I think the Internet will be the technology used to deliver what we know today as cable TV, telephone and radio communications. We will most likely see major streaming media channels and online services being provided through those wireless telco’s, cable TV and radio network providers like digital radio and XM Satellite radio. The brands we know today will mostly be the brands we know in the future. My 5 year prediction is that the top online brands will line up like this: MSN, Google and Yahoo with AOL bringing up the rear.

I think MSN will be the ultimate leader online because of its coming search technology and its growing strength in content and streaming media. Google is about to go public and that will give them the cash they need to acquire more content technology. It will be fun to watch Google expand its wings and user base over the next few years. I think Google or Yahoo will acquire Real Networks and that will give them the leg up on AOL. It is a real possibility that Google could be the ultimate in online giants.

Article by Rob Greenlee
Source: Web Talk Guys Radio

Search industry: Yahoo to Acquire Overture

Yahoo! announced that it will acquire Overture, one of the largest providers of paid listings to search engines and other web portals.

Under the terms of the agreement, each outstanding common share of Overture will receive 0.6108 shares of Yahoo! common stock and $4.75 in cash, reflecting an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.63 billion.

"The combined assets position Yahoo! as the largest global player in the rapidly growing Internet advertising sector," said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. "Together, the two companies will be able to provide the most compelling and diversified suite of integrated marketing solutions around the globe, including branding, paid placement, graphical ads, text links, multimedia, and contextual advertising."

We'll be updating the story throughout the day today as it continues to unfold. Danny Sullivan will take an in-depth look at the acquisition in tomorrow's Search Engine Update. Meanwhile, here are some links to other sources of information about the transaction.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Business News: Blogging Goes Corporate

This year, Macromedia -- the company that makes Flash and Shockwave -- has posted a $305 million quarterly loss, laid off 110 people and lost a $2.8 million copyright infringement suit to Adobe.

But for all the company's apparent troubles, in the last week there's been a lot of good feeling directed toward the firm, with people saying that Macromedia is one of the few companies to appreciate the new topography of the Web. Not only has the company started to tailor its software to the needs of people who run their own weblogs, but it's also dived headlong into the much-hyped "blogosphere" itself, setting up its own weblogs as a way to nurture ties with its customers.

Macromedia calls this "the blog strategy," and some see the company's moves as the start of a trend. These days, it's almost unfashionable for a self-respecting Webophile to not have his own blog; if Macromedia's effort is any indication, soon a tech company that doesn't embrace weblogs may seem equally dated.

(For the uninitiated, a weblog, or blog is a frequently updated website of personal ideas, thoughts, musings, news, information, or discussions of what one has eaten for breakfast.) Late last month, when Macromedia released new versions of four of its applications, it expected that its customers would have lots of questions about how to use the new stuff, said Tom Hale, the company's vice president in charge of developer relations.

Macromedia's software -- Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Cold Fusion -- builds and maintains websites, and the many new features in such complex applications can take some time to get used to.

"We were releasing a tremendous amount of software to the Web," Hale said, "and you pretty much don't know what's going to happen when you release that much that quickly."

The firm needed a way to quickly respond to questions developers might have as they use the new products -- and although some at Macromedia thought about creating a blog on Macromedia's site to address customers' questions, "we decided to experiment with the (third-party) blogs," Hale said.

Sites of interest: Business Blog

Serge Thibodeau Live

Source: Wired News

Yahoo plans IT centre in Bangalore

Global Internet company Yahoo! on Monday announced the opening of a software development centre in Bangalore, its first such facility outside the United States. The Bangalore centre will focus on product innovation and leading-edge technology development for Yahoo! worldwide, Yahoo Software Development India Pvt Ltd CEO Venkat Pachapakesan and COO Bharat Vijay said.

The Bangalore centre, to be launched next month, plans to have 150 highly skilled software engineers by the end of 2004, they said. Panchapakesan and Vijay said the Bangalore centre would be engaged in the area of software technology for its parent Yahoo! Inc, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

It would focus on key engineering areas for Yahoo, including development of its key products like finance, search, mail and messenger, data mining and research, e-commerce, security, core infrastructure and database technologies, they said. To a question, Panchapakesan said for the Bangalore centre, Yahoo! Inc has no plans to move jobs from the US.

Recruitment for the India centre would be made locally as the country had a vast pool of talented engineers. The India centre, which would primarily focus on software development and internet-based product innovation, is already in the process of recruiting around 100 software engineers, he said.

The new facility would work in tandem with the US R&D centre to keep up with the growing needs of the industry, they said, adding, it would help build products for Yahoo's business units across the globe.

It would work on development of highly scalable server technology, UNIX/C/C++, Server technologies, Middleware, TCP/IP networking, FreeBSD, Apache, Oracle/MySQL DB and Data Mining Algorithms, among others, Vijay said.

Source: Rediff.com

Google now has over 1,000 employees

The Ph.D.s, tie-dyed shirts and colorful decorative balls of the Googleplex will soon be moving to one of Silicon Valley's biggest office parks, a further sign of the search star's growing prominence in the tech world.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said this week it will sublease the Amphitheatre Technology Center from Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), which has occupied the space for about five years. The property, which is about 506,000 square feet, is across the highway from Google's current headquarters and includes amenities such as volleyball courts and a fitness center. Google, which will move in phases over the next several months, is relocating to accommodate its growing staff roster.

It employs more than 1,000 people, with 800 in its Mountain View offices, and has nearly 150 job openings posted to its Web site, not including those at international offices.

SGI is relocating its headquarters to nearby Crittenden Technology Center, where it leases additional space. SGI expects the new lease arrangement to reduce its net occupancy costs by $14 million to $17 million per year, starting in July 2004. The company, which is under financial hardship, has to reduce costs in order to break even.

Source: C-NET News

LookSmart Signs Search Deal With Lycos

As the paid inclusion market heats up, Internet search company LookSmart yesterday announced a multi-year agreement with Terra Lycos, the global Internet network, for search distribution on Lycos.

As part of the agreement, LookSmart will provide its new high-relevance commercial search product to Lycos beginning late in the third quarter of 2003. LookSmart will become the primary provider of general web search results for a large number of commercial terms. In addition, Lycos will have the option to resell LookSmart's LookListings to thousands of Lycos InSite customers, Lycos's paid inclusion and paid placement search engine marketing platform.

The deal with Lycos comes as LookSmart competitor Overture Services girds up for a paid inclusion product launch. In related news, earlier in the week LookSmart announced its New LookListings, designed to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to purchase cost-effective traffic and manage their campaigns across the LookSmart Network of distribution partners. LookListings replaces the company's former "Small Business Listings" and "Large Business Listings" products.

"Ever since we launched our online small business product last year, we've been hearing from customers who want to list more than just their homepage and have more control over their campaign management, yet didn't have the budget to qualify for our large advertiser solution," says Peter Adams, cto for LookSmart. "New LookListings will let these customers drive traffic to any number of category and product pages, increasing sales and improving ROI, while also giving large advertisers increased flexibility in the way they manage their campaigns."

Source: Technology Marketing.com

Google cache raises copyright concerns

Like other online publishers, The New York Times charges readers to access articles on its Web site. But why pay when you can use Google instead?

Through a caching feature on the popular Google search site, people can sometimes call up snapshots of archived stories at NYTimes.com and other registration-only sites. The practice has proved a boon for readers hoping to track down Web pages that are no longer accessible at the original source, for whatever reason.

But the feature has recently been putting Google at odds with some unhappy publishers. "We are working with Google to fix that problem--we're going to close it so when you click on a link it will take you to a registration page," said Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman at New York Times Digital, the publisher of NYTimes.com. "We have established these archived links and want to maintain consistency across all these access points."

Google offers publishers a simple way to opt out of its temporary archive, and scuffles have yet to erupt into open warfare or lawsuits. Still, Google's cache links illustrate a slippery side of innovation on the Web, where cool new features that seem benign on the surface often carry unintended consequences. The issue is particularly relevant at Google, a company that prides itself on creativity and routinely floats trial balloons for new features and services. Its culture of innovation may become increasingly risky as Google, which draws millions of visitors to its site daily and redirects them to others through secretive search formulas, cements its position as one of the most popular and powerful companies on the Web.

At the heart of Google's caching dilemma lies a thorny legal problem involving a core Web technology: When is it acceptable to copy someone else's Web page, even temporarily? Google's cache, a feature introduced in 1997, is unique among commercial search engines, but it's not unlike other archival sites on the Web that keep digital copies of Web pages. Google's relatively little-known feature lets people access a copy of almost any Web page, within Google's own site, in the form it was in whenever last indexed by the search giant. That could mean the page accessed is either minutes or months old, depending on when Google last crawled it.

Unlike formal Web archive projects, Google says its cache feature does not attempt to create a permanent historical record of the Web. Rather, the company actively seeks to delete dead links; once a Web page disappears, the search engine seeks to purge that record and any related cached page as quickly as possible. Still, Google's cached pages have proven to be a treasure trove for investigators seeking to recover data pulled from public Web sites. In one high-profile example, security and privacy expert Richard Smith copied Web pages detailing the backgrounds of Dr. John Poindexter, head of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office (IAO), and other officials, from the Google cache days after they were removed from the IAO Web site. The pages were deleted after public reports surfaced on the office's development of a massive computer system to spy on Americans and potential terrorists.

"When something's been yanked, Google cache is a good place to grab it and save for posterity, because you don't know how long Google will have it," said Smith. Google claims its caching feature benefits Web surfers by letting them access a site that may be malfunctioning or offline. Also, its cached pages highlight terms that match a search query "to make it easier for users to find relevant information," according to a spokesman at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.

Lawyers, start your search engines
As seemingly benign and beneficial as it is, some Web site operators take issue with the feature and digitally prevent Google from recording their pages in full by adding special code to their sites. Among other arguments, they say that cached pages at Google have the potential to detour traffic from their own site, or, at worst, constitute trademark or copyright violations. In the case of an out-of-date news page in Google's cache, a Web publisher could even face legal troubles because of false data remaining on the Web but corrected at its own site. For this reason, search experts and copyright lawyers expect the issue to come up in a court of law, joining the leagues of copyright disputes that have surfaced because of technology innovation.

"It's very much an issue that has yet to be tested, and I fully expect that it will be," said Danny Sullivan, industry pundit and editor of Search Engine Watch. Admittedly, Google's cache is like any number of backdoors to information on the Web. For example, proxy servers can be the keys to a site that is banned by a visitor's hosting Web server. And technically, any time a Web surfer visits a site, that visit could be interpreted as a copyright violation, because the page is temporarily cached in the user's computer memory.

The digital universe is constantly changing, but its content can be either fleeting or permanent. Several Web sites, including the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and the Sept. 11 Digital Archive, have surfaced to preserve information on the Web and to keep permanent historical accounts of events and Web pages. Yet, many more pages, and even those in Google's cache, are eventually lost in the digital ether. The average lifespan of a Web site is 100 days, according to estimates by the Internet Archive. Still, copyright lawyers and industry experts say that there are legally uncharted waters around a commercial caching service.

"Many of us copyright lawyers have been waiting for this issue to come up: Google is making copies of all the Web sites they index and they're not asking permission," said Fred Lohman, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "From a strict copyright standpoint, it violates copyright." Most search engines make a statistical record of a Web page when they "spider" it, or use "robots" to scan the page for meaning or context to related queries. For example, the engine can point to specific information contained on a page that's related to a search term, but it often doesn't have the complete picture of the page. Google goes one step beyond, however, by taking a digital picture of pages and making it available to visitors in cached links. Those pictures exist temporarily on its site until the next time Google crawls that particular page, which can happen in a few days or in six weeks or more.

Legally, what could differentiate Google from other archival sites that record pages is that it is a commercial site and that it has enormous scope and influence on the Web. But what's kept the feature off most Web sites' radar is that, anecdotally, most people don't click on the cache. Even Google says people only "occasionally" click its cached links. If more people did, Web publishers might lose visitors--and potentially advertising dollars, which no one can afford to lose as Web publishing gets back on its feet.

Practically speaking, Web sites can "opt out," or include code in their pages that bars Google from caching the page. A tag to exclude "robots" such as "www.nytimes.com/robots.txt" or "NOARCHIVE" typically does the job. And that's largely what's kept the cache feature from being controversial. Search Engine Watch's Sullivan said that, even though some publishers are wary of the caching feature, many don't block Google's robots for fear of losing favor in the company's powerful search rankings. He said some Webmasters believe there's a stigma associated the "no cache" tag, because many sites that use it have been accused of attempting to use banned methods to manipulate Google's rankings. Google said the "no cache" tag does not affect rankings.

Some legal experts say Google may be on shaky ground by caching first and asking questions later. A provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes a safe harbor for Web caching. The safe harbor is narrowly defined to protect Internet service providers that cache Web pages to make them more readily accessible to subscribers. For example, AOL could keep a local copy of high-trafficked Web pages on its servers so that its members could access them with greater speed and less cost to the network. Various copyright lawyers argue that safe harbor may or may not protect Google if it was tested.

"Most people agree that the caching exception in the DMCA is obsolete," Lohman said. "I don't think it would cover Google's cache. Google is not waiting for users to request the page. It spiders the page before anyone asks for it." Still, other lawyers argue that Google's practice would be protected by fair-use laws. A judge might look at the market impact of Google's caching and find that it's valuable, given that it could ultimately drive traffic to the cached site. Or the reverse could be true, depending on the nature of the page.

For its part, Google is confident that the service is within the law. "We've evaluated this from a legal perspective, including copyright law, and have determined that Google's cached page service complies with the law," a Google spokesman said. A similar issue has played out in the courts in an image-searching case, Kelly v. Arriba Soft, filed in April 1999. Leslie Kelly, a photographer, sued the company for copyright infringement when its visual search finder cataloged thumbnails and full-sizes of his digital photos and made them accessible via its own search engine.

The court initially ruled against Kelly based on the "established importance of search engines," but Kelly appealed and won. In Feb. 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Arriba's use of thumbnail images of Kelly's photos was fair use, but its display of full-size images was not fair use, because it was likely to harm the market for Kelly's work by reducing visits to his Web site and by allowing free downloads. But the opinion on full-size images was remanded by the 9th Circuit Court this week and is set to go to trial in the lower court of central California. Judith Jennison, defense lawyer for Arriba Soft, said that one of the issues in the case is that Arriba Soft, in its process of indexing the Web, made copies of Kelly's photos and saved them for 24 hours in its servers. The 9th Circuit Court agreed that creating that copy is fair use under copyright law, she said, adding that there would be a slightly different analysis in a case related to Google. Also, the fact that the search site has an opt-out program would likely illustrate that the market for original copyrighted works can be protected, which is a significant factor in fair-use analysis.

"In Google's case, the result would likely be the same, because the temporary caching for indexing purposes would be fair use per Kelly v. Arriba Soft," Jennison said. While it seems that many Net publishers haven't formed an official policy on Google caching, they say they are examining how it affects their business.

Randy Stearns, executive producer for ABCNews.com, said he's somewhat concerned about his company's news pages being archived temporarily on Google, because readers might access information that is not up-to-date or, in the worst case for a daily news outlet, is inaccurate. Theoretically, if a news report was issued with errors and was subsequently fixed on the publisher's site, but the erroneous report still existed in a cached version, it could raise legal issues for the publisher, he said. Other publishers dismiss any threat, saying that not enough people actually click on those links to be a detriment to traffic. "People who find objection to what Google does likely spend enormous amounts (of time) on their content and refresh it regularly," said Harry Lin, head of ABC.com.

In contrast with the priorities of some news publishers, Web archivists say preserving pages as they first appeared can offer important documentary records for historians and others. Brewster Kahle, head of the Wayback Machine, said many people use its archive for patent research, or "prior art" searches. Designers and students have used the archive to see the evolution of Web site design and display, he added, and the Smithsonian has used subsets of the collection in the Presidential Election memorabilia room.

News publishers agree that Google's cache is also valuable if, for example, their site was inaccessible because of technical difficulties. "It's a great, wonderful feature, and I don't know that copyright laws would protect them," said Search Engine Watch's Sullivan. "But most people are concerned about getting into Google, not getting out of it."

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Blogging life: Google-Watch Blogometer

Blogging buzz is all about links, which are always increasing, and about Google rankings, which are largely based on link popularity. There's something wrong with this picture.

What about Joe surfer -- does he actually click on these blogs? The first two graphs below are based on page views of blogs. A blogging software company shows on-the-fly daily counts of their top blogs on a regular web page. We fetch this report at the same time toward the end of every day, and add up the counts to generate this graph. Each of the blog owners places a JavaScript clear GIF counter on any of his pages that he wishes. This technique means that crawlers and other automated devices tend to be excluded, which leaves real eyeballs using actual browsers.

We're interested in long-term trends. At Google Watch we suspect that the blogging buzz, fed as it is by perpetually-increasing linking juice, is not justified by the number of actual readers that these blogs receive. We started collecting traffic data for blogs on June 16, 2003. The first graph shows daily totals, while the second is based on weekly totals. The last day shown is always yesterday, and the last week shown is always the week that ended yesterday.

The average that defines the 100 percent line consists of all of the data shown on each graph, and is specified in the upper right corner.

Click here to read the whole story on Google-Watch.org

Microsoft brains compete with Google

Microsoft has hired top scientists in a quest for search algorithms that will allow it to compete directly with Google.

Microsoft is actively working on new search algorithms it will use to power its own search engine to take it into competition with Google, according to the head of the company's Theory Group. Speaking in Sydney at the Fifth International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, professor Jennifer Tour Chayes said Microsoft is patenting new search algorithms with a view to replacing the Inktomi technology currently powering MSN's search with Microsoft's own.

"Since Yahoo acquired Inktomi, Bill [Gates] has decided we need our own capacity," she said, adding that the company is already patenting new algorithms it believes have the potential to power a new search engine. Microsoft last month launched a new search program called MSNBot, which trawls the Web to build an index of HTML links and documents -- functions previously left to Inktomi and other partners.

It is believed to be the first step in a multi-year plan to build new search technology that encompasses home and business users, with the ultimate goal of the technology being to bind Microsoft's various Web sites, applications and the Windows operating system. Beyond search, Chayes believes filtering is the next killer application that will require the input of high mathematics. "As computers become more pervasive, we are going to be assaulted as we walk around," she says. "To take advantage of all the good things IT has to offer, you will need a filter. We can't all have a secretary do the filtering for us, so there'll be a theoretical solution."

Founded to perform blue sky research -- one of Chayes' speeches to the ICIAM is entitled "Phase transitions in combinatorial optimisation" -- Microsoft's theory division has already contributed directly to product development, notably the new version of Active Directory shipped with Windows Server 2003. "The product team asked us for assistance with a bottleneck where an algorithm was preventing us from working with larger networks," she said. "One of our team, Laszlo Lovasz, developed an improved algorithm in a day."

Despite this incredible service, the theory group is not a resource available on tap within Microsoft. "We have people dedicated to interfacing between the product and research groups, so that when a problem comes to us it is very well described" Chayes says. Perhaps the best reason for this is the stature of some of the team's researchers: Lovasz is a winner of the Wolf Medal, one of the world's leading mathematics prizes, and is also a former Yale Professor. Others in the eight-strong permanent team have won the Field Medal, mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prise.

And what of phase transitions in combinatorial optimism? Chayes explains that understanding how phase transitions -- for example from liquid to gas -- can be expressed mathematically may make it easier to solve problems like load balancing servers, so that limited processing resources can be applied to multiple tasks more efficiently. Understanding this phenomenon, she says, means a thorough understanding of how water boils may help enterprises wring more out of their servers.

"We're a very far out group at Microsoft," she says. "It could be 50 years from now before some of this work is used."

Source: News ZD Net

LookSmart Combines Small, Large Biz Products

Paid inclusion leader LookSmart (Quote, Company Info) announced on Tuesday that it would combine its separate products for small and large businesses into a single offering called LookListings.

LookListings will give small advertisers more options for building their paid inclusion programs, allowing them to add search listings for multiple Web pages. Previously, small businesses could only list their site's homepage, and couldn't link directly to product pages. "The marketplace has changed," said Dakota Sullivan, LookSmart's vice president of marketing. "Today, there's a lot of demand even from very small Web sites to list multiple pages."

The move comes as LookSmart awaits company in the paid inclusion market. Paid search heavyweight Overture Services has plans to launch its own paid inclusion product shortly, which will compete directly with LookListings. In addition to opening up multiple Web page listings to all advertisers, LookSmart said the new program would give small advertisers access to its reporting center, where they can gauge the performance of their campaigns.

LookListings also overhauls the pricing model. Previously, small advertisers were charged 15 cents per click for 5,000 clicks. Large advertisers would negotiate their click rates. Now, all advertisers can have 5,000 clicks at 15 cents each month. Beyond that, the cost per click is now set according to category. For example, for each click online gaming sites pay 75 cents and book sites 23 cents. "We believe that a category-based model give complete transparency and futher levels the playing field," Sullivan said, adding that the category prices still reflected a 20 to 25 percent discount on comparable keyword listings on Overture or Google.

LookSmart provides paid inclusion for MSN, About.com, and CNET Networks, among others. Like its brethren in paid search, LookSmart has assiduously courted small businesses. Last quarter, the company reported that its small business segment grew 13 percent to 38,000 advertisers.

With paid inclusion, an advertiser pays to have certain Web pages included in a Web search crawl. Unlike paid search, it does not guarantee placement on the results page, but paid inclusion listings appear in the main search results. The market for paid inclusion is small but growing quickly. Investment bank First Albany pegs the paid inclusion market at $200 million today. LookSmart has guessed the market could grow to be worth as much as $3 billion in 2007.

In May, LookSmart warned that its annual financial results would be hurt by increased competition in the paid inclusion sector. The company said the earnings hit was necessary in order to invest in product development.

Source: Silicon Valley Internet.com

Freeserve dumps Google

Britains' 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

Ranking a website for sales and performance

Ranking a website for sales and performance can be easy, if only you follow the right steps. There are no shortcuts, no easy way out, if you truly want to succeed. As with any serious undertaking, the right way to successfully optimize and position a site requires planning ahead and executing the project step by step.

If you follow all the advice given in our articles on the Rank for $ales web site, you will do extremely well; better than your competitors in many cases.

Start by the beginning: the right keywords
Even if your web site ranks number one in Google and most of the major search engines, it is of no value at all if it brings you unqualified, off-topic traffic. A properly optimized web site with all the right keywords and key phrases will not only bring you traffic, but targeted traffic.

People visiting your web site will have a real need for the products and services that you offer. Recent studies and market surveys confirm that most Internet searchers use the major search engines to rapidly find the products and services that interest them.

Using the right keywords and key phrases will insure that they will find your web site and they will purchase what they need from you. No successful and in-depth optimization project can be seriously done without the help of Word Tracker to effectively identify and use the keywords that are just right for you.

What may be good for one of your out-of-state or out-of-the-country competitor may not always mean it will be good for your business too. Local variations in the economy, geo-political concerns or a host of different factors can, to a certain degree, affect the optimum choice for the right keywords that should be used.

For example, if your website sells airline tickets, obviously those needs can vary a lot from one country or continent to another. The same is true for most industries. A steel products manufacturer in the US could have different keywords and key phrases than some of its European competitors.

Using a powerful search tool such as Word Tracker can help you a lot in the clear identification and definition of the exact keywords and key phrases you should in fact be using.

Avoid using spammy techniques
If you truly want to rank for performance, don’t resort to illegal methods or spam in an attempt to rank higher. That will just ban or seriously penalize your web site. Instead, write quality, search engine friendly content. Ensure that each page is structured so it is obvious to a search engine that the page is truly relevant to a specific keyword.

Also make certain that your pages and all the rest of your site can be read by a search engine spider.

Try in creating a reference point if you will, associated with your keywords. A reference point could be similar to a balance of an authority, which could have many quality links to it from other sites and pages associated with that specific keyword. In order to rank better, you need to participate in a reciprocal link exchange program (RLEP for short).

Actively try to get other quality sites to link to you. To be effective, be certain that those sites are in the same field as you are. Stay in the same industry. You can get excellent results by simply following the above rules.

Check that you are not being penalized unfairly for content that may be interpreted as spam, or for being on the same IP address as someone who has been barred from search engines for delivering spam. If possible, contact the search engines that are not listing you and check what is wrong. Let supply and demand decide. Market forces should mean that those search engines that produce the best, most relevant results will flourish, and those that don’t will ultimately die.

The current prevalence of spam is preventing this from happening. Finally, if you think you can calculate relevancy better than the current availability of search engines, don’t deliver spam to attempt to control their listings. If you do, in the end, you will lose.

How PPC programs can make a difference
Purchasing keywords and key phrases in Overture and Google could represent a faster way for you to drive fairly targeted traffic to a web site and could be most effective in testing or promoting new products, seasonal services or other short-term needs. Additionally, it can provide short-term results, to fill a certain vacuum between real ranking results and its underlying campaign launch.

But these benefits all come at a certain price, ie: a price that isn’t always under one’s control at any time. Hence, conservative investment in PPC programs is a crucial and permanent ingredient to any serious search engine marketing campaign and should be viewed as a supplement only to “native” SEO.

Given all these facts, and throughout your SEM campaign, as your natural visibility generated through native search engine optimization regularly increases, your dependency on keyword and key phrase purchasing should lower with the passage of time.

Always remember that search engine optimization is a science as well as an art. It is a delicate balance of the two that will help nurture the best results in the engines. Every PPC program analysis process, like native search engine optimization, is based on such things as keyword density, placement, optimization and general link structure in the whole site.

As with any other SEM program, it is crucial that a company first understands the actual surfing habits and buying styles that Internet searchers demonstrate when looking for specific services, products or information using today’s modern search engines.

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

All you ever wanted to know about Meta Tags

For the past two or three years, many search engines such as Google and a few others have given less and less attention, and in some cases, no attention at all to Meta Tags. The sole reason for this is simply because in the past, in the go-go days of the Internet, ie: before 2000, many web site owners and webmasters stuffed their meta tags with useless information, basically spamming the search engines.

It wasn't long for the engines to realize they were victimized and since that time, many of them now pay little if no attention at all to most Meta Tags. However, what if some day they come back? What if, at a future date many of the major search engines decide that the "penalty" has served its purpose and that its now time to remove it? Not putting any meta tags in a website may not be a good idea, since it only takes a few minutes to write them in the first place!

Meta Tag definition
Making a true definition of Meta Tags is a lot simpler than explaining their functioning and by exactly which search engines. The only reason to this is simply because very few engines clearly explain with any amount of precision what they do look or don't look at and just how much importance they will actually give to any such and such parameters. Let's begin with the easy part: Meta Tags are snippets of HTML code concealed into the pages of a website that are used by the major search engines in an attempt to store certain data about that website.

Such meta tags contain descriptions, keywords and key phrases, important site title information, etc. Such meta data is part of the many things search engines are seeking when trying to properly index a website.

To be sure, meta tags are not truly necessary when a webmaster writes or creates new web pages, or makes any kind of modifications to them. There are a few observers in the search engine optimization industry who claim that meta tags are completely useless. Such strong statements can be a bit misleading. Of course, you are still free to believe them if you like, but that may not be such a good idea. While not technically mandatory, Meta Tags can, in certain cases, help the rankings of a given website, provided certain other essential rules of SEO are maintained.

Once a new website is created and put online, search engine crawlers (spiders) will visit that site and try to index it in their database. Most major search engines operate differently and, by the same token, they each weigh different parameters of a web site according to their own (proprietary) algorithms. As a few examples, Google places a lot of emphasis on its Page Rank algorithm, Alta-Vista will place a lot of importance on the description tag and Inktomi tell you in their terms of use that it indexes both the complete text of the particular web page submitted, as well as all the meta-tags of all pages.

At the other end of the scale, there are other search engines like Exact Seek that are "pure-vanilla" Meta Tag search engines which will spell out that: "Your site will not be added if it does not have Title and Meta Description tags." Inktomi also makes an extensive use of the keywords tag. Naturally, as can be expected, not all search engines work the same way nor do they have to. Certain search engines will place their importance on the actual overall content of the site.

Most major search engines have in excess of 125 individual elements and parameters they actually analyze when trying to rank and index any given website. Some of these important elements deal specifically with the way the pages were structured and also depend on other important factors such as keyword density, etc.

They will also take a note of websites that have omitted basic steps such as non-existent Meta Tags. For such search engines that have significantly decreased if not eliminated the importance of Meta Tags, there could be specific situations where the mere presence of Meta Tags could gain much more in importance. A good example to this could be websites making heavy use of rich graphics, or Flash content, but very poor or non-existent textual content anywhere on the site.

In the world of search engines, it is unfortunate to think that a picture is worth about 1,000 words to most people, but mean absolutely nothing to search engines. Search engines are totally blind when it comes to reading a picture or graphic of any kind.

When a website offers poor or non-existent textual content, the engines have to be more dependent on meta tags, in an effort to index it and add it to their database. With the most carefully written and designed websites, even if all the proper steps were taken to make certain the right Meta Tags are carefully edited and put in all the right places, unfortunately, some search engines will still completely ignore them. As helpful as some Meta Tags can be in certain search engines, good content in the site is still imperative.

Nothing can beat good, targeted & relevant content, filled with keyword-rich text spread evenly and categorized in all the carefully-defined sections of the site. As stated above, in such cases where the engine visiting your site depends on that content, it may be the only thing that will effectively work for your website.

The very best way to successfully use Meta Tags
To be really effective, Meta Tags should always be located in the HEAD area of an HTML document. That area is completely at the top of all pages. It starts just after the HTML tag and ends immediately before the BODY tag.

Additionally, you should always make certain that your meta tags don't have any line breaks. Doing that would trip the search engines as they will probably see bad HTML code and could ignore them completely. Also, try not to use any capital letters in your code, as well as any repetition of words, phrases or terms within the keywords tag. Don't make the mistake many webmasters are still doing by "stuffing" meta tags, as it could seriously penalize or ban your website.

How to effectively edit Meta Tags
The Meta Description tag is important as many major search engines will display this summary, along with the title of your specific page in their search results. This is usually what you see on the pages of Google, Yahoo, Alta-Vista and most of the other engines after a query was initiated. It is recommended to keep this description reasonably short, concise and to the point. Also make certain that it's an appropriate reflection of that particular page's content.

Keywords represent the important search words and terms that people will enter into a search engine's query box. You must choose only relevant keywords. If these keywords and key phrases are going to be written in your keywords tag, they must appear in the actual body content of that specific page. With the exception of Google, most major search engines will actually compare your meta content with what is actually written on that page. If it doesn't match, your website could receive a penalty and thus suffer in the search results.

Almost everyday, we encounter commercial websites that have this tag written incorrectly. That Meta Tag is incorrect because some crawlers can't properly handle spaces between the words in the tag or the word "all". Most major search engines will assume by default that you want a website to be indexed and that all links are to be followed and indexed in its database.

Remember that using the wrong syntax can actually result in the crawler coming to a bad conclusion and wrongly penalizing that page completely. On the other hand, if you really do not want a certain page to be indexed or followed, then you must substitute "noindex" and or "nofollow" into the tag. It is also strongly recommended to properly use the Robots.txt file exclusion protocol.

Conclusion
The Web is constantly growing at a rate of approximately 6 Million new pages everyday! Google currently indexes in its database over 3.4 Billion pages all over the Web! With most of the search engines indexing only a small fraction of that great number, meta tags can be used as an additional way to reasonably ensure a proper categorization for any given website.

If you always use terms that are really relevant in all Meta Tags, you are significantly increasing your chances at a better ranking in the engines. Properly and effectively using the right meta tags could yield satisfactory results, both in the short-term and longer term periods.

Carefully implementing Meta Tags can only work for you, never against. In the future, if they become more widely accepted and most major search engines increase their importance in them again, you will be happy you used them properly. Additionally, you will be glad you won't have to re-write them all over again!

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Overture unveils content ad service

Overture Services Inc. on Monday launched a product that delivers ads linked to key words on Web content sites, as it battles rival Google Inc. in the lucrative targeted-advertising market.

"Overture plans to diversify both its product offerings as well as its revenue streams,” says Bill Demas, general manager of Overture’s partner business and solutions group.

Overture’s new contextual advertising product is called Content Match. Google and Sprinks, a property of magazine publisher Primedia Inc., already provide similar services.

Contextual advertising is an expansion of the highly profitable Web-search advertising model popularized by Overture and Google, the No. 1 Web search company in the United States.

Advertisers that subscribe to such programs bid for the right to have their ads tied to certain key words on content pages and pay each time an Internet user clicks on their ads, which receive prominent placement.

Pasadena, California-based Overture estimates that the contextual advertising market could grow to $2 billion annually by 2008.

Current users of Content Match include Overture partner MSN, Microsoft Corp.’s Internet property, automotive information site Edmunds.com and MyFamily.com’s network of genealogy Web sites.

Source: MSNBC

Content Management Software & SEO

(Updated from our March 3rd, 2003 article). A lot has been said about Content Management Systems (CMS) in the past. Since search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) are now such a growing part of the main marketing objectives for companies of all sizes, extra attention and caution must be used before the purchase of any such CMS software or programs.

When people today are looking to buy a certain product or service or need information on a specific subject, most use the power, speed and flexibility of Internet search engines. However, in the last two years, some companies have been developing their web sites and creating new or additional content with some of those so-called CMS packages. Some of the CMS programs available today may in fact negatively affect the visibility of your web site in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

The main reason for that is some of them were not designed with search engines in mind. They were designed for what they are supposed to do: to help manage the contents of certain documents! That said, how can a company that has made extensive use of such CMS software reasonably insure itself that their site will do well in the search engines?

Some well-designed CMS solutions that give good attention to search engines when they were designed could possibly contribute to SEO work by standardizing its presentation, labelling of content and to a certain degree, its structure which is crucial to most search engines when evaluating how a particular page or site section should rank in the engines.

If a CMS package was truly designed with search engines in mind, it could be helpful for updating and some maintenance chores of certain dynamic sites, but even with some of these features present, there could be certain areas where it can still negatively affect some of the best SEO strategies. Rank for $ales advises caution in using them in such instances. Some CMS software packages can cost a lot of money, so be careful when shopping around and don’t be afraid to ask pointed questions, especially as it pertains to search engine visibility.

Whatever CMS software package you are analyzing, make certain that none of them create their own title tags, which are almost always off-topic. A good example to this would be the steel products manufacturer that is trying to use a CMS program that writes title tags such as: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, etc. Such title tags are completely useless to search engines. In this particular example, if the CMS program is well-designed for the engines, it will let YOU write informative and useful title tags such as: steel staircases, steel shelves, steel accessories, etc.

This detail may seem like negligible to some people, but it is very significant information for the engines and will make a drastic improvement in the results. An additional benefit to such standard SEO techniques is it will make the maintenance of the site much easier and faster. One problem with some CMS vendors is they don’t realize all of this as being their concern. Some don’t identify it is as even being a problem.

It would be almost effortless for a CMS designer or vendor to make its product search-engine friendly, as all the technology and the proper resources are already there. Some of the actual problem stems from the fact that the real needs are not being communicated effectively by most of the end-users and customers of some of the CMS programs.

PPC and Paid for Search
Today, the PPC and paid for search industry is growing rapidly. It basically offers businesses and companies a results-driven, value-added complement to search engine marketing techniques. PPC (Pay-per-Click) services allow web sites to bid for keywords and key phrases to be posted as sponsored links next to results pages. Companies can also pay to have their sites included in search-engine catalogues. In using such a formula, web sites that are of the dynamic type don’t have to make too many modifications to its basic structure, and can still yield a significant ROI.

As stated previously, there could be some benefit and some advantages to using certain, selected CMS products. However, when it comes to today’s major search engines, make certain you choose a product that will be truly “search engine compliant”. Additionally, always remember that some of them might still pose some problems, as far as SEO is concerned.

In light of all this, it is clear that CMS vendors, search engines, web site owners and professional search engine optimization companies must work together to make the whole process as rewarding it can be and in the most diligent fashion.

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Impatient searchers measure Web sites in seconds

Web users are picky and impatient, typically visiting only the first three results from a query, with one in five searchers spending 60 seconds or less on a linked Web document, according to Penn State researchers.

“People make instantaneous judgments about whether to stay on a site, and if a site doesn't the give the right impression, users will bypass it," said Dr. Jim Jansen, assistant professor in Penn State’s information sciences and technology (IST). "A page has to be well-designed, easy to load and relevant to a searcher's needs." Otherwise, by the time three minutes have elapsed, 40 percent of searchers will have moved on. While some may have found what they wanted, others may simply have given up and moved to a different site, said the faculty member in Penn State’s School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST).

Jansen's conclusions are based on research that he and co-author Amanda Spink, Penn State associate professor of IST, conducted in February 2001. The two researchers analyzed more than 450,000 Web queries submitted to AlltheWeb.com in a 24-hour period, reviewing users' actions in chronological order. The length of sessions, number of pages visited and relevance of results were studied. He presented the research today (June 25) in a paper titled "An Analysis of Web Documents Retrieved and Viewed" at the 2003 International Conference on Internet Computing in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Several patterns emerged. Half of all users entered only one query with 54 percent viewing just one page of results in each session (a session was a query or series of queries submitted by a user during one interaction with a Web search engine). Only an additional 19 percent went on to the second page in sessions, and fewer than 10 percent of users bothered with the third page of results. A similar drop-off in numbers occurred when the researchers considered how many results searchers viewed per query. About 55 percent of users checked out one result only. More than 80 percent stopped after looking at three results.

With more businesses opting to market through search engines rather than ads, those percentages illustrate why a good ranking on a major Web search engine can make the difference between commercial success and failure. To improve the odds Web users will visit a site, Jansen said it is imperative to get indexed by all search engines. A site's abstract that appears on the results page also can direct more users to a site -- provided the description is enticing and relevant specifics about the site are included.

"For site developers, if you want to be looked at, it is absolutely critical that the abstract be crystal clear about the purpose of your Web site," Jansen said. "Eight out of 10 times, the abstract dissuades people from going to the site." The researchers had news for consumers, too: They have a valid reason to be frustrated sometimes with Web searches. One out of every two results isn't relevant to what the searcher was looking for, Jansen said.

"As good as search engines are, there is room for improvement," Jansen said. "Niche search engines that focus on a narrow topic or search engines that cluster results by finding similarities and grouping them may be consumers' best bet for improving relevancy."

Source: Penn State University

Pay-per-Click program management

As important and necessary professional Search Engine Optimization is today, other alternatives now exist to companies wishing to complement their search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns.

Combined with a solid and well-structured, serious SEO program, SEM campaigns can be used to additionally increase visibility in the engines, as well as conducting some product-focussed marketing surveys on new services or products offered on a company’s web site.

PPC definition
To begin with, just what exactly is PPC(Pay per Click) and how can it help companies to more effectively broaden their exposure to the Web? For a start, both Google and Overture offer PPC programs which can help businesses in more accurately selecting keywords and key phrases to better target a specific market segment. Another effective use of a carefully planned PPC program could be aimed at directing a specific web address (URL) or to direct visitors to that address in an effort in evaluating trends or habits in those markets.

Some are aimed in submitting customized descriptions or titles for each keyword or key phrase, in an attempt to display them as advertisements posted in the search results of Overture and Google. Some PPC campaigns can also run in parallel to others of their associated network from other search engines.

A perfect example to this is Google's Ad Words program which will return search results in a separate box to the right of its regular “native” search engine results for a predetermined cost per click. However, as can be expected, the Google Ad Words program does not guarantee any particular order of placement for any of your listings.

In practice, the exact order is computed not only by the click-through rate but of the bid price of your ad as well. In real life, the Overture program presents its first few results at the top of the list of the “native” search results on various search engines. The listings appear in a similar format as the natural results and Overture uses an open-bidding technique to actually compute the order of the listings based on how much each bidding company is willing to pay per click on each keyword or key phrase.

The top bidding company receives first position, the second highest gets the second position and so on and so forth. Key phrases and keywords acquired through Overture's program will be delivered in the various search engines that depend on the Overture results.

Some Pay per Click program management services are offered by certain SEM companies with ongoing research and analysis to help identify the right keywords on a corporate web site that are already generating good visibility via natural search engine optimization programs.

These services are typically followed by some advice as to which keywords and key phrases to actually purchase and in which programs to make them work. The whole process then continues with the ongoing monitoring process of performance, budget and successfully updating these keyword purchases as your search engine marketing campaign evolves.

Purchasing keywords and key phrases can be done based on a variety of factors. The most important is ROI (Return on Investment).

Carefully analysing, dicing and truly measuring the exact returns from each of these single keyword investments are truly vital and are in fact one of the most important areas of the whole exercise. In such a scenario, it truly allows a business to effectively and accurately adjust and “fine-tune” keyword selection and bid pricing accordingly.

How PPC programs can make a difference
Purchasing keywords and key phrases in Overture and Google could represent a faster way for you to drive fairly targeted traffic to a web site and could be most effective in testing or promoting new products, seasonal services or other short-term needs. Additionally, it can provide short-term results, to fill a certain vacuum between real ranking results and its underlying campaign launch. But these benefits all come at a certain price, ie: a price that isn’t always under one’s control at any time.

Hence, conservative investment in PPC programs is a crucial and permanent ingredient to any serious search engine marketing campaign and should be viewed as a supplement only to “native” SEO. Given all these facts, and throughout your SEM campaign, as your natural visibility generated through native search engine optimization regularly increases, your dependency on keyword and key phrase purchasing should lower with the passage of time.

Always remember that search engine optimization is a science as well as an art. It is a delicate balance of the two that will help nurture the best results in the engines. Every PPC program analysis process, like native search engine optimization, is based on such things as keyword density, placement, optimization and general link structure in the whole site.

As with any other SEM program, it is crucial that a company first understands the actual surfing habits and buying styles that Internet searchers demonstrate when looking for specific services, products or information using today’s modern search engines.

Such buying patterns can be detected by analysing the most recurring search terms used within the various search engines and looking at site traffic log files everyday to find trends and occurrences that can be readily recognized.

Actual keywords & key phrases used can vary widely by the geo-physical location, by specific product, by the exact stage within the buying cycle, by web site, and by other such factors as the industry and a host of other elements in the equation. As a direct result, it is important for any company to have a clear understanding of just how various types of web searchers look for solutions before attempting any investment in any PPC program.

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Google tweaks toolbar to block pop-ups

Google is in the process of releasing a new browser toolbar that lets people block pop-up ads and easily update their blogs as they surf the Web.

Google's Toolbar 2.0, set to be officially announced late Thursday, is the first publicly available software that incorporates the technology Google gained when it acquired Blogger creator Pyra in February.

The Google toolbar is a strip of function buttons that sits at the top of a Web browser and lets people access features such as search without going directly to Google's home page. Other companies, including Lycos and AskJeeves, offer their own such toolbars for download.

The new features of Google's Toolbar 2.0 include Popup Blocker, which stops pop-up ads, and AutoFill, which automatically fills out Web forms with information stored locally on a user's computer.

Another new feature is BlogThis, which lets people immediately create a posting on their blog about a site they are visiting. By clicking the BlogThis button on the toolbar, bloggers can automatically insert a link and highlighted text into their blog instead of having to move back and forth and cut and paste between the Web page and the blogging tools. Blogs are Web diaries that let people share their personal and professional lives through words, links, photos and so on.

Chris Sherman, associate editor at SearchEngineWatch.com, a site that tracks happenings in the industry, said Google's Toolbar 2.0 bucks a trend among search engines, which for the most part are stripping down and refocusing on search. Not Google, he noted. "Most of the features they've added really have nothing to do with search," said Sherman, who nevertheless said he liked many of the features, particularly the ability to block pop-ups.

Google said the features are in line with the company's goal to organize information on the Web. Tom Nielsen, the lead developer on the Toolbar 2.0 project, said the development team does a lot of what he called "soul searching" before it decides what new features to add. He said developers look at what types of features people are searching for on download sites and examine activities that will enhance browsing. He's excited about the BlogThis button. "A lot of people don't know what blogging is, and we thought it would be neat to introduce people to it," Nielsen said.

When Google bought Pyra, many people wondered how the company planned to incorporate the technology. BlogThis offers an early glimpse. The company is also testing its AdSense technology, which analyzes the content of a page to determine the best ad to serve up on that page, on pages created by Blogger members.

In addition, Google has offered Blogger technology internally to its employees, who've used it to share information about their projects as well as weave stories about their personal lives.

The new toolbar features are designed to complement those offered in earlier versions of the toolbar. The upgrade still includes buttons that send people directly to Google's search and news pages without having to type in the URL. And it will also allow users to retrieve information about a certain page and pages that are similar to it, and it will translate information into English. Toolbar 2.0 is in the beta, or test, phase, meaning the company is not offering technical support but is looking for feedback from testers. It is currently available only to users of Microsoft Windows.

Google's new toolbar features are sure to pique the interest of privacy advocates, who in the past have worried about Google's data-collection capabilities.

Google outlines its privacy practices regarding Toolbar 2.0 through several screens that pop up during the download process. Under a headline that says "not the usual yada yada yada," the privacy warning advises users that one feature of the toolbar technology, called PageRank, could send "information about the sites you visit to Google." However, the company said it would not trace the surfing information back to individual names and addresses. People who are apprehensive about using PageRank can turn the feature off, and they won't be tracked.

Source: C-Net News

Marketers running paid search engine marketing

WebTrends and iProspect surveyed over 800 marketers and determined that 41% are currently implementing search engine marketing (SEM) efforts.

Of those respondents, 41% track click-through and general traffic, while just 11% use a detailed ROI analysis. Do your online marketing efforts include search yet?

And, 41% of those marketers who are implementing SEM strategies are measuring such efforts based on click-through and general site traffic. Only 11% are using a detailed ROI analysis of their SEM efforts, which includes lifetime value as well as revenue by phrase.

WebTrends and iProspect surveyed over 800 marketers who participated in a web conference presented by the two firms. Attendees were surveyed, and the results indicated that of those people who are running SEM campaigns, 23% tell WebTrends and iProspect that it is a significant part of their overall marketing mix.

The survey also determined that 23% of marketers are not using SEM at all, but 35% are evaluating the option, pointing to a strong future for the format.

Source: e-Marketer

A powerful, new search engine just appeared

There is a new and powerful search engine that just appeared on the Internet. What makes this one unique is apart from being able to make a query in the search box like Google and all the others, you can also do a search by
industry.

Global Business Listing is a new search engine designed specifically for business people on the go. It is still in its infancy, but in the eyes of many, represents a lot of potential. Will it become the next Google or Yahoo? Well, it's still early to make such a claim, but the people at Global Business Listing are working as hard as they can to make it happen.

Global Business Listing is an initiative of the General Center for Internet Services Inc. (GCIS), one of Canada's oldest and largest Internet application developer and professional search engine optimization company. GCIS retains full ownership of the new search engine.

Global Business Listing is completely free to use by anybody and is a PFI (Pay for Inclusion) search engine & directory. Its submission fee is priced at $ 269.00 US, thus $ 30.00 less than Yahoo's submission fee. Additionally, listed companies also get a sign-up bonus. Global Business Listing has successfully secured a 10-year agreement with Sun Hosting, effectively giving all companies listed in the new directory a 10% savings on all their web hosting fees.

And that's not all. Each company gets its own personalized page, complete with its own logo and all its important corporate information. Text is also included for its main products and services. Additionally, every page is optimized for its main keywords and key phrases, which should help it as far as Page Rank is concerned. Some observers in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) field have commented that the way Global Business Listing does it for its members, it may help their web sites achieve better rankings in Google and most of the other major search engines. Time will tell, but we did look at the code and it does make sense. One note of importance: the new search engine was completely designed and programmed using exclusively the HTML language.

However, we must agree with the way it is being done. Companies listed in the new engine do get better visibility. In the next Google update, it will be interesting to see the new results coming out of the freshly crawled update.

So far, about 200 companies, mostly from the US have already signed up and are listed in the new search engine.

Source: SED Review

Being number one equals the Super Bowl

"Number one on the search engines became the equivalent of a Super Bowl ad; your company's very presence signaled you were the best in your industry."

Just a few years ago, when asked "How do you drive traffic to your website", many companies would name banner ads as their main marketing medium for increasing online revenues. In an effort to increase brand awareness, companies spent thousands of dollars on obnoxious banner advertisements on high profile websites in an effort to cement their reputation as the number one company or product in their industry.

It didn't seem to matter that very few people actually clicked on these flashing, animated billboards. What did matter was Internet users saw these ads wherever they went on the web; there was a sense of pride and vanity from having your company's banner appear more often than your competitors. Search engine vanity

Fast-forward to the present day and banner ads have fallen from grace with few companies buying banner ads purely for the sake of one-upmanship on the competition. In their stead, search engine marketing has become the medium of choice for companies looking to increase website exposure. With the steady growth of search engine use, thanks in part to the technology and reliability offered by Google, companies already know that obtaining top positioning on the search engines will result in qualified traffic to their website and increased online revenues.

However, there is a new phenomenon rising up to replace the battle once seen with banner advertising; Search Engine Vanity. Search Engine Vanity occurs when a company seeks to obtain number one search engine positioning for the simple purpose of one-upmanship on their competitors.

Traffic data, click-through-rates and conversions are all secondary considerations compared to the desire to ensure that when an Internet user searches for a product or service, their company website is listed above that of their competitors. Whether it's Apple and Dell vying for the top ranking for "computers" or Wal-Mart and Netflix battling for the number one spot for the phrase "dvd rental"; these and other companies know that being #1 on the search engines can be vitally important when demonstrating market share to the press or investors.

Search Engine Super Bowl
Companies can spend millions of dollars each year in advertising and branding. A single 60 second Super Bowl ad will cost you over $2 million and have little discernable benefit compared to the same amount spent on a series of ads elsewhere. Yet the prestige offered to a company that advertises during the Super Bowl cannot be denied. The same holds true when it comes to search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN. Companies are acutely aware that being highly positioned within these search engine results will strengthen their brand and increase their credibility within their industry.

Take Alaska Airlines as an example. While they had great search engine exposure, with hundreds of search terms listed on the first page of the search engines, they knew that they needed to be in the top spot for "Alaska flights" if they were to solidify their position as the number one airline provider to Alaska.

Being somewhere in the first 5 search engine listings, was perfectly adequate to drive traffic to their website, but the prestige of being the very first site listed would have an intangible benefit. By being the number one listed site on Google, Alaska Airlines would immediately position itself as the Google's favorite, automatically ensuring brand dominance. Number one on the search engines became the equivalent of a Super Bowl ad; your company's very presence signaled you were the best in your industry.

The end of common sense?
So are companies throwing money at search engine marketing for the sole purpose of being number one, with little regard to actual traffic and revenues generated? Has Search Engine Vanity taken over from common sense? Yes and no. More and more companies are seeing search engine marketing as the latest trend, something they must do because their competitors are already involved. They fear being left behind and are rushing to secure top positioning for the terms that they believe represent their brand.

A company such as IBM, that has spent many years and millions of dollars to ensure that their name is synonymous with "computers", knows that the Internet offers a new playing field with different perceptions. In their efforts to secure their brand, it is important that they "own" the term "computers" and hence invest a lot of effort to ensure that ownership is carried over to the search engine results. However, like most companies you can be sure that IBM knows that the by-product of a number one position on the search engines is increased traffic and sales. With more than 500 million searches being carried out each day, being number one for a generic term or phrase not only increases brand awareness but also increases website traffic and ultimately, revenues.

As Penny Oslund, Executive Director, EMBA Programs at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School put it, "we want to ensure that our OneMBA website is positioned above all other business schools to ensure the prestige of our program, the traffic will take care of itself". "Look at me, I am number one!"

So as search engine marketing becomes a valid and widely adopted marketing medium for companies of all sizes, not being positioned at the top of the listings is something business wish to avoid. Just as companies rushed in the mid 90's to secure a domain name that reflected their company image or brand, many businesses now seek to ensure that when the average Internet user searches at Google, it is their website that sits at the top of the pile, proudly announcing "Look at me, I am number one".

Story by Andy Beal
Source: Pandia

Search providers agree to merge

FindWhat.com said Wednesday that it will acquire Espotting in a deal that will meld two regional providers of commercial search services into a global network.

Under terms of the deal, London-based Espotting will receive about 8.1 million shares of Fort Myers, Fla.-based FindWhat's common stock and $27 million in cash. FindWhat also will offer 2.1 million shares of its stock to Espotting employees and affiliates at an exercise price of $1.73 a share.

If the deal is completed, Espotting will become a subsidiary of FindWhat, with operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia serving 40,000 advertisers.

FindWhat's CEO Craig Pisaris-Henderson will retain his title and role in the merged company; Espotting founder and CEO Doug Ishag will become vice chairman.

The merger is an attempt by two smaller commercial search engines to better compete against market leaders Overture Services and Google, which have become extremely popular with consumers, advertisers and investors in the past two years. Last quarter, portal giant Yahoo reported that 19 percent of its revenue was derived from a deal with Overture. And many investors are anticipating an initial public offering for Google when overall market conditions improve.

Paid search businesses sell keywords to advertisers that are seeking higher placement on their search pages. Each time a person clicks on an advertiser's link, the commercial search provider receives a fee. Providers of these paid searches have struck distribution deals with Web giants such as Yahoo, MSN and America Online.

The business is also picking up in Europe and Asia. Overture this year outlined plans to expand into international markets, and Google has signed deals with overseas portals.

FindWhat said the combined company projects 2003 revenue of $142.5 million and pretax net income of $24.5 million, on a pro forma basis. The merger is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2003.

A name for the combined company has not been determined, but the shares will be traded under FindWhat’s current ticker symbol, FWHT. In midday trading Wednesday, the shares were up $3.09, or 23 percent, to $16.78.

Source: Pandia.com

Insurance against potential penalties

With the Robots.txt protocol, a webmaster or web site owner can really protect himself if it is done correctly. Today, web domain names are certainly plentiful on the Internet. There exists a multitude of sites on just about any subject anybody can think of.

Most sites offer good content that is of value to most people and can certainly help with just about any query. However, like in the real world, what you see is not always what you get.

There are a lot of sites out there that are spamming the engines. Spam is best defined as search engine results that have nothing to do with the keywords or key phrases that were used in the search. Enter any good SEO forum today and most spam topics in daily threads usually point to hidden text, keyword stuffing in the meta tags, doorway pages and cloaking issues. Thanks to newer and more powerful search engine algorithms, these domain networks that spam the engines are increasingly being penalized or banned all together.

The inherent risks of getting a web site banned on the basis of spam increases proportionately if it appears to have duplicate listings or duplicate content. Rank for $ales does not recommend machine-generated pages because such pages have a tendency of generating spam. Most of those so-called “page generators” were not designed to be search engine-friendly and no attention was ever given to engines when they were designed.

One major drawback of these “machines” is that once a page is “optimized” for a single keyword or key phrase, first-level and at times second-level keywords tend to flood results with listings that will most assuredly look as 100% spam. Stay away from any of those so-called “automated page generators”.

A good optimization process starts with content that is completely written by a human! That way, you can be certain that each page of your site will end up being absolutely unique.

How do search engines deal with duplicate content?
Modern crawler-based search engines now have sophisticated and powerful algorithms that were specifically designed to catch sites that are spamming the engines, especially the ones that make use of duplicate domains. To be sure, there are perfectly legitimate web sites whose situation can certainly be informative. However, and as the following example will clearly demonstrate, that is not always the case.

We will take this practical example of where there are actually three identical web sites, all owned and operated by the same company, where the use of duplicate content is evident. Google, Alta-Vista and most other crawler-based search engines have noticed and indexed all three domains. In this scenario, the right thing to do is to make use of individual IP addresses and implementing a server re-direct command (a 301 re-direct).

An alternative to this would be to at least provide unique folders or sub-directories and using the Robots.txt exclusion protocol to disallow two of the three affected domains.

That way the search engines wouldn’t index the two duplicate sites. In such cases, the Robots.txt exclusion protocol should always be used. It is in fact your best “insurance” against getting your site penalized or banned. In the above example, since that was not done we will look at duplicate content and assess where the risk of getting a penalty is the highest. We will list and describe the indexing of these three sites as being site one which is the main primary domain, site two and finally, site three.

The four major crawler-based engines that were analyzed were Google, Teoma, Fast and Alta-Vista. All three domain names point to the same IP address, which actually made it simpler to use Fast's Internet Protocol filter to discover that there was really no more than three affected domains in this example.

However, all three web sites are directed to the same IP address AND content folder! Such a scenario makes them in fact exact duplicates, raising all the duplicate content flags in all four engines analyzed.

Even if all three sites share the same Robots.txt file, the hosting arrangement and syntax in the Robots.txt file does nothing that is effective to help this duplicate content problem. Major spider-based search engines which rely a lot on hypertext to compute relevancy and importance as most do today, are best at discovering and dealing with sites that delve into duplicate content issues.

As a direct result, a webmaster runs a large risk of having duplicate content in these engines because their algorithm makes it such a simple task to analyse, sort out and finally reject these duplicate content web sites.

If a “spam technician” discovers duplicate listings, chances are very good they will take action against such offending sites. The chances actually increase when a person, often a competitor files a spam complaint or that a certain site is “spam-dexing” the engines. To be sure, any page caused by duplicate content can improperly "populate" a search query. The end result is unfairly dominating most search results.

Marketing analysis and PPC “landing” pages
In order to better analyse specific online marketing campaigns or surveys, some companies at certain times have in fact duplicate sites or operate PPC (Pay-per-Click) landing pages. It is important in such cases not to neglect to use the Robots.txt exclusion protocol to manage your duplicate sites. Disallow spiders from crawling duplicate sites by properly editing the right syntax in the Robots.txt file.

Your index count will certainly decrease, but that is the right thing to do and you are actually performing the search engines a service. In such a case, a webmaster needs not to worry of impending penalties from the engines.

If these businesses or their marketing departments are in fact running marketing tests or surveys, there is usually more than just one domain that could potentially appear in the actual results pages of the engines. In such cases, I strongly recommend writing or re-writing all content all over and making certain that no real duplicate content gets to be indexed.

One way to achieve that is to use some form of meta refresh tag or Java script solution to actually direct visitors to the most recent versions of pages while their webmasters get the Robots.txt exclusion protocol written correctly.

The Java script would effectively indicate where it is intended to redirect, assuring it can put the final document in its proper place. A “301 server redirect” command is always the best thing to use in these cases and constitutes the best insurance against any penalties, as it will inform the search engines that the affected document (s) have in fact moved permanently.

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Google Expands Content-Based Internet Ad Services

Google Inc., the leading U.S. Web search engine, on Wednesday said it expanded a program that helps operators of small Internet sites automatically place targeted advertising on their content pages and get paid each time a site visitor clicks on one of the ads.

While best known for its search technology, Palo Alto, California-based Google gets a hefty share of revenues from its paid listing business, which links advertising to key words used in Internet searches.

With its new contextual advertising services, Google aims to give the company's network of 100,000 small to large advertisers targeted venues through which to reach potential customers.

Privately held Google, which in March unveiled contextual advertising services for Internet sites with more than 20 million page views per month, on Wednesday rolled out its new self-serve program called AdSense.

The program aims to help operators of less-trafficked sites quickly format their Web pages to receive advertisements that match key words in the content of those individual pages.

When people visit the Web pages and click on the ads, Google and the site operators get paid by advertisers. Google said that dozens of Web sites participated in a trial of AdSense but did not say how many site operators were currently signed up or how much money they were making.

Google's main competitor for content-based advertising services is Sprinks, a property of magazine publisher Primedia Inc. Overture Services Inc., Google's rival in the paid-listing segment, has also targeted the contextual advertising business.

Source: Reuters

Fast acquires AltaVista enterprise search business

When Overture acquired both Fast's Web Search unit with its AlltheWeb search engine and the AltaVista search engine, the company laid the foundation for what can become one of the Net's most important search engines.

However, the Norwegian company Fast is still alive and kicking. It is now focusing on delivering search technologies to companies, which they may use for their Web sites, intranets and databases.

Here is an interesting swap: Fast is now acquiring the AltaVista enterprise search business from Overture!

According to Fast AltaVista’s customers will get uninterrupted support and maintenance on their current platform and "an opportunity to migrate to FAST Data Search".

There are no plans to integrate the AltaVista enterprise search technology with FAST Data Search, so it is a fair guess that Fast will ultimately abandon the AltaVista technology.

This is what Fast calls a consolidation of the enterprise search market, meaning that there will be fewer competitors.

Source: Pandia.com

AOL adds new image search

AOL has added image search to its online services. It's based on the Google image search engine, and functions very much in the same way.

The result pages present scaled down versions of the pictures themselves, and a click on a picture brings up a split screen, with the original Web page in the lower part, and some information on where the picture has been found in the upper frame.

A click on the sized down picture in the upper frame brings forth the picture in its original size (as in Google), although sometimes we are presented with an Adobe GoLive LassoStudio logo only.

The filter for offensive content is permanently on. Resourceshelf reports that AOL is only using a small proportion of the Google image database, and active users of this service will therefore prefer to stay with the original.

Source: Pandia.com

ESpotting Extends European Search Market

This week ESpotting signed deals with Internet search firms Mamma.com and Euroseek to display paid search listings on both sites, extending their dominance of the European pay-per-click market.

Espotting signed a pan-European, geo-targeted deal with Mamma.com. Mamma deploys technology to geographically segment its users and chose Espotting to provide results for its European user-base. Mamma's geo-targeting technology analyses a user's IP address based on a list of known European addresses, and displays results relevant to the country of origin.

A separate deal with European portal Euroseek will see pan-European full implementation, consisting of all search results, and targeted content across all channels and directories. Euroseek, previously powered by Google, was founded in 1996 as the first European-focused search engine on the Internet.

"The deals with both Mamma and Euroseek show once again that no-one understands Europe better than Espotting." says Espotting Media COO, Jonathan Bunis.

"Espotting are committed to delivering value for our affiliate partners by providing new revenue streams through both paid for listings and previously un-monetised content; to driving cost effective, targeted sales leads to our advertisers; and to supplying users with the most relevant search results."

Source: High Search Engine Ranking.com

Search Engine Marketing Helps Sales Performance

Sales Performance International recently announced a new series of webinars and executive seminars focused on helping businesses sell effectively in today’s uncertain economy.

The events will be offered in multiple U.S. cities and online through June and July. SPI CEO, Keith Eades, author of The New Solution Selling, will present information about rebuilding sales pipelines and improving sales organizations. Registrants for each event will also receive a free copy of Keith Eades’ book, Aligning with Buyers.

SPI partnered with WebsiteBiz to plan and launch an online campaign to drive attendance and registrations to the upcoming events. The campaign combined targeted email broadcasts and search engine positioning techniques to invite prospective registrants and promote the series in selected markets. Initial results from the email campaign have exceeded registration goals for the scheduled events.

“We are very pleased with the results of our partnership with WebsiteBiz…" said Tim Sullivan, Vice President of Marketing. “They listened to our short-term objectives and were able to quickly create and launch a customized campaign within budget and on target. The initial email invitation produced results that exceeded our expectations. Their proactive approach and responsiveness helped us meet deadlines and stay on schedule. We look forward to even better results from WebsiteBiz for each upcoming event.”

WebsiteBiz is a privately held Internet Marketing Agency founded in 1997. The company, based in Charlotte, NC, is focused on driving targeted traffic, delivering measurable results, and proactively improving conversions. Their services include Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Online Media Buying, and Website Usability Analysis. WebsiteBiz has helped companies like Bank of America, Shell Oil, Source Technologies, and Merz Pharmaceuticals increase customer acquisitions and improve return on investment for their online initiatives.

Established in 1988 and based in Charlotte, NC, Sales Performance International is a global leader in sales process consulting, training, management systems and sales process automation. Among the company's clients are Ariba, Bank of America, EDS, GE Capital/ITS, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, i2 Technologies, Lotus, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Pitney Bowes, US Bancorp Investments and Vignette. Visit www.spisales.com for more information or call 704.364.9298 to speak with Caroline Durham.

Source: d-Business News.com

Google News wins Webby Award

First Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, and now a 'bot has beaten human journalists. Google News, the news site run entirely by computer algorithms, beat out BBC News Online, MSNBC.com, Poynter's Romenesko and allAfrica.com to win 2003 Webby Award for best news site.

There's still hope for humans, though. The People's Choice Webby Award for best news site -- chosen by Internet users who voted -- went to BBC News Online. The people have spoken!

What this really means is that the Webby judges decided that the collective work of all the world's media is more valuable than any individual publication. Hard to argue with that.

Source: Cyberjournalist.net

Google Inks Paid Listings Deal with AOL Canada

Google announced on Tuesday a deal with AOL Canada to provide paid listings for the online service and on its portal.

The deal calls for Google to provide three paid listings, generated from Google's 100,000 AdWords advertisers, under a "sponsored links" heading near the top of the AOL.ca and AOL service search results pages. The agreement complements Google's year-old algorithmic search agreement with America Online that included AOL Canada. (AOL Canada is a strategic alliance between AOL and RBC Royal Bank.)

"We considered three suppliers and we choose Google because we concluded they were the best," said Arturo Duran, AOL Canada's vice president of interactive services. "It was easy to work with them because they already knew my engine." The companies declined to reveal the deal's length or financial details.

The agreement marks a deepening of Google's ties with AOL, its No. 1 distribution partner. Last May, Google inked a deal with AOL for its then-nascent AdWords paid listings program, in a blow to Google rival Overture Services. The company is by far the most important partner in its distribution network, which also includes Ask Jeeves and EarthLink.

AOL Canada no longer breaks out its subscriber figures from the 35 million AOL counts globally. In its last subscriber count, in the fourth quarter of 2002, AOL Canada had 500,000. According to comScore Media Metrix, AOL.ca was the 11th ranked Canadian portal, drawing 1.1 million visitors in April. The top portals in Canada, MSN (15.7 million visitors) and Yahoo! (13 million), both use paid listings from Overture.

Despite AOL and Google's relationship, Overture has maintained its partnership with AOL Europe for paid listings, expanding that partnership in February to include in some of its country portals' search directories.

Source: Silicon Valley Internet.com

BBC Selects Intelliseek to Power Research Portal

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has chosen Intelliseek's Enterprise Search Server (ESS) technology to power a research portal for BBC journalists, producers, and researchers who need single-point access to information currently stored in numerous, disparate sources.

Rather than searching separately for background information the BBC's communications professionals can now use a single desktop interface to gain access to news clippings, broadcast and recording archives, images, internal or specialty databases, and subscription content sources.

Intelliseek, based in Cincinnati, specializes in federated search technologies that capture, track, and analyze information from disparate sources and in multiple formats to provide real-time research and intelligence. By pooling disparate sources into a single interface with built-in relevance and continuous updates, ESS technology helps organizations cut the time necessary for research, decision-making, planning, sales, marketing, and product development.

Source: e-Content Mag.com

Lycos and Infoseek Japan tie the knot

Infoseek Japan and Lycos Japan have decided to merge their portals into one on the 1st of September this year. The main reason is apparently to get a stronger position vis-a-vis the Japanese version of Yahoo!, which is doing very well at the moment.

Services that are now offered by the Lycos portal will be transferred to the Infoseek site. Both sites are owned by Rakuten Inc., Japan's biggest Internet shopping mall operator.

Lycos is powered by AlltheWeb in most countries. In Japan, however, the search engine used has been Wisenut, owned by the LookSmart company. Wisenut is now loosing its foothold in Japan, as the new unified portal will be powered by Infoseek.

Search engine old timers will remember the American Infoseek, and the Japanese version is indeed an offshoot of that search engine. However, today it is purely a Japanese endeavor.

Sources: The Japan Times and Webmaster World

New search engine patents

Innovation is the key success in the search engine industry -- Google has proved that beyond doubt. Due to this several companies invest heavily in developing new technologies, new ways of presenting results and new ways of gaining revenue.

Gary price has put up a list of 19 US search engine oriented patents or patents applications awarded since April 15, 2003 at his ResourceShelfPLUS site. What it shows is that "information retrieval research" is not limited to the search engine companies.

Microsoft, which -- mind you -- does not own the search engine powering its own MSN portal, is developing a system for detecting duplicate documents in Web crawls, presumably in order to be able to filter out identical sites from search results and stop the use of related spam techniques.

Amazon has developed a system for search query auto completion, meaning that the site will try to guess what you are searching for and complete popular queries for you.

There are also patents from Apple, Time Warner and IBM. Old timer AltaVista, now part of the Overture conglomerate, has patented a "method of ranking a plurality of pages identified during a search of a linked database". It is actually a new variant of the search engines' common attempt to identify authoritative sites and important "hubs". Links from such sites count more in the algorithm determining the order of search results.

Source: Pandia.com.

Paying for inclusion in directories

More and more is being said about Pay for Inclusion (PFI) search engines and Pay per Click (PPC) search portals. Today, there are a good number of ways that search directories and search engines are charging companies trying to get their web sites conveniently listed on the Internet.

What is really important to underline when talking about this popular topic is that funds invested into most PFI programs go mainly in getting your web site indexed into the various search databases. There really isn't much more to it. Some promise you to be listed within seven days, others tell you it may be sooner.

Companies can pay these directories as much as they feel like it, but PFI will not yield those web sites higher placement in the engines. It would be foolish to believe that the mere inclusion of a URL in such directories will propel any web site in the first position.

Business people should be extremely careful of hyped promises to be at the top, with just a directory inclusion. As you are about to find out, it takes a lot more than that to be at the top in the search engine results pages (SERP's) of any major search engine.

With any type of commercial web site or business in any field, companies have to pay Yahoo just in order to be considered for inclusion. After their editors have reviewed it, they will add the web site if they believe it is of good use to their searchers. If, on the other hand, the site in question is refused for any reason, they will still keep the $ 299 fee.

Now if you read their terms of service (TOS), they apparently call the shots and companies don't have other options to be listed in their directory. Having said that, and in most cases, Yahoo does a pretty good job at adding most submitted PFI sites, provided the submitting party isn't trying to spam their index in any way.

There's another PFI search engine on the block
Another pay-for-inclusion search engine and directory that is gaining a lot of popularity these days is Global Business Listing. Launched in the early part of 2003, what makes Global Business Listing truly unique is you can make a regular search just like any search engine using its query box, or you can do an industry-wide search using its extended directory of global industries and businesses.

Global Business Listing is priced lower than Yahoo at $ 269 for a whole year, plus you also get a fully personalized page, complete with your company logo and products & services description. Additionally, Global Business Listing members also benefit a 10% annual discount on their web hosting fees, thanks to a partnering arrangement with Canadian web hosting wholesaler Sun Hosting.

You could say that spamming includes (but isn't limited to) doorway or gateway pages and submitting duplicate sites or mirror sites that are very similar in content or that add no basic value to their index as a whole.

At Yahoo, after one of their editors decides that a web site complies to their generally accepted standards and then adds it to their database, that site gets no priority treatment in any way, as far as the quality of the rankings are concerned. That explains the reasons why it is very important to carefully prepare keyword and key phrase-rich text content before submitting the site to Yahoo for inclusion.

One important word of advice
Make certain of the category you want to submit the site too. After Yahoo has included it, if you are not happy with its overall description or category placement that it falls in, it is strongly recommended you email them to let them know. Conditional on the category changes you ask them to do and the exact reasons motivating them, Yahoo may or may not agree to your request. Be persistent if you know you are right. Demand to be treated fairly.

In terms of your placement and how high it is the Yahoo SERP's, it would appear that the more visible and the more popular any given site is on the web in general, and the higher its Page Rank, the better are its chances for a high placement in the Yahoo directory.

Again we will stress the real importance of building a web site that is search engine-friendly, filled with your most important keywords and key phrases.

The DMOZ index (or Open Directory Project)
The DMOZ or Open Directory Project (DMOZ or ODP) has no PFI program to speak of and mostly any categories of web sites can be submitted for free. There are no plans for a PFI program at this time. However, be prepared to be patient when submitting to DMOZ. Many sites take anywhere from two to four months to get listed! We have even heard of delays of 6 months and more.

Currently, the Open Directory Project relies strictly on volunteer editors to properly evaluate and index web sites in their respective directories. Click here for some important tips on how to properly submit any website to the DMOZ directory.

Almost all search engines that have web crawlers (or spiders) have some sort of PFI program in effect. Alta-Vista, AskJeeves-Teoma, Lycos-Fast and most of the Inktomi family of engines now have them. Most of these PFI programs are designed in a way that specific pages of a given web site will be included to a directory's main database, within a set period of time. Some will even be re-crawled on a regular basis, depending on the directory in question.

To be included in these PFI directories, costs vary by specific programs from about $60 to $299 (in the case of Yahoo) per website, for one year of inclusion in their directory. One word of clarification here: directory PFI differs from search engine PFI since the search engine crawlers pickup the information directly from your web site, as compared to just using the title on any specific page and description that somebody would submit to any directory.

A word of caution about any PFI programs
However, keep in mind that PFI programs will NOT improve your positioning in any way in the results pages. All they will do is make certain that your site is somewhere in their main database. As things currently stand, your website could be in the top twenty or it could sadly end up number 300 or lower. It is your responsibility to have your site carefully optimized in order for it to be in the top ten results.

Remember that search engine optimization is a science as well as an art. If in doubt on the correct way of doing any of this, you should consult a good and reputable professional optimization firm. Remember that certain web sites sometimes get penalized or banned altogether, for failing to follow the Terms of Use of most major search engines and directories. There are people who will still try to abuse or spam the engines, at the site's own perils.

On a more positive note, one benefit of using a PFI program is that most optimization work can be seen and appreciated fairly quickly, if it is done correctly. Lately, Google has taken longer and longer between most of its regular "deep crawl" monthly updates. This case was even aggravated in April of 2003, as the April monthly update at Google took almost six weeks to complete.

Also, remember that Google is still the most widely-used search engine, updating more than three billion pages of the web every month.

There are also PPC ad programs
On top of having PFI programs, some companies also offer PPC (Pay per Click) programs. Two of these are Find-What and Overture. Google now has Ad Words. There will probably be more such programs soon. These marketing programs are basically like publicity campaigns, as compared to classic search engine optimization.

More on the Google Ad Words program:- One major leader in the PPC landscape is Google, with its Ad Words Select program, or AWS for short. The Google Ad Words Select links are posted along the right-hand side of the results pages. You can see them in the little coloured boxes, clearly identified as "sponsored links".

Improving your marketing chances by bidding for key phrases and keywords on the Google AWS program is substantially different from PPC programs offered at Overture, even if most of the basic principles are the same for both programs.

On these PPC ad programs, businesses bid on certain pre-defined keywords and key phrases and if they happen to be among the top bidders, their ads appear in the sponsored-advertising section of these search engines and/or directories. What seems to make them work is many searchers apparently believe these ads to be actually relevant to their searches.

In essence, it doesn't hurt to try. Most companies or marketers should view PFI and PPC programs as a complement to the actual, real process of professional SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The downsides to using PPC
To be sure, there are some downsides to most PPC programs. One of them is that you will need to invest quite a bit of time in effectively managing all your bids to make sure that you are in fact getting the lowest possible cost-per-click price. Additionally, one major drawback in using most PPC programs is, once you stop paying for PPC key phrases and keywords, your web site will have completely vanished from the sponsored/featured listings.

In such a scenario, all present and future traffic will be gone forever, unless you re-initiate your PPC program as it was and start all over.

If you still choose to go the PPC way, it is strongly suggested you carefully optimize your web site so that it will still appear in the regular search results. In such an instance, if the overall budget and associated costs of managing your PPC program is still too high, at least you will still have the regular search results (SERP'S) listings in replacement, which, for all intents and purposes, should substantially improve your ROI.

Important reading
In this rare paper, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page explain the anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine and its main functions.

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

eBizSearch search engine for e-Business info

There's just something about niche search engines on university sites that makes me happy.

Anyway, eBizSearch, at http://gunther.smeal.psu.edu/index.html , is described as "an experimental niche search engine that searches the web and catalogs academic articles as well as commercially produced articles and reports that address various business and technology aspects of e-Business." The front page of the site is a simple keyword search with the option to search for documents or citations.

A search for "clickthrough" in documents found three results, while the same search in citations found one result. The citation search results look like a bibliography. The document search results contain a title, very brief excerpt, and URL. The three results I found for this search were all PDF files. A search for "popup" in documents found eight results, and while seven of them were PDF the eighth one looked like PostScript.

These were some very information-dense resources. Articles included "Advertising in a Pervasive Computing Environment," "Modeling the Clickstream: Implications for Web-Based Advertising Efforts," and "Preferential Partner Selection in an Evolutionary Study of Prisoner's Dilemma." I saw articles as far back as 1996.

Source: Research Buzz.com

Google: Not quite ready for an IPO yet

Google, the Internet search company that defied dot-com tradition by surviving and flourishing, has no plans right now to go public, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Monday.

Google: Not quite ready for an IPO yet
May 6, 2003

Google, the Internet search company that defied dot-com tradition by surviving and flourishing, has no plans right now to go public, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Monday.

Asked at the JP Morgan Technology and Telecom conference here, what market or other conditions would be needed to persuade the company to make an initial public offering, Schmidt declined to answer, saying with a smile: ``that would be speculation.''

Schmidt said the company will stay focused on its core search technology, which it outsources to corporations, Web sites and Internet service providers such as Yahoo and America Online.

Source: ZD Net.

Searching Online: From Keyword to Key Phrase

Thinking about optimizing your site for search engines? Make sure to consider OneStat.com’s latest findings -- most (nearly 30%) of worldwide Net users search online with two word phrases, while over 24% use three word search phrases.

According to a recent report from OneStat.com, nearly 30% of worldwide Internet users type two word phrases into search engines when searching online. In fact, over 24% use three word phrases when searching.

OneStat bases its findings on a past two-month period, as of the end of April 2003. Online product research is very popular among Internet users, especially those who are still too afraid to use their credit cards to buy online. For more on this topic, read today's article, "Online Future for Non-Credit Card Payments?," by Senior Analyst Noah Elkin. A March 2003 report from DoubleClick and Greenfield Online finds that over 40% of US Net users end up at the Web sites they use to research products by using search engines.

Source: eMarketer.com

Battle of the search engines: secret Google weapons

Very few people have raised the issue of why Google Inc., through Google Labs is involved in Google Compute. Google Compute is an organization contained within Google Inc., to promote distributed computing projects.

Very few people have considered why Google Inc., is even involved in such a project. Microdoc News explores this issue. According to the Google Compute page, Google Labs is involved in a distributed computing project because Google Inc., have high expertise in the area of distributed computing:

The Google search engine uses more than 10,000 networked computers to deliver results to millions of users worldwide, making it one of the largest distributed computing systems in existence. In addition to providing leading search technology, we are also interested in solving other important computationally intense problems. While we're not experts on protein folding, we do know quite a bit about using networked computers to solve difficult problems involving terabytes of data.

Indeed, Google Inc., have capability in this area. However, one has to recognize that universities also have many heads thinking about a problem and that by aiding a university in solving an issue of obtaining enough computing time through Google Inc., clout with its users, Google Inc., also have access to these minds who are solving distributed computing problems. Google Inc., has much to gain from such cooperation.

Google Inc., are in need of staff -- look on the Google Labs front page and they have an advertisement ofr staff. And through working with a university of people who are working on distributed computing problems, Google Inc., gets to see the minds at work, and therefore ideal people to hire in the future. The benefits are more than this however. Distributed computing models are very effective in handling large amounts of data. And Google Inc., aare in the job of handling large amounts of data, whether it is in its mainstream business of search or in its Blogger business, Froogle business or whatever it is into. The more experience Google Inc., has in distributed computing the better off Google Inc., will be.

Added to this, however, is the fact that operating a voluntary distributed computing program, Google Labs gets to do some market research. How effective is volunteer distributed computing? What are the pitfalls? How many people does one need to be effective in extending the capabilities of an existing set of computers? Distributed computing is not new and there are numbers of distributed computer projects available on the Internet. In fact, there is a distributed computing project that uses volunteer computing time to create an extensive search engine database. Google at all times needs to evaluate the effectiveness of running a huge PC farm as against co-opting volunteer time, and what better way than to give back to the community and at the same time learn a lot about volunteer distributed computing.

Would Google Inc., use volunteer distributed computing for its crawling needs? I doubt it very much especially from comments about Grub:

"I don't want more computers or bandwidth," he said. "I want more clues about which page to look at rather than another page. The problem is how to rank the right pages. I don't think whether you are a distributed architecture affects that. The problem for us is how do we direct the crawl, not do we have enough resources to get the crawl."

Google is also experimenting with distributed computing. The Google Search Bar, which adds search capabilities to a Web browser's toolbar, donates spare cycles to Stanford's Folding@Home project, which simulates the ultra-complex process of protein folding. However, the director of search, Norving, did not say Google would not use distributed computing in the future. He simply said it was not applicable to Google Search at the moment.

Google Inc., is learning much about distributed computing, and it will always need to keep its options open as to how distributed computing whether it is voluntary or not, can be used in the future. Added to this, though, is the fact that blogs, the web, and in fact the Internet is largely composed through a distributed computing model, and in many cases a voluntary distributed computing model. It would not surprise me if Google Inc., came out with a voluntary distributed computing model of information collection from blogs - a way of sidestepping the need for crawling blogs.

Source: Microdoc News

Overture Closes Fast Acquisition

Overture, a global leader in commercial search services on the Internet, announced on April 22nd, 2003 that it had completed the acquisition of the Web search unit of Fast Search & Transfer, a leading developer of enterprise search and real-time filtering technologies.

Overture said it completed its $70 million cash purchase of the Web-search unit of Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer (FAST.OL). This is one of two key acquisitions in its battle for dominance in the fast-moving Web search and advertising market.

Under the terms of its deal with Fast, Overture acquired the company's AlltheWeb.com search engine and its "paid-inclusion" services for $70 million in cash. Overture also said the transaction includes an additional performance-based cash incentive payment of up to $30 million over three years.

Through the combination of FAST's Web search unit and AltaVista, Overture expects to offer customers a full suite of paid placement, paid inclusion and algorithmic Web search products and services for syndication to portals, ISPs and other search destination sites. Additionally, Overture also hopes that its own 80,000 advertisers will benefit through increased access to new products and sources of distribution to drive targeted leads.

As part of the agreement, Overture will use the new acquisition to test new approaches in the search process. The acquisition also will add to Overture's international presence, through FAST's key distribution relationships and advanced linguistic capabilities in about 50 languages.

Founded in 1997, FAST is based in Oslo, Norway and has operations in the United States (Boston, San Francisco), Europe (Norway, France, Germany, Italy, UK), and Japan. The acquisition includes FAST Web Search algorithmic search, AlltheWeb.com, and FAST PartnerSite paid inclusion services. FAST retains the intellectual property relating to its enterprise search technologies.

Source: Search Engine Optimization Ethics

The trouble with LookSmart: flat click pricing

In the latest quarterly report, we learned that LookSmart is still hovering around break-even and projecting a so-so year. A number of theories have been put forward to explain its weakness, ranging from lack of moral fiber to its dependency on MSN.

There may be some truth to those charges, but I'm surprised that no one has put their finger on what may be the fundamental reason that LookSmart's progress has stalled after it saved its bacon with a shift into the pay-per-click model: its failure to adopt the same market principle that has driven the growth of competitors Overture, Google Adwords, and Findwhat.

When LookSmart shifted from "pay for inclusion once" to a "pay for inclusion and then pay for clicks" model, it priced clicks at a flat 15 cents. Sound reasonable? It isn't.

Keywords and click-throughs all look sort of the same on paper, but the difference between getting exposure on the words "soy milk" and the words "mortgage refinancing" could be as different as getting exposure on a bus stop bench in a lightly-traveled road in a heavy-industry district and getting exposure on national television. It could be as different as dropping leaflets on a large city of illiterates and handing out free Blackberry pagers to Fortune 500 CEO's. You can't put a flat price on this stuff.

Because pay-per-click advertisers now track everything, they are aware of metrics like cost-per-customer-acquired, cost-per-order, cost-per-lead, etc. The price of the clicks is virtually irrelevant, except that for costs per lead to be in line with profitable targets and industry averages, some businesses need really cheap clicks (10 cents might be too high), and others will be willing to pay $1.50 per click to get exposure ahead of their competition who also track their results and are willing to bid as high as $1.45 a click.

What is probably happening right now, given the likelihood that LookSmart-generated traffic doesn't, on average, convert as well as Overture or Google traffic, is that a certain percentage of LookSmart advertisers have seen their conversion data and now know that fifteen cents is no bargain. So they suspend, or at least, fail to increase, their LookSmart budgets. The remaining advertisers - those who do turn a profit at fifteen cents - might be willing to outduel one another and bid prices up to 40 and 50 cents or more. But LookSmart is content to give it to them at fifteen cents, thus permanently limiting their upside.

That's not LookSmart's only problem, but clearly, adoption of the market principle is something that LookSmart must consider if they are to realize the same success with the pay-per-click model that others have. Clicks are worth vastly different amounts to different businesses targeting different consumers. Does a local television station charge $50,000 for a 30-second spot at 2 a.m.? More to the point, can you get a 30-second Super Bowl spot for $200?

The MSN dependency is a serious issue too. No matter how hard LookSmart works on its product quality, customer service, etc. - the fact is that when you begin charging by the click, you are now a little less like search and a little more like an advertising network. An advertising network must find places to put its ads. LookSmart currently is short on distribution partners.

Boxed into this tight spot, LookSmart could deke its way out of danger by merging with similarly-valued FindWhat. FindWhat could advise them on how best to implement the market principle in their product offering, and, of course, deliver a sizeable number of distribution partners to LookSmart. Lately, LookSmart has been acting like a company with $400 million in the bank, making "high-minded" acquisitions of little search companies and cool "projects." Time for a reality check.

Source: Traffick.com

Jeeves Notches Fourth Gov. Client

Notching its fourth government contract, Ask Jeeves has been tapped to provide natural language search and navigation for the District of Columbia's municipal Web site. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The company's JeevesOne product will help residents, business owners, government employees and tourists find information about the nation's capital through www.dc.gov.

Emeryville, Calif.-based Ask Jeeves, already counts the U.S. Navy, the state of Washington and the Municipal Association of South Carolina clients and sees potential in the public sector as cash-strapped governments look for ways to save money.

D.C.'s government will also use Jeeves Analytics software to study every question asked. The information will then be used to tweak the site's content and layout. By answering more questions online, the D.C. Government expects to field fewer calls and e-mail queries, freeing up employee.

Ask Jeeves said that's been the experience for Washington, a customer since 2001. The state handles more than 7,000 queries online daily. If each online query saves a three-minute phone call (or e-mail) to a state employee, it would total about 57,000 hours of staff time saved annually.

"The Web is a powerful tool for helping governments connect with and serve their citizens," said Scott Lomond, general manager of Jeeves Solutions. "For example, the State of Washington so values "Ask George" that they've given it top billing -- front and center real estate on Access Washington (the state's portal)."

Ask Jeeves' enterprise group competes against iPhrase and others. In the private sector its customers include British Telecom, Ford, Nestle, Nike and Visa.

Source: Internet News.com

Overture Readies New Search Products

Overture Services said it would release its paid inclusion and contextual marketing offerings in the next three months, as it tries to expand and diversify its product line.

The announcement came at the company's annual presentation for financial analysts, a little more than two weeks after Overture shocked investors by cutting its earnings forecast for the current year in half, in part because of a longer and more costly development of new products.

While making its name as the leading provider of keyword-based paid listings, Overture has embarked on overhauling the company to be a one-stop provider of a variety of search services, including algorithmic search, analytics, paid inclusion and contextual advertising. Paid inclusion and contextual ads will expand Overture's reach beyond the three or four keyword listings that appear on partner sites.

The rest of the page represents an opportunity to us," said Ted Meisel, Overture's chief executive. "It gives us the opportunity to create a better search experience."

Meisel, which described the new products as part of "Overture 2.0," sees big opportunities in search, which he estimated could be a $15 billion market by 2008.

Unlike paid listings, where a client is guaranteed placement on the results page, paid inclusion advertisers pay to have their Web pages crawled during a search. Contextual ads are served on content pages next to relevant text. For example, a sports-related Web site might carry keyword listings for team paraphernalia next to a story about a hockey game.

Overure's paid inclusion offering will be a hybrid of the paid inclusion technologies from Overture's two major search acquisitions earlier this year, Alta Vista and the search unit of FAST Search and Transfer. The two units will offer their paid inclusion products separately until then. (As a result of the Alta Vista and FAST integration, Overture said it would cut 100 positions, mostly from sales and finance.)

In the paid inclusion market, Overture faces entrenched competition, although not from Google. The market leader for paid inclusion is LookSmart, which has felt the pinch of rising competition. Earlier this week, the company cut its earnings outlook on account of higher spending on product development to stay ahead of the competition.

Overture said it would release Content Match, its contextual advertising service, later this quarter. Content Match also faces stiff competition, in this case from Overture nemesis Google. In late February, Google released its Content-Targeted AdWords. Already, the company has inked a number of deals, including a distribution agreement with Knight-Ridder Digital and ad networks Burst Media and Fastclick. Google upped the ante further with its acquisition last month of Applied Semantics, a contextual advertising pioneer and Overture distribution partner.

Like Google, Overture will allow advertisers to opt out of its contextual advertising scheme. Overture has not announced any distribution partners for Content Match.

Likewise, paid inclusion is not without its concerns. Advertisers are not guaranteed placement, but their Web pages appear without a searcher knowing they were included for pay. For this reason, Google has said it has no plans to offer a product.

In addition, Overture is at work on a local search product that will allow advertisers to target customers in a geographic area. The company said local search would be released by the end of the year.

Overture said the new products would boost its flagging earnings beginning next year. The company said 2004 earnings would be about double the 35 cents to 42 cents per share expected this year.

Source: Silicon Valley Internet.com

Google to create search tool for weblogs

Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab.

CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement on Monday, at the JP Morgan Technology and Telecom conference. 'Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs,"' reported Reuters.

It isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be. After Google acquired Usenet groups from Deja.com, it developed a unique user interface and a refined search engine, and removed the groups from the main index. After a sticky start, Usenet veterans welcomed the new interface. Google recently acquired Blogger, and sources suggest this is the most likely option.

Bloggers too are likely to welcome their very own tab as a legitimization of the publishing format. But many others will breathe a sigh of relief as blogs disappear from the main index. "I just want a search engine that works," laments Chris Roddy, a politics and linguistics undergraduate at the University of Emory.

"I can get a Google search with porn turned off; why can't I get blogs turned off too?" he asked on Slashdot. Google has strived in vain to maintain the quality of its search results in the face of a blizzard of links generated by a small number of sources. (Google searches 3,083,324,652 pages as of 4PM PT today. Assuming there are one million bloggers, and generously assuming they have a hundred pages each, that amounts to 0.032 per cent of web content indexed by Google. Recent research by Pew put the number of blog readers as opposed to writers, as "statistically insignificant").

However, through dense and incestuous linking, results from blogs can drown out other sources. "The main problem with blogs is that, as far as Google is concerned, they masquerade as useful information when all they contain is idle chatter," wrote Roddy. "And through some fluke of their evil software, they seem to get indexed really fast, so when a major political or social event happens, Google is noised to the brim with blogs and you have to start at result number 40 or so before you get past the blogs." We'd noticed.

"Taking Usenet out of the general search was great, because it is not really interfering with general Internet searching," Roddy told us. "Usenet was a public forum in the first place." A Slashot discussion prompted a suggestion that Google add a -noblog option, which it effectively appears to be introducing by default.

Gary Stock, chief technology office for Nexcerpt, Inc. agrees. "A year or two ago you could hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky' and there was a good chance that you could find a good and authoritative page," he told us.

"It is less the case today. More and more people have more text to type, and may not have anything authoritative to say - they just throw up characters on the screen." He says that the link-based algorithm called PageRank™ was designed, at Stanford University, with very different assumptions about the quality of information.

"They didn't foresee a tightly-bound body of wirers," reckons Stock. "They presumed that technicians at USC would link to the best papers from MIT, to the best local sites from a land trust or a river study - rather than a clique, a small group of people writing about each other constantly. They obviously bump the rankings system in a way for which it wasn't prepared."

Information Quality
For Stock and Roddy, the problem is that the resulting degradation in the quality of information makes it even harder to find primary source material. Roddy said the realization came after searching through 500 blog entries to find a primary source.

Exacerbating the problem, says Stock - who devised 'Googlewhacking', or the art of producing a search query that returns just one result - is the frequency with which the sites are indexed. "If they are really spidering all 3 billion pages, then they must have changed some law of physics," he explains.

"Someone has made a choice whether to go to a site ever hour or every three years. That begs the question - if I know something to be a high traffic site and I train my robots to visit often, do I discount it when I feed my information to PageRank?"

For example, he cites a hypothetical. "Suppose turtle-rescue.org has authoritative information about turtles. And it changes every month. Then BoingBoing puts up a page about turtles and that becomes a big deal.

"Each of us gets vote," jokes Stock. "And someone votes every day and I vote once every four years." "The blogs push up very quickly up to the top of the search results."

Databases
"To me the power of what Dave Winer and Ev Williams have done, and it's great, is that I can easily publish ResourceShelf in seconds, giving me time to do other things," says respected author and librarian Gary Price. Price doesn't regard his site as a weblog, even though he uses Blogger tools, now owned by Google. Price co-authored The Invisible Web, a guide to little-known about public resources on the Internet [Amazon - review].

"But what happens when the weblog fad dies down?" he asks. "The public think that they can put 2.1 words into Google and the best answer will appear, they don't ask how long is it taking them to get it. For the average person - its very good, but there are choices out there; and a lot of people aren't aware of them and don't know."

"You have to realize there are other information sources, and that information costs money." "This is why New York Public Libraries has a sign 'Here's where you find the stuff that isn't in Google.' and much of this is publicly accessible," Price points out.

Or as Seth Finkelstein reminds us,"Google is good, but not God." (We'll follow up what, and how to get it, soon).

Source: The Register

Google Hiring Engineers for a New York Office

With the technology start-up boom over, the term Silicon Alley is fading into history, leaving behind a New York Internet industry that offers little excitement. But that has not stopped Google Inc., the Internet's post-boom darling, from planning to hire a team of about 100 software engineers for its Manhattan office.

"We came to the realization that not all the good programmers in the world lived in Silicon Valley," said Craig Nevill-Manning, a senior research scientist at Google who is relocating to New York. "And not all the good programmers in the world wanted to live in Silicon Valley."

The hiring spree by Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., offers little hope for New York's army of underemployed Web-design jockeys and e-commerce experts. Instead, Google is seeking the kind of advanced programmers who have been lurking around Wall Street's financial firms and New Jersey's corporate research labs for years. Mr. Nevill-Manning said, for example, that Google had already hired some programmers from Bell Labs.

Along with options to buy shares in Google, which is still private, the company is offering its engineer job candidates, as a break from their usual arcane research, the chance to work on practical projects like making improvements to its popular search engine. "They want to work on something their grandmother can appreciate," said Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology and the first employee hired by its founders.

The New York team will collaborate with the roughly 400 programmers at Google's headquarters and will also be free to develop their own projects, he said.

Until now, Google's colorful New York office near Times Square has housed an advertising sales group. Employees there have to do without the home office's cafeteria, where meals are prepared by the former chef for the Grateful Dead.

But Mr. Silverstein, who perched on an inflatable blue ball during an interview in the New York office, said the company was trying to make sure the staff there did not feel like second-class citizens. For example, employees on both coasts plan to take field trips to see the film "The Matrix: Reloaded" this week. And "we have free M&M's here as well," he said.

Source: New York Times

Google launches regional news service

Google announced on Monday that it had created Google News UK, part of a move to upgrade its Internet news aggregation service by launching five new country-specific versions.

Similar local versions of Google News have also been launched in Australia, New Zealand, India and Canada.

Like the original Google News, these will gather news headlines and photographs from some 4,500 media outlets across the world, but it will prioritize those that specifically refer to each country's government, business, science and technology, sport and entertainment news. Google, whose Web search technology is also used by companies such as Yahoo, recently topped a list showing which portals and search engines are most popular with Internet users looking for information.

ZDNet UK's Graeme Wearden reported from London

Google launches news search in five countries

Google has launched a separate version of its news search engine in Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, India and Canada.

The database is not limited to local news sources, however, but presents a mix of some 4500 news sites from all over the world. Regional news is given top priority on the home page.

Unlike most news services of this kind, the stories are not selected by human editors, but by use of Google search engine algorithms.

Google News Search Australia
Google News Search UK
Google News Search New Zealand
Google News Search Canada
Google News India
Silicon Valley article

Source: Pandia Search World

Google remains the No. 1 search engine in the World

The Web statistics software provider OneStat.com reports that Google now has a global average usage share of 55.2 percent.

According to OneStat the seven largest search engines on the Web are:

Google 55.2%
Yahoo! 21.7%
MSN Search 9.6%
AOL Search 3.8%
Terra Lycos 2.6%
Altavista 2.2%
Ask Jeeves 1.5%

Given that Google actually powers most of the various national incarnations of Yahoo! and AOL, between 70 and 80 percent of all search results are fetched from the Google database.

All numbers are an average of the last 2 months. Research is based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day. There are no major changes compared to the previous measurement.

Source: Pandia Search World

Overture paid search pays off for Yahoo

Nearly one fifth of Yahoo's overall first-quarter revenue grew out of its partnership with Overture Services, a provider of paid search listings, the Web portal disclosed in a securities filing Thursday.

In a measure of the alliance's weight on Yahoo's earnings, the portal reported income of about $54 million from its partnership with Overture. That's 19 percent of the total revenue logged for the three months ended March 31 and more than double the roughly $23 million, or 12 percent of total revenue reported in the same period of 2002.

Overture provides payments to Yahoo for displaying its advertiser-sponsored search listings atop results pages. Each time Web surfers visiting Yahoo click on one of the sponsored links, Overture collects a fee from the advertiser behind the link and shares that revenue with Yahoo.

Yahoo has benefited heartily from the deal. In April, it reported its fourth consecutive quarter of profitability and its second consecutive quarter of growth in advertising revenue, partly because of cost-free revenue from Overture. Yahoo's recent filing illustrates how much influence the pay-per-click search provider holds with Yahoo. Without the reported $54 million in fees, Yahoo's profit of $46.7 million for the first quarter might have suffered.

As a result, industry analysts have speculated that Yahoo will eventually build its own paid search business and slowly edge out Overture, which has a contract with the portal until April 2005 with an option to extend the deal to 2011. Others have speculated that Yahoo might purchase Overture with its surplus cash of $750 million, a short-term interest-free loan it secured earlier this year.

But Safa Rashtchy, senior analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, said Yahoo benefits so nicely from the Overture relationship because it does not have to assume Overture's costs. The Web portal only reaps the rewards of revenue.

"This dependance on Overture for profits...is an indication of...the risk it will face if it were to build (such a service) in-house, since the level of monetization, and hence profits, will fall off sharply," Rashtchy wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com.

For the first quarter, Yahoo parsed revenue into three categories: marketing services, fees and listings. Marketing services, which encompasses online advertising and the paid search deal with Overture, jumped 38 percent year over year to $190 million. Executives said this revenue line got a boost from Overture and from traditional advertisers. Yahoo Chief Terry Semel said last month that excluding payments from Overture, marketing services revenue increased by a "double-digit percentage" over the same period last year.

In the filing, Yahoo acknowledged its reliance on Overture for revenue and highlighted some of the risk involved with its recent acquisition of Inktomi, an algorithmic search service that competes with Google. It said that by owning Inktomi, Yahoo is now in greater competition with AltaVista and Fast Search & Transfer, which are now both owned by Overture.

"We also generate a significant amount of revenue from our search and directory capabilities through an advertiser’s purchase of an enhanced placement in our results," the filing said. "If we are unable to provide search and directory services which generate significant traffic to our Web sites, to continue to secure an arrangement with a third party provider such as Overture on terms which are acceptable to us, or we are unable to develop our own ability to provide this service, our revenue could significantly decline.

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Ask Jeeves selected Google over Espotting

Ask Jeeves announced on Friday that Google has replaced Espotting as the paid-listing provider for its UK subsidiary, giving the search leader a key distribution outlet abroad.

The two-year deal calls for Google to provide the top three listings on results page of the Ask Jeeves UK search engine, ask.co.uk, under the heading "Websites I can show you." (The listings will be labeled as sponsored.) The two companies will split the revenues generated from advertisers' paying each time a user clicks on their listings. Further financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ask Jeeves said it selected Google over both Espotting and Overture Services. Espotting signed a paid-listing deal with Ask Jeeves UK 18 months ago. Both Espotting and Overture will remain in Ask Jeeves UK's meta search results, at the bottom of the page. "The strength of the search advertising market, along with the value of our search traffic, resulted in a lively competition for our UK business," said Adrian Cox, Ask Jeeves UK's chief executive. "The performance of the Google program on Ask.com, coupled with the rapid growth of the AdWords advertiser base in the UK, make Google a valuable partner."

A Google representative declined to break out the number of UK-based advertisers the company has signed. Overall, Google boasts an advertising network of 100,000. Ask Jeeves was one of a key early group of distribution partners of Google's AdWords. At the time, Google was setting out to convert its strength in algorithmic search into a rival paid-listings program to that of industry leader Overture. Google replaced Overture in the July 2002 deal, having established itself in the prior months as a serious competitor through distribution agreements with EarthLink and America Online.

Nearly a year later, Google and Overture are neck and neck in generating paid listings, with comScore's qSearch service recently estimating that Overture has a slight lead in the market. Abroad, Overture has recorded a string of distribution partner wins when pitted against Google, establishing a foothold in three European countries and two Asian countries. Overture recently launched operations in Italy and plans to open in six more offices this year. Google has relied mostly on traffic to its local sites.

Ask Jeeves has profited handsomely from the booming market for paid listings, which is projected to grow from a $2 billion industry today to $6 billion in 2007. In the first quarter, the company took in $15.3 million from paid listings, a 210 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. While Google drove much of that growth through the U.S. deal, Ask Jeeves UK recorded $4.1 million from paid placement, a 320 percent increase from the first quarter in 2002. Ask Jeeves, which is among the top search destinations in the UK, will be Google's biggest distribution partner. In addition to its own popular search site, Google has distribution deals with ISPs BT Openworld and NTL. Google launched its AdWords program in the UK in September 2002. It said the Ask Jeeves UK deal improves its reach to 63 percent of the UK's online population.

The loss of Ask Jeeves UK comes as a blow to Espotting, which counted the search site as one of its top partnerships, particularly in the face of intense competition from both Google and Overture in its home market. Espotting retains distribution deals with Yahoo! UK and UK Plus. Overture still remains the dominant force in the UK market, having inked deals with FreeServe, MSN's local site, and AOL Europe. (Overture also has a distribution agreement with BT Openworld, which offers users the option of using Google or Overture.) Overture boasts reaching 80 percent reach in the UK. Its operations there have been profitable for five straight quarters.

Source: Internet News.com

Turbo10 searches the hidden Web

Turbo10, the London based meta search engine, has been invited to demonstrate its so-called Deep Net search engine technology at the Twelfth International World Wide Web Conference in Budapest on May 20 - 24.

This new technology is based on a technical paper titled The Mechanics of a Deep Net Metasearch Engine.

It's all about "the hidden Web", really, and how to reach it. The hidden or deep Web is the part of the Internet that is not reached by regular search engines, mainly because the data is only accessible if you make use of database search forms -- which normal search engines do not.

These sources include various specialist databases administered by universities, libraries and government departments.

Moreover, while most metasearch engines retrieve data from the regular search engines and directories, Turbo10 fetches information from hundreds of topic specific engines.

Nigel Hamilton, Turbo10's CEO and Technology Director, adds that there is a wealth of information in specialist databases that we are now just starting to access.

Source: Pandia

New Google algorithm may speed up indexing

The search engine Google could soon be cataloguing the world wide web up to five times faster, thanks to new software tweaks developed by Stanford University computer scientists.

At the heart of Google's software is the Page Rank algorithm. It ranks how important a web page is by counting the number of links that lead to it, with links from a page that itself receives a lot of links weighing more heavily. Its fast, high-quality results have made Google the world's most popular search engine.

Ranking the more than three billion web sites now online can currently take days with PageRank. An individually customised ranking "would now take 5000 computers five days to do. It's not feasible," says Stanford researcher Sepandar Kamvar.

But even speeding up the process enough to allow ranking based on broad topics could be useful, he says. For example, a comedy buff looking for Marx would find much more about Groucho than Karl, making the search even more accurate than before.

Source: New Scientist

All the Web Adds a Couple Nice Features

The All the Web search engine might have gotten bought by Overture, but apparently that hasn't stopped them from continuing to crank out the syntaxy goodness.

The first thing they're offering is a bookmarklet. A bookmarklet, in case you didn't know, is a little bit of JavaScript code that you can set as a bookmark. The difference between a bookmarklet and a regular bookmark is that a bookmark just opens up a page, while a bookmarklet does something -- in this case, it performs an "URL investigator" search on whatever page you're looking at.

For example. Grab the bookmarklet and add it to your regular bookmarks (You can get it for Netscape, IE, or Opera at http://www.alltheweb.com/info/news/2003.html ) and then go to http://www.newsisfree.com . Click on the bookmarklet. A new window opens up with an AlltheWeb page of information about NewsisFree.com, including the number of pages in AlltheWeb's index from this domain, the number of pages that link to it, and the number of pages that contain the term. This is handy when you quickly need information about a domain or about the scope of a Web site. (Remember, this bookmarklet only covers *domains*, not sub-domains.)

The second thing AlltheWeb offers is a new syntax: convert. Convert will do a query-box conversion between measurements. Type in, without quotes, "Convert: 3 ounces" and AlltheWeb will serve up a page of metric and imperial conversions for three ounces.

Source: Research Buzz.com

The European pay-per-click war

There is a battle raging over the control over the European pay-per-click search engine text ad market. The combatants are Espotting, Google AdWords and Overture.

Last week Espotting lost the Ask Jeeves UK account to Google, which was a serious, although not fatal, blow. Given that Overture has bought two important European players, AltaVista and the Fast Web search division, Espotting may soon find it hard to find major search sites and portals to carry its text ads.

Espotting is not giving up, though. Espotting has expanded its contextual advertising deal with Kelkoo, Europe's leading comparison shopping search engine, to cover a total of 30 "channels" (i.e. categories of goods and services) in four European countries: The UK, France, Germany and Spain. Espotting will deliver its top five results as "Top Sponsored Picks" on relevant Kelkoo channels.

At the same time Overture has announced that it is opening its sixth European office -- in Italy this time.

Source: Pandia.com.

Hard to distinguish between regular and paid results

Consumer Webwatch will shortly present a report that concludes that searchers find it hard to distinguish between paid pay-per-click text ads and regular search results.

In a discussion on "Building Trust on the Web" under the Consumer WebWatch's April summit on Web credibility, Leslie Marable of Consumer WebWatch told that according to one study of April last year 60 percent of the consumers they polled "had no idea that some search engines charged fees in exchange for prominent placement of search results."

It should be added that since then several search engines have started designating their pay-per-click search results more clearly, not at least because of pressure from the American Federal Trade Commission. This was clearly one of the reasons Consumer WebWatch commissioned a new study.

The new study is not based on a phone survey like the previous one. Instead Consumer Webwatch has opted for an anthropological/ethnographical in-depth study of 17 people. It turns out that all participants were surprised when they learned about pay for placement -- even the more "advanced" Web users.

Search sites often mark paid results as "sponsored". One participant noted that "A sponsor is someone who gives money to support programs," and he did clearly not read this to mean "paid text ads". This is not a representative survey. You need more than 17 respondents to achieve that. Still, we would not be surprised if a majority of searchers are unable to distinguish between pay-per-click text ads and regular search results -- especially when the text is formatted and presented in a similar way.

Does it matter? Well, a cynic may argue that "what they do not not won't hurt them" -- as long as they find relevant results that is. Both Overture and Google AdWords spend a lot of resources on ensuring that the paid text ads actually are relevant -- not only to avoid complaints from organizations like the Consumer WebWatch, but also in order to make advertisers happy. Relevant text ads results in more click-throughs and higher conversion rates.

But there is also the question of credibility. If this marks the start of a new debate on the legitimacy of pay-per-click text ads, the search sites may get hurt, as these ads have become one of their most important sources of revenue. Moreover, the success of a site like Google is built on a good reputation, and Google cannot afford to loose that.

Google has actually done a lot to distinguish the text ads from regular search results, placing them i colored text boxes set apart from the rest of the listings. However, they are still called "Sponsored Links". So why don't they just call the adverts "Adverts"? Our guess is that they are afraid that this will cause a drop in click-throughs and lower revenue.

In the long run, however, the risk of more bad publicity may make that a more sensible option. The searchers may like it as well. This especially applies to those that are searching for information instead of goods and services. People who want to know more about how to grow a lush lawn are not always looking for fertilizer.

For a presentation of last years controversy, see "Paid results have finally become 'Sponsored Links'" (The Pandia Post July 2002).

Source: Pandia.com

Northern Light Coming Back?

Northern Light sent out a press release on May 22 announcing "Northern Light, the tiny little search engine company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, emerged today from the chaos of the Divine bankruptcy, smaller but basically intact, its notable search, classification, and content integration technology still viable and ready to roll." (See the press release at http://tinyurl.com/cmub .) Northern Light was purchased by the former CEO, C. David Seuss.

A story about the purchase in the Boston Business Journal ( boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2003/05/19/daily35.html ) indicates that Seuss bought the engine for all of $81,000. It's not clear if the Web search is coming back, but Seuss said in the press release "We have started discussions with interested parties about ideas for new approaches to delivering on the promise of Web searching, ideas that represent a collaboration between others who have done innovative work and Northern Light. These ideas may result in uniquely useful Web search services."

If Northern Light does come back, and I don't think it's a bad idea, it needs to come back swinging. Even before its sale to divine it suffered from a too-low profile (in my opinion) and insufficient discussion of its good points (including e-mail alerts and a really nice news search engine.) Its partnership with Yahoo was just the boost it needed, but right on its heels came a sale to divine and all the associated problems there.

If I were C. David Seuss, I would get right out in front. More feisty press releases (the leading sentence on the Web page, "We are pleased to announce that we have escaped and are an independent company once again", is a good start.) Take a lead on something the other search engines haven't done too much with, like RSS feeds for search results or a support of an meta-data standard for news pages. Don't try to out-Google Google.

The Northern Light Web page ( http://www.northernlight.com ) offers sign up for three different Northern Light mailing lists but not much other information. Worth keeping an eye on.

Source: Research Buzz.com.

Search engine secrets revealed

If you want to find what you are looking for on the web, use a single search engine and get to know its quirks.

US researchers studying the best way to find information online say trying the same query on different search engines rarely produces the best results.

Instead searchers should become more familiar with their favourite search engine and use its advanced features to refine results. The researchers found that only 10% of net seekers were tuning their searches using the extras offered by most search sites.

Smooth operator
The good thing about the net is the depth and diversity of information online. But this does mean that it is often hard to separate what you want from the mass of irrelevant webpages thrown up by almost every net search. US researchers Bernard Jansen and Caroline Eastman studied the way that people look for information online and found that the individual quirks of search sites make it hard to define a single strategy to find what you want every time. Here are some good search tips:

* Stick to one search engine
* Get to know its advanced features
* Be as specific as possible
* Put search term in quotes
* Use words like "or", "must appear" or "not"

"There are no wholesale rules about structuring a query that will work on multiple search engines," said Bernard Jansen, assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State University. "And what works on one engine, such as narrowing a query, can have the opposite effect on other search engines," he said.

For instance, refining a search on Google using "or" significantly changes the results it returns but does not have the same effect on the MSN and AOL search sites. In their study of 600 queries the two scientists found that 60% of results returned for a particular set of terms will be the same across all search sites.

Instead of looking for the pages that every search engine returns when searching, Professor Jansen and his co-author recommend that users become as familiar as possible with one search engine and stick to it. The researchers found that only 10% of people refine the results served up to them using words such as "or", "must appear" or try to ensure their search terms are treated as a single phrase.

Refining a search with such words can make a big difference to the numbers of pages returned. For instance, looking up "monkey" and "tennis" on Google produces 109,000 hits. By contrast, searching for "monkey tennis" as a phrase returns only 2,200.

Professor Jansen said users who understood how best to search on one or two engines should use them until systems designers figure out how to personalise information retrieval.

Source: BBC News.

Big Changes for Search Engines

Fast, smart, personalized to suit every user's needs. And pretty. That's what the search engine of the near future will be.

Tweaking existing search engines and developing new ways to find specialized data were the subjects of two dozen papers presented at this week's 12th International World Wide Web Conference in Budapest. While search engines have improved steadily under the hood since the first days of the Web, they look and function pretty much the same as ever. But computer scientists are working on new search techniques and interfaces that could significantly alter most surfers' results pages. Expect, for example, to be able to sift through search results graphically, or to personalize Google results.

A team of researchers from Japan's Nec presented a paper titled "Mining the Peanut Gallery" describing (PDF) a tool that would allow consumers to automatically sort through product reviews. The Review Seer returns rankings of products based on user feedback culled from newsgroup and website postings. Surfers could further personalize searches by specifying what features and price ranges they are interested in.

There are still some issues to be sorted out with Seer, said Kushal Dave, a member of the team that developed the tool. One particularly pesky problem is dealing with reviews that contain a lot of negative comments, but wrap up with a final sentence exonerating the product. "Humans are so … random," grumbled one audience member.

Other speakers focused on new ways to present search results to users. Ben Shneiderman, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland in College Park, is convinced that most people are better at communicating with their computers when they can see data, rather than reading or writing it. He demonstrated several visual search tools, including the TimeSearcher, which allows seekers to see graphics illustrating search result data.

TimeSearcher allows users to define search terms on a graph, clicking and dragging to specify that results should, for example, be confined to data created or changed on specific dates. Any information that is tied to time can be searched with TimeSearcher. PhotoMesa and PhotoFinder are a combination browser and search tool specifically designed for searching digital images. Specialized search tools that work on one computer or across a private network are a step toward personalized searching of the Internet where results will be tailored to the express desires of each user.

Eventually, search engines will be able to consult cookies -- small text files placed on users' hard drives by Web servers -- and assume, from past searches, that a user is looking for one type of information and not another. The cookies could tell a search engine to return only new information, or only data targeted to the user's location. In any case, personalized searching won't be possible until Google, already known for running lightning-fast searches, is 10 times faster.

Google could increase its search speed using new techniques developed by Stanford University computer-science researchers, who presented a paper on their findings at the conference. "We've gotten a lot of press attention today from this work," said Stanford researcher Sepandar Kamvar. "Some of it is not quite correct. One major caveat: Google will not run five times faster if our research is implemented, but we do expect a 30 percent speed-up."

According to Kamvar, three simple-to-implement tweaks to Google would measurably boost search speed, "freshen" the results and -- if the research is further refined -- eventually allow for personalized searches. Google's owners haven't said whether they will adopt the Stanford research, but Google co-founder Sergey Brin was in the audience.

Source: Wired News.

Open Directory introduces abuse report system

There has been complaints about editors using the Open Directory (ODP) to forward their own interests only. ODP meta editors are introducing an abuse report system in order to defend the directory's quality and integrity.

There are search engines and there are search directories. While search engines crawl from one Web page to another using software based "robots", search directories are built by human editors that visit each and every one of the sites included. The mother of all search directories is, of course, Yahoo!. However, the Open Directory, a volunteer based initiative, is just as important -- or maybe even more so, as a listing in this directory may influence your ranking in Google in a positive way.

You may access the directory at a lot of sites, including Google and AOL. The Pandia Plus directory is also based on the ODP. In a large number of categories the Open Directory, or DMOZ as it is also called, provides some of the best collection of online resources available. However, it is no secret that there is a lack of editors in some areas of the catalog.

Moreover, there are webmasters that try to abuse the system, getting too many listings, entries that inappropriate etc. This abuse undermine the legitimacy of the database, and could -- in a worst case scenario -- lead Google and other search sites to abandon the directory. The DMOZ team has for a long time had a very strict policy against editors trying to use their position to promote their own sites. If found, they are normally kicked out. However, there are more than 57,000 editors and a very small staff. Quite a few cheaters slip by.

Now the directory is taking a new approach in the battle against both internal and external abusers. Users of the ODP (and hence of the Google Directory or Pandia Plus) may now report suspicions of abusive editors/conduct to DMOZ Meta Editors and Staff. "All reports will be investigated expeditiously and in complete confidence," ODP Meta Editor Ettore R. Peyrot says. "If abuse is found we will rectify it."

Users will be able to submit reports anonymously, although the ODP would like to have an email address, in case they need to ask for more information. According to the "Frequently Asked Questions About the DMOZ Abuse Report System", the following behavior is not accepted:

* Editors giving preferential treatment to their sites
* Editors adding inappropriate sites (e.g. pornographic sites)
* Sites listed in the Kids branch which present adult content
* Biased/slanted categories where some views are suppressed
* Editors accepting bribes

However, the ODP editors are not that concerned about spam techniques used to influence rankings in search engines. After all, these editors visit your site personally, and if they see a high quality site of relevance to their category, they will normally add it. Hence hidden links won't hurt you, but they won't help you either. The new system is currently in a beta testing phase, which is why it is not hosted on the dmoz.org servers.

However, it does have the "full blessing and support of the ODP staff".

Source: Pandia.com

Turbo 10: A new search engine

You're not going to believe this, but a new search engine has just appeared and, well, it may be better than Google.

Obviously, that sounds slightly ridiculous but after having spent a day devising weird and wonderful searches and comparisons, not only has it stood up to the test but it's so good that you realise how much of an effect Google has had on your thinking when it comes to searching the Net. You can go try it now - it's at Turbo10.com - but for God's sake, before you start emailing and ranting and raving, read the rest of this story as it will probably cover what you're going to say.

The cons
First of all, let's get it out the way and slag Turbo10 off. One, it's called Turbo10 - brings to mind something slightly 80s with silver streaks. It's called Turbo because, spokeswoman Megan Hamilton explains "we wanted a name that connoted speed. Also the word 'turbo' has the same meaning across a number of major European languages". The "10" is vital to the search engine. Megan says: "The 10 is used because we show 10 results per page, we connect up to 10 target engines, and we show the top 10 topic clusters for every search." It's still called Turbo10 though. However, if you remember correctly, everyone thought "Google" was a bit of a silly name when it first appeared in Beta.

Turbo10 is cluttered. It's cluttered and the colours (dark blue and purple) will not be to many people's tastes. A far cry from the liberating white space in Google. Is this a return to the bad old days of over-complex search engines? No, because when AltaVista was king, all those extra bits were useless add-ons and got in the way. Every single bit of Turbo10's page has a very real and very useful function. The results are tightly packed in and the description of where your search request is in the document is not that great. It sometimes contains a meaningless jumble of words and it seems a little buggy in that it sticks the wrong thing in sometimes. We imagine this will be ironed out as it comes out of Beta.

Turbo10 does not let you use punctuation marks or logical expressions (well, it does, but they have no effect). Now, your immediate reaction is "that's rubbish - how the hell will I get at what I want?" But after playing with the site a bit, you realise that this reaction is due to the Google (and many previous engines) mindset you have for searching the Web. If you assume for a minute that you can get exactly what you want without having to use the various refining techniques that we have all learnt, then this non-use of logical expressions is a positive thing. Basically, Turbo10 has a different philosophy of Net searching and after a while you start to get it.

The pros
Let's give the Turbo10 PR information here. "Turbo10 has launched the first fully automated system that creates and maintains connections to online databases en masse. 'Connecting to 1000 engines is just the tip of the iceberg. By creating an automated system we can connect to thousands more,' Nigel Hamilton, Turbo10's CEO said." That's the start of the company's press release. The more interesting bit is further down: "Turbo10 searches the Deep Net - a vast array of specialist databases that range from business associations, universities, libraries, and government departments. These specialist search engines are inaccessible to traditional crawler-based engines such as Altavista.com and google.com who can only index static pages. Turbo10 is the first commercial metasearch engine to connect to hundreds of these specialised engines en masse, broadening the depth and range of search results for the online searcher."

That's it in a nutshell. Okay, so now you're thinking "this is just as academic, specialist search engine and it can't even be compared to Google". In fact, it can be compared directly to not only Google but also specialist search engines - plus the ones in between like Teoma. Turbo10 let's you select up to 10 search engines to run a search through. But unlike AskJeeves where all the results are irritatingly put in different boxes, Turbo10's genius to combine them all in one weighted listing - it's the search engine of search engines. So if you wanted, you could select google.com, google.co.uk and news.google.com to search in.

If you only select these three, Turbo10 will run a search and also choose another seven search engines it sees as best-fits for your search. Then, the results will be displayed according to either speed (Turbo10 doesn't want to be accused of being slow) or relevance, irrespective of search engine, but with the search engine that the result came from shown. Although we note that suspiciously few results come from Google itself. The reduction of search results from this initial list is then done by the use of clusters in a box on the left-hand side. So, for example, a search on "the register" - two very common words - gives Register.com as the first choice. TheRegister.co.uk only makes it to number eight. However, among the clusters on the left are "news" - which links mostly to news stories and is less help - but also "theregister content" - all of which links to stories on this site. Once you use the clusters a few times, you end up getting to what you're looking for faster than with advanced searches or logical expressions.

So what? Google still gives you everything you need and Turbo10 is too much trouble. Well, quite possibly true - but then Turbo10 has a lot of advantages.

New search mentality
Rather than list results in a long line, causing you to have to scroll, Turbo10 has ten fitted on the page and you use arrow buttons to move onto different pages. You may like this, you may not, it doesn't matter, it's there. But you will notice that there are only spaces for 10 of these pages - so, a total of 100 results for any particular search. In most cases however, there are only three of four pages - so just 30 or 40 results returned. Here again is where there is a different mindset. While Google tends to go "oooooooooo" right across the page, Turbo10 sticks to its guns and throws out very few.

This is the crux: if you want something obscure in Google and most other engines, you keep changing the search criteria until you get it or you finally find it on page 36. With Turbo10, you simply choose different search engines. When we first started trying out the engine yesterday, it had 1102 search engines available. At the moment, it links to 1108. But the time you've reached the end of this article, it will be probably be more.

The core of Turbo10 is that you select your own engines. This is all done simply online. You select the ten you want, give the "collection" a name, and stick on your email address (it promises to never sell it) so you can be recognised and then this is added to a list of "collections" that you can select using a drop-down menu on the main search area. So, basically, you could use the Turbo10 default setting (about, altavista, bbc, dmoz, encyclopaedia, goggle, msn, yahoo) for general Web searches but if you want a news story, you set up a collection of 10 news search engines and call it "news". You then select this one is what you want is news stories. Then, if you want say something technical, you set up another collection with 10 technical search engines.

It's a different way to find what you want, and if you think about it, far more logical than learning different search tricks and techniques. Plus - and this is the real killer - we reckon that aside from all the "how it works" and "what it means" stuff, Turbo10 produces BETTER results for a given search. In fact, after using it for a while, you tend to notice that Google slightly over-rates geeky and sub-culture comments in place of solid, useful links and facts.

Vision
Turbo10 has a vision for how search engines will work in the future. Spokeswoman Megan Hamilton confirms that Turbo10 is going for the broad market and so competing with Google. "We want to become the Hotmail of search - personalised to each searcher," she says. We're not sure that is the best comparison to make, but the idea is to use the latest Internet technology to make search engines less impersonal. Plenty of new features are in the pipeline. "We are going to use Amazon-style recommendation algorithms to further personalise searching. Searchers will be able to view their own search profiles which will also act as bookmarks. Most search engines have no idea who their users are - we want to change this completely - to user-focused search. Each user's search profile will interact with others ... we want to create a blog-o-sphere of search users and their profiles. More browsing options and result annotation will also be included." (Hopefully with this personalised approach, you will be able to change the colours.)

Of course, whether this plan is a truly wonderful and helpful idea or another irritating way for a company to learn too much about you depends entirely on how you view the organisation running it. Turbo10 is brand new and so has yet to build up trust with its users, so we'll hold off until time gives a better perspective. However, from what we've seen, this looks like a really good and useful search engine. Better than that, it actually provides a different philosophy of running Internet searches. With Google having come to dominate the market (to the extent that people seem to forget that it is a company and not some kind of United Nations for the Internet), the competition and new blood can only be a good thing.

I'm sure I've forgotten lots of bits and bobs but this review is too long already, so get out there and see what you think. Oh, Turbo10 doesn't have the Google cache feature complete with highlighted words, which seems to be becoming more important every day, which is a shame. Also, please don't bother emailing saying that there's no way this will put an end to Google: of course it won't, Google is Google and is pretty much here to stay. This is an alternative.

Apart from that, our only fear is that it will be knocked offline by the demand that will inevitably follow.

Source: The Register

Judge dismisses suit against Google

A federal judge this week granted Google's motion to dismiss a suit that alleged the company manipulated search results in its powerful Web index.

U.S. District Court Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Tuesday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction brought by SearchKing, an Oklahoma City-based Web hosting and advertising network that claimed Google unfairly removed links to its site and those of its partners from the index, causing financial losses. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that Google's formula for calculating the popularity of a Web page, or "PageRank," constitutes opinions protected by the First Amendment.

"PageRanks are opinions--opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query," according to the decision filed in the U.S Western District Court of Oklahoma. "The court simply finds there is no conceivable way to prove that the relative significance assigned to a given Web site is false," the decision said. "Accordingly, the court concludes Google's PageRanks are entitled to full constitutional protection."

SearchKing, which operates an advertising network, originally filed a grievance in October 2002. Its complaint centered on Google's PageRank algorithm and charged that Google devalued SearchKing's PageRank score, bumping it and its ad network out of listings. The Web-hosting company operated an ad network that sold text links on popular Web sites to get them a better listing in Google results. SearchKing sought a preliminary injunction against Google, asking to be restored to its previous PageRank and to be awarded $75,000 in damages. Late last year, SearchKing's top listing was restored on Google.

The judge denied SearchKing's request for damages, saying it "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted." Mountain View, Calif.-based Google countered in January with a motion to dismiss the case based on constitutional protections.

A Google representative declined to comment on the ruling. SearchKing CEO Bob Massa expressed disappointment over the ruling, but he didn't see it as a complete loss.

"We have been able to give the Internet marketing community a much clearer view of the inner workings of Google, their systems, their reach and their own view of themselves," he said in a statement. "SearchKing never broke a law, yet was accused, judged and executed without so much as a notice of intent. This affected thousands of innocent people without just cause." Massa said he is reviewing his legal options.

Article by Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The Google Page Rank explained

Interview with Chris Ridings - Google PageRank expert

From Search Engine Blog.com:
Today we talk to the rather knowledgeable Chris Ridings about (surprise, surprise) PageRank , SearchKing and cowboys.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us Chris. Can you tell us a bit about yourself? What is your background?

Well, it looks like people are stuck with me rather than the "blind lesbian circus performers with a grudge" that you practically promised everyone last week. It's a shame, I was really looking forward to reading what they had to say.

I'm sure your readers will try to hide their obvious disappointment. I come from the silicon valley of SEO, otherwise known as the UK. I could try and make myself sound interesting by starting out with all my rubbish jokes like "Well, I was born and everyone just had to make the best of it", but Mike Grehan had the cheek to be funny so it would just show me up.

I could try to dazzle you with my knowledge of busines, but Ammon Johns seems to have covered that angle too. So I guess you just get the real me - one bloke stuck in an office on the one sunny day a year we get on an island where it rains a lot and everybody apparently drinks tea and eats fish and chips. I've been using computers for a pretty long time and in fact I cut my teeth on a ZX81 when I was 7 (I think they were called Timex's in the US?).

Let's face it, about that time in history every parent plonked their child in front of a ZX81 because it promised their child a prosperous future in IT. I quickly learnt that if pilot's pressed the "j" key too much in their aeroplanes then their cockpit's filled up with grey blocks and the plane silently melted in to oblivion. Pretty soon I'd managed to crash most of Sir Clive Sinclair's Boeing fleet in to what I can only presume was Iceland, so I learnt to program by typing in listings from magazines.

That was the only way you could get decent games back then. Okay, more accurately - that was the only way you could get any games back then (decent being a relative term). When I went to university in 1993 they had this bizarre thing called the Internet, which for some reason I had never heard of until then. I learnt that it was invented by the military so that, presumably, they too could email their friends across the room to arrange which pub they were going to that night after a while of struggling with lynx (the text based browser not the cat) somebody showed me this revolutionary tool - Mosaic. That would be when I first got in to web design.

Whilst the founders of Yahoo were busy putting together a multi-million dollar list of sites I was busy putting a picture of a cathedral and a link that said "this is my friends site" on to a web page that virtually nobody ever saw.

It took me weeks, mostly trying to find somebody to host it. Nowadays, of course things have progressed and we have geocities to create those pages in minutes. Frankly, I'm disgusted - if you don't have to spend six months learning "vi" to create a web page that says "Hello World" then what's the point?

After I left University I went in to a techie job, gradually ending up doing Network support. To cut a long story short, during that time period I didn't use the internet that much. It was harder for me to get hold of and didn't seem worth the effort, there was little need for me to email people across the room - that's what pagers were for. Then I went back to college and university to do a business degree and the internet was back in force, although apparently we were now meant to use it to find information and do research.

Whilst I was doing my business degree I started getting back in to doing web sites and such, and obviously I wanted more visitors to my site. So I started reading as much as I could. Obviously I became a skilled master of meta tags, automatically submitting sites, link exchanges and FFAs. I knew to follow the advice I read to the letter in order to maximise my success. Or in other words - I was naïve. "It's right there on the web, and they rank okay, so it must be true". So I decided that anybody who gave Internet Marketing advice was not to be trusted!

If you don't trust anybody that gives Internet marketing advice, that tends to give you a minor problem in terms of getting information! So at the time I began to look at research papers and so on, taking me closer to the original sources.

There was one in particular that I read, from Stanford about Google. Google by this time was pretty much everything, so I set about reading it. Whilst I read it I made a few notes, which turned in to a list of points. The list of points turned in to a very short article about how to rank in Google.

Having used the points myself, I gave the article away freely and a new SEO commentator was born (although nobody would have ever heard of him and nobody cared :-) ). Following backlinks and the like I started to find sources of internet marketing information that were perhaps less wrong then the ones I had previously found. It's that age old thing that good information tends to cluster together. So I gradually picked up hints and tips on things that actually worked! Over time, my faith in some internet marketers grew and I realised there was good information amongst a lot of junk.

About that time PageRank was one of the most misunderstood things in the SEO world. So I started gathering together information and reading research papers to enable me to grasp an understanding of PageRank. At the time I was also programming some small scale search engines, so I had opportunity to do some tests and experiments. I wrote all this down and PageRank Explained was born. I should probably, at this point, remark that PageRank Explained was a grammatical nightmare and a lot of it's readability was down to Jill Whalen who offered to put little yellow comments on it and refused to take them off until I spellled and said things proper like. PageRank Explained turned out to be more popular than I thought.

Skipping time a bit, so this doesn't become the longest background ever, PageRank Explained afforded me the opportunity to get to know some very clever people, start Support Forums and of course rewrite it with Mike Shishigin as "PageRank Uncovered".

Whether I'm technically an SEO or not is probably a matter of opinion, perhaps we could have SEORank and judge that with a little green bar on a scale of 1 to 10? I have very few clients who generally approach me and who have specific SEO work needing doing.

It's all top secret hush hush due to client confidentiality, competitive advantage, and of course my men in black obsession. I don't work on SEO full time, mainly because nobody's offered me a fortune to work for them, and because this enables me to have more time to research. Probably one of the differences between myself and many SEOs is that my background leads me to be about having a general understanding but then focusing on a few things really well. I'm the kind of person that has to take things apart for themselves to see how they actually work, that won't believe the sun goes round the earth unless he's actually done the work to deduce it himself.

The kind of person you wouldn't want to show your new computer too because at the end of it you would have a mass of disconnected cards, a motherboard and a few sticks of memory.

You're well known for your deconstruction of PageRank. For those new to the topic, can you explain briefly what PageRank is and how it operates.

"Well known", you know how it is Peter - there's hardly a day I can walk down the street without somebody asking me about PageRank, it's difficult to go to a restaurant without getting troubled by the paparazzi and holidays are just impossible.

It has it's advantages, the groupies, the emails from adoring female fans awe-struck by my knowledge of PageRank. But the telephoto lenses and the rumours hit hard. It's all okay now, I've done rehab and the lucozade addiction is under control. If I wear dark glasses and a hat I don't get recognised by quite so many people and the press crews have moved on. Should we maybe settle on just known? :)

One of the reasons that PageRank is so hard to explain and understand is because it is analogous to something we all do all the time without thinking about it. Consider I want to buy a new DVD player, I might ask a group of friends what the best DVD player to buy is.

Now some of them are going to give me names of DVD players, but some of them are going to say "I don't know, Tim knows a lot about DVD players". When I talk to Tim, I have a greater respect for his advice because everybody said he knows this stuff. Now if Tim says "Ask Harry too, he knows a lot about DVD players", then despite the fact that nobody else has told me to ask Harry I can assume that Harry probably does know more than the rest (although probably not more than Tim).

PageRank is the same mechanism. Instead of trying to find out who knows most about DVDs, it tries to find out what pages are the most "important". It's hard to actually "ask" a page something, and talking to a computer monitor is not the best way to impress your colleagues, so they make a general assumption. That assumption is "If a page links to another page then it thinks that page is important". There are lots of things wrong with this assumption, but you said "briefly" so I'll leave people to research more if they want to.

Just like Tim's advice to "ask Harry also" is given greater weighting because most people told me to ask Tim, if a page has lots of "important" links, when it says another page is important then PageRank gives that more merit.

By using a mathematical formula to work all this out, Google ends up with a numerical value for each page. Known as it's PageRank. One of the common misconceptions is that if a page has a higher PageRank than another page, then it must rank higher in the results.

This, of course, cannot be true or the page with the highest PageRank on the web would always show first whatever you searched for. To get the actual results you see on Google's results page they will actually first calculated the relevancy of the page to the search term you typed and then apply the PageRank to sort them. When PageRank is applied to sort them it is applied in a way that gives a tendency for higher PageRanked pages to do well rather than merely sorting the results in to PageRank order.

PageRank Uncovered is certainly a comprehensive document, and obviously required a deep level of research. Can you tell us a little about how you went about your analysis of PageRank?

I have a problem defining that, if you find a topic really interesting then the line between research and obsession becomes a very blurry thing. I probably started research before I could consciously define it as research.

Am I sounding geeky enough yet? Before you start researching a topic you clearly need to start with an idea of what that topic is, which means that I had to get to a basic understanding first. When I was first researching for PageRank Explained, there wasn't that much reliable information around so I started from the original Stanford papers.

One of the things about it being a logical and mathematical topic, is that we can extrapolate a lot of information from a very small amount of base information. So for example, whilst the Stanford paper may not specifically say that internal pages can have an effect on your PageRank we can see from what they present that it must. Thus, hidden in the depths is the counter to one of the more common myths at the time "Only links coming in from other sites matter".

The problem with extrapolating information is that you need to test it, which being able to program helped no end with. Another example would be that the stanford papers formula reveals that the PageRank given is divided by the number of links, we can deduce that by putting more internal links on pages with out going links we get more total PageRank across all pages of the site.

PageRank Uncovered is really an extension to those basics I deduced in PageRank Explained. Once you have an understanding of PageRank you can then begin to watch and adjust your opinions depending on what Google do.

For example, when looking at the Google toolbar there were a couple of occasions on which a lot of page's PageRank dropped. Followed not many months later by a rise in the index size. Now until you know the basics, that's not understandable. But as soon as you know the basics then you can begin to work out why that's happening and how it relates to what the toolbar shows and how PageRank worked, or at least you can begin to say "maybe it's because…".

Essentially, because we know Google are never going to come out and tell us exactly how it works, the process is to watch for many of these little "effects" and see how they fit in to or change the overall picture. Because PageRank Uncovered was a year later, there are a lot of these little effects that can help solidify deductions or discount them. In effect we're talking about a process where you're continually theorising, modifying those theories and refining them based on the data presented.

I think that when we talk about research, in this context, we are really talking more along the lines of scientific research. It is akin to early scientists trying to work out whether the earth goes round the sun or the sun goes round the earth, we can theorise and then test those theories. We need to do that again and again and again. Whilst we may end up with an established, well accepted, answer that describes all situations that we have ever seen it still remains a theory.

One thing I've always wondered is how much PageRank may have changed since Brin & Page published their paper. After all, why would you want a key company asset on public display? How much do you think PageRank has changed since the original paper was written?

If PageRank hasn't changed since Brin & Page published their paper then I'd be shocked. This is one of the reasons I try hard to stress the "theoretical aspect". One of my pet hates, incidentally, is those who repeat the theory as fact.

However, a theory can describe every conceivable event that could occur in real life and I believe this to be the case with PageRank. When I read about PageRank, researched it, and did the testing I came to the conclusion that small and subtle changes would almost certainly have been made but that the main principles must always be the same. Anything more than the principles is of little worth to anybody but Google and perhaps their competitors. Unless you're the kind of nut that would take apart a friend's new computer to see what was in it.

It's a bit like driving a car, I need to know what the pedals are, how the steering wheel works and how the stereo works but I don't need to know the detailed scientific specifics of combustion. If I get a hire car, it may be different.

The layout may change slightly and it might be electric; but for my purposes I can still work out what the pedals do, where the steering wheel is and how the stereo works. Even those of us who are information junkies have to accept that there are limits to what we need to know, and that those limits define the tolerance to which a theory will apply or not. Many companies do have their key assets on display, it's one of the prices paid for doing business and also for a patent. I think that in Google's case, even without the original paper somebody else would have come up with a similar mechanism and realised it closely resembled the results Google were giving. There's nothing mystical or magical about it, who knows - it could well have been DaVanzoRank!

I have to ask you (and this is your chance to put your side of the story) - Ian Rogers claims you made a fundamental mistake in your earlier "PageRank Explained" analysis and said some of the recommendations in the paper are not quite accurate. Did he have a point?

Naughty Naughty, you're a lot more Jerry Springer and less Oprah when it comes to being the king of search engine chat aren't you?! :) It would appear that since then Ian has become an SEO (http://www.iprcom.com/services/search_engine_optimisation.html).

It's a little hard for me to preach ethics whilst simultaneously criticising a competitor so I'll keep this brief. Let's just say that I'd be perfectly happy for anybody who's actually reads what I write and thinks about it, or for anybody who's written anything specifically to the capabilities of a target reader group at a particular time to make their own judgement on this.

On a general view (just to expand a little), earlier on you asked me to explain PageRank briefly. I could have said it's "a recursive algorithm to calculate the statistical probability that a random surfer would come across a web page". Does this make me wrong earlier or did I tailor it and generalise to what the readership can best understand at a minimal loss of technical accuracy? In a years time would I write it the same way? If I have done a good job with my general description, have I ensured the readers knowledge of PageRank to be equal to that statement as a minimum?

And if I have does that not make it easy for them to criticise my example? And will that criticism be as a result of my success in explaining or my failure? And don't you just hate a person who answers a question with lots of their own? :)

How can webmasters benefit from knowing about PageRank? What is the best thing they can do to help boost this score, without annoying Google of course? ;)

I think that the biggest benefit to knowing about PageRank is to know when to worry about it and when not to. Seriously. When I read anything about PageRank it tends to be the "PageRank is everything" or "PageRank is worthless" type comments, occasionally misquoting me, which show little regard for the situation. E.g. The more key phrases you want a page to rank for, the more you need good PageRank on that page.

They will of course prove to be self-fulfilling prophecies, if you believe PageRank is everything then you will concentrate so heavily on PageRank that you will eventually get what you desire. If you believe PageRank is worthless then you will fail to use it at all and be blissfully unaware of what you could have achieved. It's not exactly a state of affairs that will help progress the fledgling SEO industry, but at least everybody's happy :)

Those who take the bother to truly look in to PageRank and assess it objectively are those who will use it when it benefits them. The easiest way to boost PageRank is to write something that people will want to link to. It sounds silly to say, but time spent writing information is often a lot more effectively spent than time spent asking for links. Many successful sites only ever ask for a handful of links and submit to a handful of directories. I'm not one for mantra's or catch phrases, I don't want to say "Content is King" because frankly it's another tool and there are no King's. I also don't want to use that phrase because it's become synonymous with "only ever worry about content".

But in terms of effectiveness, one well written page can draw in a lot of links. With the search engines steadfastly refusing to actually define their rules in black and white, it's also the only method that can be considered truly safe (unless of course you happen to write about ranking methods they don't approve of, review software they don't like, etc).

More important than any of these is to know what to do with your PageRank. If I made a million dollars it is essentially worthless to me if I leave it in the bank all my life until I die, there are ways I could use my millions to my benefit and ways I effectively waste it even though it is still in my possession.

The same holds true of PageRank. I've always talked a lot about internal structure, and to be honest over time my views on internal link structure have increased. It is largely irrelevant how much PageRank you have and there is little use in having more if you don't make maximum use of the PageRank you already have in your site. I think too many people are keen to have a toolbar PR7 on their home page targeting one easy to get key phrase whilst neglecting their internal pages. By arranging internal structure to focus PageRank on important internal pages they can maximise the use of PageRank, as it happens there are also good benefits in terms of navigation for the user. And how could Google possibly complain at that?!

On your site, supportforums.org, you're big on dispelling myths propogated by cowboy seos. What are some of the more pervasive myths out there? Any new tips you'd care to share?

I promised you some news, so I'm sure you won't mind me digressing from the question slightly - by the time your readers read this supportforums.org won't be my pet project anymore! Frankly supportforums.org and I have been together for a while, and we've gradually come to realize that we want different things.

She wants to grow and further her career, she wants to be more than just a mouthpiece for an idealist and I want to work on other things without stifling her ability to evolve. It's an amicable split, I get to keep the server and she gets the links and articles. She's gone to live with her new owner, and she's very happy.

I'll miss her, we just seemed to click and she used to organise everything so gracefully. But it's time to move on, and I'm sure there's another site out there for me…somewhere. As an industry commentator, I will be taking much more of a back seat. As much as I think this is a good idea for the site, and me, I will miss the ability to afford some people the opportunity to talk when they might not be able to elsewhere. I don't really want to lose that opportunity, I visit the bulletin board style forums a lot and have seen their potential to allow fully open discussion in a way that helps progress the industry.

For that reason, I have designed a bulletin board system at http://www.searchguild.com/ that has been built from the ground up to enable people to speak freely and honestly. My presence there, should people choose to come, is really only in an administrative capacity to provide the facility.

Back to the question - I spent a long time being fooled by myths when I first started to try to understand the search engines, so I guess perhaps I'm on a little bit of a moral crusade to point them out when I see them.

This isn't the "Joe Blogg's is spamming, isn't he a naughty boy" type crusade, I find those petty and annoying. I would say that rather than acting against any individual cowboy SEOs I am reacting to the propagation of bad or misleading information. I'm not sure if you could define it as a myth, but one of the biggest and most annoying things are those pages where SEOs list key phrases that nobody searches on as examples of how good they are.

If you want to detect a cowboy SEO, apart from looking for a horse and some spurs (obvious signs, they hardly need saying), then one of the best things to do is run the key phrases they advertise through wordtracker. Unfortunately this trickery is a growing trend and your average webmaster can't be expected to know this. If there was a proper industry body for SEO I'd be the one petitioning them to make their members put the number of searches per day on their pages along side those terms.

If not maybe percentage ROI, or something that means anything other than number one for "tibetan goats carrying backpacks up a mountain for a balding man with a beard". As there isn't, I'll just have to say that I personally applaud anybody who does do that. If everybody put up that further information then the trickery would eventually be obvious to all.

Beyond that there are probably more I could list here but I think I'm probably in the running for having given the longest interview answers already. Often, myths are distributed unwittingly by peope with good intentions, rather than propogated by cowboy SEOs.

They seem to make sense. I'll pick just one example, It's recently been stated that in Google the anchor text of links to a page only counts if that term appears on the page. Intuitively this has a logical basis, but we can say it's likely wrong or at best not fully considered. Partially indexed pages are pages that the search engine hasn't crawled about but it knows from link information alone.

If we accept this "theory" to be true as it stands then we must also accept that partially indexed pages can show in searches. The search engine does not know what text is on the page so it can't rank it from that, if the theory is true every anchor text must be discounted because the search engine cannot see them on the page. That would make having partially indexed pages pretty pointless and partially indexed pages do show in searches. Now if you really think about it, the probability that in general anchor text is going to appear on the actual page as well is quite high - so it would be easy to imagine that somebody testing this theory might indeed build up a body of evidence supporting it.

But that body of evidence really only demonstrates human nature and natural linking process. Ergo, there would appear to be very little evidence to support this theory in general and at least for the case of partially indexed pages the theory must be false.

The SearchKing case has highlighted the power relationship between search engines and webmasters. Do you think the search engines have wider responsibilities to the webmaster community?

Often, it is easier to explain things with analogies. Consider that there is an election of some kind, let's say for leader of a university's student union. George is elected to be president for the year, saying that he'll be the best and cut the price of beer in the student union.

George has obtained power because he was the best candidate. However, George doesn't really care for people with ginger hair "they're unimportant" and George is in a position of power so George decides that only people who don't have ginger hair get half price beer. Now George is the president, he was fairly elected, it turns out he's a good president (unless you're ginger), and there's no rule against him doing this. It's his right and there's nothing that can be done. But when George was elected he took on moral and ethical responsibilities to the people that put him there (even some misguided ginger's voted for him).

The same is true with the search engines, because they have the same degree of control. A search engine may be put in power because it is the best technologically. The process of attaining that power may be free and fair and they may have a right to do certain things, but they still have a moral and ethical responsibility to all parties concerned whether they consider them unimportant or not.

On the modern day Internet, the search engines are so important that they effectively act as a barrier between users and web sites. Regardless of how you get that big, when you are that big you get responsibilities. The most important of which being the universal responsibility of fairness.

To be fair, they must be accountable. If I say accountable, let's be clear here. Because I'm well aware that there are some who would be more than happy to blow that statement up in to "search engines should be legally regulated" for me. Accountable to me means that they should have procedures for situations that affect more parties than just themselves. Those procedures should be subject to frequent review and independent advice taken on them.

Such procedures should be published and all stakeholders should have their eyes wide open. It's not enough to ban a site, there must be reasons for banning a site and those reasons must be verifiable. That's important not only for the progression of the industry but to stop individuals within the search engines acting in a rogue capacity.

If webmasters don't have an involvement in that then a major control and checking mechanism is missed. It's a myth that webmasters cannot be told what they are doing wrong, offering them the chance to correct it, and I dare say that the first engines to awaken to that will be the most successful in the future.

It's a topic where it's easy to cloud the issue with things like "goodness" and the "correctness of the path that led to that power", some like to believe that search engines are the only businesses on earth with responsibility to only one stakeholder (the searchers).

So let me isolate it down to some very simple questions: If I have a big red button on my desk, that when I push it destroys several businesses and seriously damages many. Then regardless of how that button got there, regardless of whether I'm a good person or Dr Evil, if I choose to press that button then do I have an ethical duty to have sound reasons and to explain them when asked? I.e. Does that big red button place responsibility on me simply because it is on my desk? If I spill my coffee on it and it sets it off, is it enough of an excuse that I'm a good person and it wasn't intentional?

I note you've been following the SearchKing case closely. What are your views on the judges ruling?

I think that judges face problems with each and every case they come to, in that they must try to understand the issues involved. When we move in to the area of technology they are faced with a myriad of concepts and difficulties and the tendency is to relate that to things that they can personally understand in the real world.

This is no bad thing, and is what allows us all to understand computers but it allows us to understand only at a very superficial level. Whilst it might serve us well if we're learning to use Word, if we're making a judgement that affects the ability of each and every webmaster or of each and every search engine to do particular things in the future then that somehow seems inadequate.

Maybe in technological cases it's even more important for the parties involved to be extremely careful to explain things well, but I have to confess to being a little disappointed in the judge's understanding of PageRank. For example, take the statement "Page 3 - The PageRank is derived from a combination of factors that include text-matching and the number of links from other web pages that point to the PageRanked web site. The higher the PageRank, the more closely the web site in question supposedly matches the search query, and vice versa.

The highest possible PageRank is 10, and the lowest is 1.". I might be tempted to offer this up as an example of all of the most common misconceptions of PageRank. PageRank, by definition cannot include "text-matching", because to do so would mean calculating PageRank for every possible query that could be typed in to Google (there are an infinite number of those, so it would take till infinity). And PageRank is not measured on a scale of 1 to 10, for a start this is what Google's toolbar shows and not the actual PageRank that was reduced, secondly even that starts at 0.

I don't claim to be as sure of the outcome as many seem to be on one side or another, but from an observers viewpoint I would like to see decisions and rulings based on actual understanding of the technology and issues.

If you could build the ultimate search engine, what would it look like? How would it operate?

Google, fair, not for profit, with input from all the stakeholders, without the bits I don't like (The Tour, Google Answers, News, We're Feeling Cocky - just a plain old search engine), and ranks all my sites at number one :-)

Oh, you want me to be imaginative and future looking? Very well, but it's a lot like several before. More user based and less general. You'd turn up at the home page and it would know who you were (you're already cookied so why not?). It knows what you like and what searches you do at particular times of day, times of the year and on particular days (all the information's in their logs anyway, so why not use it).

You'd get the page design/layout you'd chosen from a selection of thousands, and down the list of searches you likely want to do would be "mother's day card". It would recognise that not everyone's from the US so that when you clicked it would tend to give you mother's day card sites for your geographical location. It would try and get more information from you to try and turn a general query in to a more specific one, like whether you want to actually buy a mother's day card or be cheap and send a cheesy email one.

Here's where I differ from most other viewpoints of the ultimate search engine. I don't want it to try and guess what I mean. If I type in the word "jaguar" it shouldn't try to guess whether I mean the car or the animal and then just return that set. That just reminds me of a little paper clip popping up in a certain application and saying "it looks like you're writing a letter" or that same application constantly changing my spelling. The ultimate search engine would get a collection of results for both the animal and the car and provide me with a mixture of both right there on the front page, it should then provide easy links to view either one or the other.

By every search result would be buttons which would let you say you really liked that page or you really hated it. The search engine would use this information to help raise or lower that site and sites most like it in the future for any searches you do.

Because this is specific to you it would begin to learn what design elements you like, what level of textual content you like and so on. This data may be cross-referenced from everybody to provide a general starting point for every user on to which the user specific preference data could be mapped. In terms of communication: It's a search engine, so I figure that a proper searchable database of frequently asked questions, how to documents, rules and instructions isn't completely out of the question. And beyond that there should be some kind of live support with a real, instant response. I'd suspect that this would have to be paid for, but that would seem fair.

Thanks Chris. And best of luck with the new forums. Over the next few weeks we'll be talking to Fast and Looksmart.

Note: You can find additional information on the Google Page Rank algorithm, by clicking here

Source: Search Engine Blog.com

Dogpile Offers Private-Label Web Search Toolbar

InfoSpace Inc. has announced that meta-search engine Dogpile is now offering a private-label version of the Dogpile Toolbar.

The Dogpile Toolbar is a downloadable browser plug-in that combines Dogpile Web search, which draws together results from search engines, with InfoSpace online yellow and white pages to offer users an easier way to find information, businesses and people.

The private-label Dogpile Toolbar brings together query results from up to thirteen search engines under the partner's brand. Businesses can also add unique content and features to the toolbar to reinforce brand attributes and make access to select services faster and easier.

The Dogpile Toolbar resides within a user's Web browser and includes a dictionary, thesaurus, stock quotes, public records, horoscopes, maps and more. InfoSpace has also announced that is has signed ABCNEWS.com as its first customer for the new product. ABCNEWS.com expects to launch an ABCNEWS.com-branded version of the Dogpile toolbar by the end of the third quarter.

Source: eContent Mag.com

LookSmart Records One-Billionth Paid Click

LookSmart today announced that it has delivered its one-billionth paid introduction, making it the first paid search inclusion provider to reach this milestone.

To celebrate the one-billionth-paid click, LookSmart awarded the recipient site, PracticeFast.com, with one year's worth of free LookSmart traffic.

"As the pioneer and leader in paid search inclusion, LookSmart is extremely pleased with this achievement," said Jason Kellerman, chief executive officer of LookSmart.

"Until now, only pay-for-placement search companies have attained this measure of scale. It drives home the growing importance of paid inclusion for both advertisers and the portals."

The announcement follows LookSmart's recent signing of a search distribution agreement with Lycos that marks the first application of the Company's high-relevance, high-value "Optimized Results Sets" commercial search listings product.

"LookSmart delivers high quality traffic that converts for my business," said Vladimir Grigorian of Atlanta, Georgia-based PracticeFast.com.

"Their model of paid inclusion has reduced my search marketing costs, improved ROI and saved me time, since there are no auctions to monitor. Receiving the one-billionth paid click and a year's worth of free traffic is a great bonus."

Source: Media Post

Google acquires Applied Semantics

Google announces that it has acquired Applied Semantics, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based producer of software applications for the online advertising, domain name and enterprise information management markets.

Applied Semantics' products and engineering team will strengthen Google's search and advertising programs, including its fast-growing content-targeted advertising offering.

Additionally, the deal will enable Google to grow its engineering presence and recruiting efforts in the Southern California region. "Applied Semantics is a proven innovator in semantic text processing and online advertising," said Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder and president of Technology. "This acquisition will enable Google to create new technologies that make online advertising more useful to users, publishers and advertisers alike."

Applied Semantics' products are based on its patented CIRCA technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval. A key application of the CIRCA technology is Applied Semantics’ AdSense product that enables web publishers to understand the key themes on web pages in order to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertisements.

The Applied Semantics team will remain in Santa Monica where Google will establish its Southern California product development center. Google also recently opened an East Coast engineering office in New York City. For a complete list of current job openings at Google visit www.google.com/jobs. Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day.

Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page & Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Google is a trademark of Google Technology Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Source: Press release, Applied Semantics Inc.

Daypop search engine offers meta tag indexing

The search engine Daypop is now offering the ability to index meta-tags. What kind of meta-tags? Any kind; that's sorta the point.

In his writeup of this idea, Dan describes the idea of creating meta-tags and then using them to narrow a search in ways not generally available via regular searching. For example, using a "blogring" tag to distinguish where bloggers are from.

When I read this it popped into my mind that this would be yet another good example of Daypop playing well with other online resources. I think thought about what Erik Benson was mentioning on his Weblog a little while ago -- http://tinyurl.com/ahlm -- he was trying to build a Google hack that would search every domain in his Blogroll.

And then I looked at Blogrolling.com, and thought -- wouldn't it be cool if you could go to Blogrolling.com and generate a meta-tag based on whose businessblog rolls you were in, and then put that on your 'blog's main page? For example, if ResearchBuzz was on blogrolls for Erik Benson's site, Backup Brain, and BeSpacific, Blogrolling.com could generate a meta-tag that looked like this:

So instead of having to build a hack, Erik could just go to Daypop and search blogroll=erikbenson queryword to find the blogroll content in which he was interested.

Of course I'm leaving out a couple of things. Everyone in Erik's blogroll would have to participate to make this search complete, and I don't know how difficult/easy it would be for Blogrolling.com to implement such a feature.

But I'm sure there are other ways of using unique meta-tags that would be just as useful/interesting. In the meantime, is anyone coming up with any standards to use with Daypop's new feature?

Source: Research Buzz.com

Overture completes acquisition of AltaVista business

In accordance with the terms of the acquisition agreement announced on February 18, 2003, Overture acquired the AltaVista business for $106.6 million ($60 million in cash and approximately 4.275 million shares of Overture common stock, with a value of $46.6 million based on the closing share price on April 25, 2003).

This acquisition, combined with Overture's recently completed acquisition of the Web search unit of Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), will enable Overture to offer a full-service search solution to portals, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other destination sites. Additionally, Overture will be able to provide its growing base of 88,000 advertisers access to new sources of distribution and products, such as paid inclusion, to drive additional targeted leads.

Overture plans to develop a common platform for its new Web search product before the end of 2003 and will continue to operate both AltaVista and FAST's search engines separately until that time.

"With the successful acquisitions of AltaVista and FAST's Web search unit, Overture is well-positioned to create the most powerful and comprehensive search capability on the Internet," said Ted Meisel, president and chief executive officer, Overture Services. "We are now stepping up our integration efforts and making appropriate investments to build the next generation of search." As part of today's announcement, Overture also made a series of management appointments related to the acquisitions:

-- Jim Barnett, formerly AltaVista's chief executive officer, will lead Overture's Web search efforts and will report to Overture's Meisel.

-- Fred Bullock, formerly AltaVista's senior vice president and chief marketing officer, will direct site management and marketing for Overture's Web search efforts and will report to Barnett.

-- John Ellis, formerly AltaVista's senior vice president of engineering and operations, will oversee those same areas for Overture's Web search efforts and will report to Barnett.

Since its founding in 1995, Internet search pioneer AltaVista has become a leading global provider of search services and technology and has also been awarded the most search-related patents in the industry. As part of the acquisition, Overture has assumed AltaVista's 58 search technology patents and other patent-pending applications.

The securities that were issued in connection with the acquisition of AltaVista have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration, or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements, under the Securities Act of 1933.

Source: Business Wire

Search engines now more and more popular

WebSideStory found that, in general, top search engines such as Google and direct navigation have become the more popular ways for consumers to reach Web sites.

In contrast the role of Web links has declined dramatically from 2002 to 2003. This likely reflects the maturation of the Internet population, which has settled in to going directly to preferred retailers and is comfortable using search engines to find what it doesn't see at preferred retailers. It could also reflect retailers getting more aggressive about customer retention.

Source: eMarketer.com

Search engine Google goes Maltese

Like all popular things in this world, it was just a matter of time before many Internet users’ favourite search engine went Maltese.

The search engine, Google, found at www.google.com, can now be read in either the English or Maltese language and offers all the usual features.

There is the standard search box, where users enter a word, name or sentence and Google will track Internet pages featuring the specified subject.

You can also write a name and press the I’m feeling lucky button to see where in cyberspace that name is featured.

Google also offers a facility that supplies the user with a search of just Maltese language web pages, on any topic.

Images and photos can be searched for as well as jobs. There is an advanced search facility and a help and directory tool.

There are also groups that are already separated, to make your life easier, where you can search for news and business stories under different subject headings.

Maltese is offered alongside other languages - just click on the language tool bar and read away in Spanish, Italian, German, French and others.

Source: Independant.com

Corporations seek better search results

Ford Motor got a crash course in the science of search analytics two years ago during a high-profile product recall.

When the carmaker announced that it was replacing Firestone tires on all of its vehicles, consumers stampeded the corporate Web site in search of information that went beyond the typical product sheet.

Over the following days and months, Ford and search partner Ask Jeeves not only fielded thousands of searches a day; they recorded and analyzed the queries on the fly in hopes of improving the service, a practice that continues today.

"The Ask Jeeves reports are used in two ways," according to Joyce Mueller, a consumer e-marketing manager at Ford. "First, to evaluate the site design and understand what content people are having trouble finding...Second, to learn what people are looking for. Currently, the majority of our searches are not for our main vehicles, but for other information such as the SVT (Special Vehicles Team). This helps us prioritize enhancements to the site."

In the field of customer intelligence, search analytics is poised to become a star. Examining search queries is now the preferred way for corporations to analyze Web site activity, to make sites more responsive and profitable. The method has all but replaced earlier techniques such as click-stream analysis, in which companies attempt to follow a visitor's journey from page to page.

Although experts agree that corporate search analytics is an important tool, some say it remains somewhat limited, much like an enterprise search itself. Recent reports have shown that corporate searches generally do a poor job connecting users with the information that they seek. In a telling gauge of the performance gap between enterprise and consumer search services, for example, Google's Webwide search was better 52 percent of the time at finding information on a corporate site than the site's own search engine, according to a Jupiter Research study released in February.

"(A) site search is the single greatest opportunity to learn from--and influence--customer behavior," according to the Jupiter report. But "site operators have barely established tangible metrics for evaluating--and optimizing--their search implementations. With the secret of success wrongly attributed to the 'magic' algorithm, and little measurement or optimization, site operators have vastly underrealized their investments as they continue to underserve their visitors."

The Jupiter study examined the effectiveness of so-called outward-facing enterprise searches, or queries that site visitors make. Another study looked at internal corporate searches--queries by "knowledge workers" of their company's own resources--and found the state of the art similarly lacking.

Knowledge workers spend 15 percent to 30 percent of their day searching for information, according to IDC. But more than half of their online searches fail to turn up the desired information. IDC estimated that a company with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes at least $6 million every year spending hours on fruitless searches.

A handful of search analytics upstarts, including Stratify and iPhrase, are hoping to turn this problem into an opportunity, challenging longtime enterprise search providers with increasingly sophisticated and user-friendly analytics technologies. The window may be closing fast, however, as incumbents are working hard to bolster their offerings with better analytics features.

Corporate search stalwart Verity acknowledged that it is playing catch-up with built-in analytics and said an "out of the box" analysis tool will ship with both of its search products by the end of the year. Verity's search application, purchased four months ago with its acquisition of Inktomi's corporate search properties, already comes with analysis capabilities that the company will add to its own product.

And companies that already have a built-in analytics tool are bolstering their technologies. Last week, iPhrase updated its corporate search tool with more powerful analytics software.

"The analytics piece is really important, and for the most part, it's where the big companies fall down," said Matthew Berk, an analyst with Jupiter. "It's a good differentiator. But increasingly everyone will have it."

Industry analysts say the answer to today's search quagmire is a sophisticated analysis of search queries, and that the means to achieve it should be built into an enterprise search application rather than added onto it.

"The trouble with what incumbents like Autonomy and Verity are doing is that, unless you have specific analytics built into the product, you can't possibly manage it," Berk said. "And unless you pay ongoing attention to whether your search results are accurate and useful, you might as well have thrown away your money."

Another analyst agreed that integrated search and analytic products are better than trying to add capabilities to a basic search tool.

"Many of the older companies will tell you that they do it, but the question is, how much work do you have to do with what they give you?" asked Laura Ramos, an analyst with Forrester Research. "The newer, younger companies like Stratify, InQuira and iPhrase are paying a lot more attention to analytics. The incumbents have the capability, but you have to engage them in professional services or do more work to get a shadow of the results."

Autonomy says its technology goes beyond what the search analytics providers promise. The company, with an office in Cambridge, England, and another in San Francisco, specializes in automated characterization and categorization of information, giving organizations the ability to link large numbers of related documents to other resources.

"You would use our technology to do the automatic categorizing," said Kris Marubio, Autonomy's vice president of marketing. "Then you would get someone else to do the analytics. We're the underlying infrastructure." Marubio cited the company's relationship with Business Objects as an example of how Autonomy's technology provides the fundamental information aggregation that third-party analytics and business intelligence software can then exploit.

Business Objects, a 13-year-old company headquartered in Paris and San Jose, Calif., licenses Autonomy's software and includes it in its business integration portal to provide analysis tools for search behavior, among other data sources. Another enterprise search vendor that licenses some analytics capabilities from other companies is Jeeves Solutions, an enterprise division that Ask Jeeves is said to be trying to sell. Jeeves Solutions last week upgraded its JeevesOne product to Version 3.0, with changes to its analysis tools.

Jeeves opined that, in the case of search analytics, it was better to buy, or at least rent, some components of its analytics software. "The reality is that these tools are very sophisticated and complex," said James Speer, Jeeves Solutions' director of product management. "We want to provide a complementary solution. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately some of the vendors are going down that road, which is a dead-end road for the customers."

Source: C-Net News

Google acquires Applied Semantics

Google announces that it has acquired Applied Semantics, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based producer of software applications for the online advertising, domain name and enterprise information management markets.

Applied Semantics' products and engineering team will strengthen Google's search and advertising programs, including its fast-growing content-targeted advertising offering.

Additionally, the deal will enable Google to grow its engineering presence and recruiting efforts in the Southern California region. "Applied Semantics is a proven innovator in semantic text processing and online advertising," said Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder and president of Technology. "This acquisition will enable Google to create new technologies that make online advertising more useful to users, publishers and advertisers alike."

Applied Semantics' products are based on its patented CIRCA technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval. A key application of the CIRCA technology is Applied Semantics’ AdSense product that enables web publishers to understand the key themes on web pages in order to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertisements.

The Applied Semantics team will remain in Santa Monica where Google will establish its Southern California product development center. Google also recently opened an East Coast engineering office in New York City. For a complete list of current job openings at Google visit www.google.com/jobs. Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day.

Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page & Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Google is a trademark of Google Technology Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Source: Press release, Applied Semantics Inc.

SE marketing: in defense of dashy domains

Dashed domains offer a big target for proponents of a purer web marketing. They float there broadside in the SERPs, overshadowing the sleeker domains, just begging for a pot shot. You'll find eager takers on any major SE forum or blog.

Disclosure: yes, I am responsible for some dash-intensive domains. Opinion: why would a serious search marketer not experiment with a potentially fruitful technique? But beyond any real or perceived benefits, dashed domains are worth pondering for what they can reveal about marketing via search.

Origins
Yahoo! created this monster, if a monster it is. Blame them for a search algorithm based solely on the content of the search listing and not on the web site in question. Further blame them for leaving only one element of those listings in the direct, unalterable control of the webmaster or marketer: the domain name. Yahoo!'s editors could edit all the flowery marketing copy out of your description, but they couldn't touch your "buy-flowers-here.com" domain without defeating the purpose of a directory.

You can also blame them for their word-matching algorithm. It seems to only recognize words embedded in domains as separate words when the words are delimited somehow. A dash, an underline, a dot. "Buyflowershere.com" didn't match a search for "buy flowers"; "buy-flowers-here.com" did. So what was a web marketeer to do, especially when Yahoo! was the Google of its day?

Remarkably, both of these preconditions for the dashed domain scourge still exist today. Even the Google directory still appears to match only on delimited words. Google's directory SERPs bold your search terms in the displayed snippet, and the bolding only shows on delimited words. This bolding may just be a visual cue to the searcher, completely independent of the workings of the search algorithm, but this appearance alone suggests the value of dashed domains to many online marketers.

The value of these supercharged domains was highlighted, ironically, when they almost lost their value overnight in October 2002. Yahoo! de-emphasized its directory in favor of Google's crawler results, and in so doing effectively pulled the plug on hundreds of sites that depended on those dashes for their traffic. Sites with long Yahoo!-optimized domains went from thousands/week in revenue to pennies overnight.

But other sites with dashed domains continued to flourish: sites that had gotten their dashed domains into Google's crawler results, where they benefited from Google's link-friendly ranking algorithm. By packing keywords into your domain, dashed domains guarantee that any links to your site will front-load Google's index with your most important keywords in close proximity to your link. My "buy-flowers-here.com" listing on Yahoo!'s directory still smells sweet since it's letting Google know both where I am and what I am. I'm at buy-flowers-here.com and I'm about buying flowers. There is active debate on Google forums about how much benefit keyword-packed domains offer. But there is enough evidence to suggest to many that it's worth it to dash their domains.

And what of searchers?
Perhaps the biggest continuing benefit of dashed domains is to the human searchers in the search equation. Remember them? Undashed multiple word domains are unnatural and unsightly. They are the norm only because computers didn't used to like spaces in file names and paths. Web geeks accept them because we've gotten used to them. But imagine how odd the convention must still seem to first time web users.

Dashless domains are so pre-sliced-bread. If a searcher's brain happens to scan my undashed domain as "buyf-lower-sheres", she's lost to me as a customer. I personally find my eye lands on strong word-like clusters in the middle of a domain and parses out from there. So my new hosting company becomes "futu-request" and a Sunday in January is transformed into an avian wonder: "superb-owl".

Next time you're scanning a search result page (for keywords other than your own!), take note of how quickly your eye skips over anything it cannot instantly parse. There's every chance your brain is disregarding as visual noise plenty of undashed domains while picking out individual words—and your target keywords—from space delimited content and dashed domains. Dashing a domain is the sliced bread of web marketing, as good for searchers as for search engine ranking.

Dashed domains may also be "the nude in the ice cubes" of internet marketing. Think of your Adword tile in the middle of seven others. Think of that searcher's mouse sliding down the right margin until something clicks. He might not even know what clicked or why. How much time did you spend honing the description copy, trying to fill it with trigger words, only to have it displayed in tiny grayed-out type? Wouldn't hurt to have a few extra keywords in the domain name—green and a few points bigger—to lure another click onto your site. Repeat that hundreds or thousands of times a day or month.

With those extra delimited keywords, will your ad be just that much more likely to register a connection in the searcher's brain? If not subliminally then maybe just not quite liminally. Just enough to produce more clicks from more customers your ad clicked with. Enough to bump your conversion rate up, and your ad up the column with it? Perhaps. Definitely worth considering, especially if you don't have the resources of the folks behind the tiles above you.

Branded or dashed?
Indeed, for many web marketers, from dot-com entrepreneurs to small businesses venturing on-line to affiliate site hobbyists, it's really an issue of resources. Building a brand simply isn't an option. They don't have the time to associate a catchy made-up name with some feel-good concepts. Especially not when people might feel just as good about them simply knowing what they do. "Buy-flowers-here.com" ain't sexy, but you know what you're getting—arguably even if it turns out to be an affiliate site.

Perhaps this is where some of the ire against dash-dash-dot domains comes from. It's the little guys without their branding agencies and with only with their do-it-yourself search marketing who have the most to gain with dashed domains. With a little cleverness and a dashed domain, they can jostle in beside the big names in the search results. So what of brand in a world of search?

The web is becoming more like a flea market everyday. Your listing on a search engine page—directories especially but also crawlers—is like your stall on a market aisle. You arrive early to claim a spot, but your location may change week-to-week. And when you don't move, even your most loyal customers may have trouble re-finding you in the maze.

The searcher's experience of searching, finding and acting (buying) is becoming more and more seamless. And the process seems to be less frequently mediated by a typed URL. In the melee of the search flea market, a dashed domain that simply names what you are may be more valuable than a branded domain. Sure, brands are easy to remember and type into a browser. But at what cost, when even those who start with a brand in mind are as likely as not to enter it in a search engine rather than the location bar?

At their heart, dash- and keyword-rich domains are an acknowledgment of the primacy of search. They may be untypable and unrememberable, but who types a domain any more? Besides the big brands maybe. For everyone else, there's search. Dashed domains—in their use and in the complaints against their use—are an acknowledgement that you can make it on the web today without anyone but you ever typing your domain.

Story by Cam Balzer
Source: Traffick.com

Ask Jeeves turns up heat in online-search battle

Ask Jeeves on Monday is set to announce upgrades to its Ask.com site as it moves to up the ante in its battle for the hearts and minds of Internet search users.

Ask Jeeves is among the Web-search shops working to woo new users and increase visibility in a market dominated by privately held Google, the Silicon Valley company behind a technological leap that made searching more effective and is credited for moving Web search into the mainstream.

Company executives said Ask Jeeves' "Smart Search" upgrade helps users more quickly and intuitively find what they seek on the Web by making it easier to tailor search queries for information, pictures, products or news.

According to recent research from Nielsen/NetRatings, the Web's top search destinations are Google, followed by Web portals run by Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL Time Warner. Google supplies search technology to AOL, Yahoo and others.

Ask Jeeves — the second-most popular search engine behind Google — is the No. 5 Web search destination.

Steve Berkowitz, Ask Jeeves' president of Web properties, told Reuters there is room for his firm and a couple others to thrive in the fast-moving Internet search market, where Yahoo recently snapped up search engine Inktomi and search-advertising firm Overture Services.

Berkowitz said Web search is still in its infancy and that the technology remains imperfect. As a result, he said, Ask Jeeves has worked to give Web searchers an alternative: "People like to access information in different ways. We've always taken the approach of not trying to out Google Google."

Industry analysts and other Google competitors say the technology gap between Google and its rivals is closing, and agree there is room for more than one Web search provider in the market.

While Web search technology itself is not a huge revenue driver, good search results help spur traffic to Internet sites and are a key factor behind revenues from advertising services that are linked to Web search results. Google and Overture both provide such advertising services and share revenue from them with partners such as AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN Internet services division.

Source: USA Today

Ask Jeeves upgrades its technology

Ask Jeeves is the latest search company to upgrade its technology and capabilities in an attempt to increase market share in the face of Google's domination.

Yahoo! for example, unveiled its latest search engine a few weeks ago, and search advertising firm Overture (Nasdaq: OVER) recently announced it will buy Alta Vista. The hunt for search supremacy is on.

Ask Jeeves' new Smart Search streamlines the searching process and its results. The technology will immediately provide images and news for search terms that it determines warrant such results, instead of users having to click another tab to see pictures or news. The site is also cleaner and, according to the company, loads 50% faster than it did previously.

Additionally, searchers will be able to more easily find out local information, such as movie show times and directions, with the new Ask Jeeves. A search for movie times, for example, will first return a zip code request, and then the desired information. Related search topics and clarification for searches have also been improved and expanded.

Ask Jeeves is the fifth-most popular search destination according to a February 2003 Neilsen/Net Ratings survey. The site had 13 million visitors and the average time spent there was 11 minutes per person. Google, on the other hand, enjoyed 40.3 million visitors and 25 minutes per person.

Ask Jeeves says it's not trying to replicate Google, but provide an alternative to the popular search engine instead. It believes there's room for several players in the market. When speaking with Reuters, President Steve Berkowitz said, "We've always taken the approach of not trying to out-Google Google."

That's a smart tactic, and if Ask Jeeves can effectively market itself, it just might work. The company, which has been around for six years, is profitable and provides search services for businesses in addition to its butler-branded site. It announces first-quarter results tomorrow afternoon, and is expected to earn $0.04 a share on sales of $23.25 million.

Source: Motley Fool.com

Microsoft prototype robot: search engine in the making

Microsoft Prototype Crawler (Robot) has been released. Microdoc News has seen the Microsoft Prototype Crawler in its logs.

While Googlebot busied itself in getting all five new pages that have been released since it last visited, the Microsoft Prototype Crawler made a single request and disappeared.

The Microsoft Prototype Crawl
This is what our log revealed about the Microsoft Prototype Crawler today:

Host: 131.107.163.48 Url: /2003/02/16.html Http Code : 200
Date: Apr 17 22:40:20 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 40139
Referer: - Agent: MicrosoftPrototypeCrawler
(please report obnoxious behavior to newbiecrawler@hotmail.com).

While Googlebot/2.1 and Slurp/cat were busily checking on the newest pages, Microsoft Prototype Crawler sampled one page, the article "Google Buys Pyra: Fuel for the Blogging World". It would be my guess that the new robot was following a link from another page. There are very few links from other sites to this page.

Microsoft has Google in its Sites
Since announcing their intention to be in competition with Google, this is the first sign of stirring in the Microsoft camp. However, this is interesting move. Microsoft is building and not buying. Being the business people they are and wanting to be in there as quickly as possible, Microsoft must think they have an advantage in building -- possibly some new technology, or a new take on what it means to search.

Assuming this new platform runs on Microsoft technology, there is going to be an interesting comparison between a Microsoft search engine and a Linux Search Engine (Google). Since we know Google has about 54,000 computers in what is a mammoth supercomputer made out of PC parts, it will be interesting to see how many NT Servers it takes to make a comparable search engine, or a better one than Google.

Source: Microdoc News

Convergence of search engines & Weblogs

With about 3 billion pages in its database, Google is the most comprehensive search engine today. With an ability to crawls approximately 150 million pages of the Internet a day Google can visit all of the 3 billion pages in about 20 days.

However, this is not how it works. Microdoc News comments on Grub and LookSmart initiative of building and operating a distributed crawler and identifies yet another step towards convergence of search engines and weblogs.

Grub: Distributed Crawling
Microdoc News registered and downloaded the Grub client. Microdoc News is one of 1096 clients running - crawling 47,840,029 URLs in the last 24 hours. Microdoc News assigned one computer on its network dedicated to Grub crawling. In the six hours so far, Microdoc News computer has crawled 12,750 URLs. 14% of these were changed, 73% were identified as unchanged and 5% of these URLs were down.

Microdoc News can see the benefits of distributed computing and the power each additional computer adds to the network -- we disagree with jimlog 2.0 where it was purported there that there would be little gained:

The big problem with this project is the bandwidth needed. With a non-distributed crawler, the pages have to be downloaded to the main servers just once. With a distributed crawler, they have to be downloaded at the client, and then uploaded to the server. Uploading to the server from the client is the same as having the server download the page in the first place. So the work is doubled. While it's possible to reduce the size of the data uploaded to the central server by parsing the web pages, to build an effective search engine you need all the data, so the client can't reduce the size much. For example, Google keeps the entire page intact. [Search: By the People, For the People at jimlog 2.0]

Microdoc News checked 75% of the sites and did not therefore have to communicate anything with the central Grub servers. It would seem that there is at least a 70% increment in power with each computer added to the network with an overhead of about 30% that needs to be carried by the central Grub servers.

Convergence of Weblogs and Search Engines
Weblog writing is a highly distributed activity, particularly when a weblogger hosts her/his weblog on a different server than a main hosting server. Grub is an example of crawling the web using a distributed model. Both are information management activities conducted using a distributed model.

Blogging, on the one hand, is a mechanism used by Google to good effect, to identify which parts of the Internet are considered important by readers of the web. Blogging is one of the mechanisms used by Google Inc. to identify what should be crawled more often, and which pages are important to those reading the web, as Peter Norving suggests:

"I want more clues about which page to look at rather than another page. . . "It isn't a problem of computing resources but deciding what parts of the Web should be updated more frequently than others," he said. [Wired News: Building a Bigger Search Engine].

Crawling could move towards a more distributed model as well. One of the important steps that has been glossed over to this point is Grub's "localized crawling" feature. This is where, I as both crawling agent and webmaster place a grub.txt file in the root of each of my websites. This is a clear pointer to a website that Grub has not had to locate. It is located for Grub by the distributed crawling agent. This is also a site that the webmaster/crawling agent wants to get listed in this new search engine.

Now you could have blogger and crawling agent as one and the same person. Get the word out that the best way to get you site listed is to actually also become a crawling agent . . . what is the potential? Every webmaster, every blogger, every person who wants to get traffic then has an incentive to be a crawling agent.

The next step is to build each crawling client so that it has a detection device on the machine it is hosted on to identify when new pages are added. A client, if you like, as it is most likely sitting on a machine that is also hosting a web site or blog site, becomes a distributed spy to detect when that site has pages that need updating.

Voting
To ensure that a webmaster does not hack the results and therefore get a better listing in the distributed system than otherwise, other bloggers sites need to provide information for scheduling the updating of my site. My client indicates there are new pages, the scheduling machine lists those pages as to be crawled soon, and according to the number of links pointing to that site that contains that page, the pages are listed to be crawled in order of link importance.

Now this is all conjecture and pulling ideas out of a hat, and some of it may never happen. This space, however, is a space to be watched. Convergence is happening now and going to be an exciting space of new things in the next months.

Source: Microdoc News

Yahoo wages loosing battle in Web search market

The local unit of Internet portal giant Yahoo has continued to lose strength in the search engine market, according to a survey. The survey, conducted by a popular online research service Ranky.com, found that an Internet portal NHN emerged as the most popular Web search tool with an average 3.72 million users a day, eclipsing Yahoo’s 3 million users.

``In just five years, NHN has become synonymous with online searches,’’ the survey said. Searching for information online is one of the most common uses of the Internet, and search engines are popular with online advertisers.

Since its debut in the domestic market, which has one of world’s most sophisticated Internet-user bases and a powerful broadband Internet structure, Yahoo had dominated the online search market.

Recently, however, Yahoo’s status as the leader in online search engines has been challenged because it has not designed business models that attract domestic Internet users. Unlike NHN, which has millions of online gaming subscribers, Yahoo’s Korean unit does receive royalties associated with gaming, the survey said.

Yahoo’s Korean unit did not comment when approached for comment on the survey. Meanwhile, the survey said Daum Communications ranked third with an average 1.79 million users a day and Empas.com, a privately owned Internet portal, came to fourth with 1.61 million users.

Recently, Internet portals have diversified their revenue streams using search engines driven by advertising.

Source: The Korea Times

New rule regulates search engines

China's Internet management agency yesterday moved to better regulate companies that provide website search services and ensure they meet basic technical standards.

The regulation, which was issued by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CINIC), aims to provide technical guidance for Internet companies in China collecting and storing website names in data banks. At present, dozens of Chinese Internet service companies provide website search services by key words using different technical standards.

The United States-based AOL and Microsoft have already carved out sizable market shares on the strength of their technical advantages. "Different service providers have different technical standards, which tends to cause inconvenience for Internet users," said CINIC director Mao Wei at yesterday's press conference publicizing the new regulation.

According to Chinese laws and regulations, website search engines can be provided by domestic or foreign Internet companies. "The situation could potentially undermine China's information security if we don't take measures to regulate these services," said Mao.

For example, some foreign companies have data banks of China's websites, giving them free access to any of those sites. In developed countries, website search services can only be provided by qualified companies that are approved by Internet management authorities.

"The technical regulation is our first step towards governing the service," said Mao. Six major domestic Internet companies, including Sohu and Huyi Information Resources, have signed up to the new rule. "The regulation aims to ensure all Internet service providers in China meet certain technical requirements," said Mao.

Source: The China Daily

Global search engines: China Web alliance takes on Google

Sina.com, one of the mainland's most popular Web sites, has joined about 200 Internet portals in a government-backed search engine alliance that challenges global giants such as Google.

The search engine--developed by the China Internet Information Centre and Chinese firm Sinobet in September last year--links to a database of more than 30,000 mainland portals, including most of China's key official news Web sites.

Analysts said demand for reliable search engines had soared in the mainland, especially as the authorities frequently blocked access to popular foreign sites such as Google and AltaVista. "Last year, when the Google's mainland access stopped working, that caused a major outcry from many Chinese users," said Gartner's Asia-Pacific research director, Dion Wiggins.

"They could do nothing about it. Google is a foreign company in a foreign country. This search engine is in China, managed by Chinese. There is more local control."

The mainland search engine, chinasearch.com.cn, is free for Internet surfers, but firms need to pay to be linked to the database. "There isn't much difference if you are an ordinary user," Sina Vice President Zhou Shuhua said. "It will only provide more choice, not less. We will provide additional links related to your search at the site of the browser."

With the new partnership, Sina hopes that more than 60 percent of users will use its search engine, compared with 10 percent now. The alliance hopes to achieve a 20 percent market share in the mainland this year. It denied being part of a government move to replace Google. A representative said the timing of Google's access problems and the launch of the search alliance "was a coincidence."

Source: ZD Net.com

Distributed computers power new search engine

A distributed computing project called Grub, which harnesses individual users' spare computing power and internet bandwidth, began cataloguing millions of web pages this week.

The project's home page says that in the last 24 hours over 36 million web pages have been catalogued by Grub software installed by users on about 1000 personal computers around the globe. Like SETI@home and other distributed computing projects, Grub runs in the background on a computer's spare capacity. It automatically trawls the web and collects details on thousands of pages per hour and returns this information to a central database. The Grub screen saver that displays the websites the program is scouring.

LookSmart, the US company behind Grub hopes that eventually the project could provide enough raw data to keep a comprehensive search engine up-to-date. The company believes the distributed service has the potential to one day rival Google, the web's most popular search service. Google's success is built on a different approach. It relies on huge banks of servers to catalogue the internet and uses yet more computing power to return search results to millions of users almost instantaneously.

Freely accessible
Website information collected by Grub is already being fed into one of LookSmart's search services, called WiseNut. But the collected data are also freely accessible to the public, so they can be incorporated into any web site or desktop application. Anthony Rowston, an expert in distributed computing at Microsoft's research laboratory in Cambridge, in the UK, told New Scientist: "Technically I can't see anything wrong with it." But he adds that, as there is no clear incentive to download the client, the service will depend on the good will of volunteers for its success.

Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, says the biggest challenge facing most search engines is choosing which pages to search rather than simply the need to search as many as possible. Google is thought to search over 150 million pages per day, but relies on other tricks to rank the significance of pages, such as the number of links between them. LookSmart has said Grub may eventually incorporate more advanced features like this.

Sullivan also raises concerns that the software could be manipulated to make searches favour particular sites over others. "I have more faith in companies that control their own crawl and index than I do in approaches that ask people to submit their own data," he told Wired News.

Source: New Scientist.com

WSPS search engine marketing success for GoJobSite

Gojobsite has a reputation for its search engine marketing. Jeremy Green, internet marketing manager explains why.

A major part of GoJobsite’s success has been attributed to its marketing strategy, which has used search engine marketing extensively. Jeremy Green, internet marketing manager at GoJobsite, “What makes us very different from our competitors is our focus on highly-targeted, highly effective online marketing to attract the right candidates to our advertised vacancies. This focus has been very successful helping us to deliver excellent cost-effective results for our clients.”

What were GoJobsite’s needs? GoJobsite was already regarded as a pioneer, having launched the service at an early stage in consumer use of the internet. As an internet-only company, GoJobsite realised very early on that it needed to be marketed online to attract potential users directly. The founders of the company have a background in recruitment, IT and technology, making them more aware and receptive to new processes and techniques. Rather than concentrating solely on banner advertisements, the decision was made in 1999 to investigate the nascent internet marketing technique known as pay-per-click (PPC) placement marketing on search engines.

Initially, the company decided to handle the bidding process by placing bids on keywords through a few search engines. The number of keywords was limited, as was the time available internally to carry out the bidding process. As GoJobsite expanded into other job sectors, the number of keywords had to be expanded too, reflecting the changing content of the site. With no official budget set for internet marketing, results were limited, but showed convincingly positive trends. However the marketing staff at GoJobsite were finding it difficult to allocate enough time to making bids on search engines; the manual element of the process was making it less worthwhile.

As a result, external agencies were hired to promote GoJobsite on the internet. However the company soon found that although the agencies’ understanding of some aspects of online marketing was good, they simply did not understand the new opportunities available to market the brand on search engines. GoJobsite found that agencies had inadequate comprehension of the market, and did not have the ability to regularly update bids on hundreds of keywords. As a result, the agencies were vastly over-spending, often leading to costs per conversion of up to £20.

With such costs escalating as GoJobsite continued to grow, it was decided that keyword bidding on search engines would be brought back to the internal marketing department. Dedicated staff were employed to make manual bids on all of the keywords, but this proved a monotonous and mundane task.

It was at this stage in 2001 that the internet marketing manager at GoJobsite, Jeremy Green, joined WAIM, the World Association of Internet Marketeers. Whilst at a forum of WAIM, Jeremy met Simon Conroy, the technical director of WSPS. Simon had previously chaired WAIM, and saw that WSPS could help the GoJobsite marketing team.

WSPS had recently introduced a program which automated the bidding for keywords, called BidBuddy. BidBuddy would allow GoJobsite to undertake complex search engine pay-per-click marketing campaigns involving a wide range of targeted keywords, by automatically updating bids by BidBuddy to ensure optimal positioning of GoJobsite on the search engines. This would save time and money, and eliminate the need for manual updates.

Jeremy Green explained, “The automatic bidding for keywords was particularly useful for GoJobsite, as the manual bidding had been the major time-consuming exercise when the PPC marketing campaigns were based in-house. WSPS could not only use BidBuddy to run a wide range of bids at once, but also work with us to help inform our keyword lists and strategies.”

How WSPS drives users to GoJobsite
Since WSPS started working with GoJobsite in the summer of 2001, the site usage has been monitored by ABC Electronic, the independent media auditors. Figures have shown that the site has maintained over one million visits a month since April 2001, and over 500,000 users since January 2002 – an unparalleled record in the UK online recruitment industry.

Jeremy Green explained, “We were immensely pleased with our growth during 2001 and 2002, which has put us in a market-leading position. We had a 40 per cent growth in site usage during 2002, and we can probably attribute a significant part of this to search engine marketing, run in partnership with WSPS.”

When a consumer searches for a particular company or service on an internet search engine, the initial results that appear on the screen are sponsored matches. WSPS’ first task was to research possible keywords which would be relevant to GoJobsite’s business. WSPS analysed keywords and phrases from previous PPC campaigns and compiled a list of core keywords and longer related key phrases. Some popular keywords cost more to bid on, but less popular ones cost less. By having a mixture of the two, the average bid price is kept low, ensuring the most effective use of the budget.

The next stage involved deciding an appropriate strategy for each keyword. This would outline for example the maximum allowable bid price, the most appropriate position within the results set. WSPS also needed to use BidBuddy to allocate automated bidding strategies to each keyword and phrase. This ensures optimum positioning in search engine rankings, whilst ensuring best use of budget.

Following organisation of BidBuddy’s strategies and approval from GoJobsite, the keywords were then uploaded to the main search engine keyword providers such as Espotting and Overture. Following their successful submission, WSPS’ BidBuddy bid management system checked and updated keyword campaigns throughout each day, in order to adjust bids against competitor activity in accordance with strategies laid down by GoJobsite. The results have been extremely positive, as shown by the ABCE audit figures.

Plans for the future
WSPS and GoJobsite work together closely to develop and customise the BidBuddy program to GoJobsite’s specific needs. As with all WSPS clients, the regular feedback from GoJobsite is crucial to the evolution of the service. WSPS and GoJobsite are pushing forward PPC marketing, developing new ways of driving buyers not just browsers, to companies’ web sites.

GoJobsite intends to continue using WSPS for the foreseeable future. Jeremy Green concluded, “We will continue search engine marketing for as long as search engines are the principal method of seeking out information on the internet; return on investment from our marketing budget has been high. Working with WSPS has been a pleasure from the start, we have increased brand awareness, and maintained our market-leading position.”

Source: www.GoJobsite.co.uk

Google's porn filters under fire

Children using Google's SafeSearch feature, designed to filter out links to Web sites with adult content, may be shielded from far more than their parents ever intended.

A report released this week by the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society says that SafeSearch excludes many innocuous Web pages from search-result listings, including ones created by the White House, IBM, the American Library Association and clothing company Liz Claiborne. The omissions occur because of the way Google designed the feature, which can be enabled or disabled through a preferences page. The feature uses a proprietary algorithm that automatically analyzes the pages and makes an educated guess, without intervention by Google employees.

That technique reduces the cost of the SafeSearch service, but it can lead to odd results. It's perhaps unlikely that many humans would have classified a BBC News report on East Timor, Mattel's site about its Scrabble game -- the URL includes the word "adults"--or the Nashville Public Library's teen health issues page as unsuitable for minors. Some articles from CNET News.com and CNET Software are also invisible to SafeSearch users. "If Google put some of its smart people on this task, they could do a much better job than they have so far," said Ben Edelman, the student fellow at the Berkman Center who performed the research. "They've got a lot of smart people. It would be shocking if their great engineers couldn't do better. The question is whether that's a priority for Google."

Google admits that the thousands of innocuous sites listed by the Berkman Center's report are invisible to SafeSearch users. But the company challenged the methodology of the study, saying that some of the sites are missing because their Webmasters employ a device called the "robots.txt" file, which is designed to limit automated Web crawlers in various ways. Such a file might, for example, ask Web crawlers not to visit a certain area of the site because repeated visits would slow down the server considerably. Social etiquette dictates that crawlers should obey a robots.txt file. Google chooses not to include pages that use such files in SafeSearch listings because its crawler can't explore the entire site and thus, the company says, can't be expected to judge the site's content.

Edelman said he was unaware of the robots.txt exclusion when he conducted the study, and revised his report on Thursday to include a discussion of the issue. The report was originally released Wednesday. Edelman said only 11.3 percent of the sites listed in his study are filtered because their Webmasters created robots.txt files. Those include sites from IBM, Apple Computer, the City University of New York, Groliers, and the Library of Congress. "It doesn't matter whether SafeSearch omits a site because the site has a robots.txt file or because SafeSearch is imperfect," Edelman said in an interview. "Either way, the site would have been relevant but disappears from results."

Some of the thousands of nonpornographic sites without robots.txt files that are filtered include offerings from the Vermont Republican Party, the Stonewall Democrats of Austin, a U.K. government site on vocational training and the Pittsburgh Coalition Against Pornography. News sites take a hit too, with articles from Fox News, Wired News, The Baton Rouge Daily News and some Web logs affected. Google argues that SafeSearch is designed to err on the side of caution. David Drummond, Google's vice president for business development, said: "The design was meant to be overinclusive. The thinking was that SafeSearch was an opt-in feature. People who turn it on care a lot more about something sneaking through than they do about something getting filtered out."

Drummond said that the list of off-limits sites is created "in an automated way" without human intervention. "It looks at keywords, it looks at certain words, the content of the page, the weighting of certain words that are likely to be found on something that's a bad site," Drummond said. An employee becomes involved when Google receives a complaint about a legitimate site that should have been visible or a pornographic one that was, Drummond added. Google is hardly alone in encountering problems when separating the wheat from the chaff on the Internet. In fact, filtering software is so problematic that Edelman, with Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain, has made something of a career out of documenting overblocking and underblocking flaws in the programs. A federal appeals court relied on that research when deciding that Congress' attempt to force filters on public librarians was unconstitutional. That decision is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

There seem to be few consistent patterns in SafeSearch's overblocking, but one that does appear is that Web pages about Edelman and other Harvard researchers who have written about filtering software's problems are blocked too. "It might be difficult for an AI (artificial intelligence-based) system to figure out that this is a site about regulating pornography on the Internet instead of actual pornography," Edelman said.

Google's "SafeSearch Help" carries this disclaimer: "While no filter is 100 percent accurate, Google's filter uses advanced proprietary technology that checks keywords and phrases, URLs and Open Directory categories...Google strives to keep the filtering information as current and comprehensive as possible through continual crawling of the Web and by incorporating updates from user suggestions."

Story by Declan McCullagh
Source: ZD Net

Seattle Times: competition increasing for Google

Four years ago, shortly after I'd written about a new search service called Google, a Microsoft manager called me for a briefing on MSN Search. "I don't know what the big deal is," he said at the time. "Google looks pretty much like a straightforward keyword search."

Microsoft, on the other hand, felt the key to searching was shopping. MSN would do standard searches, but its orientation was to help people to buy things. From a business standpoint, that made sense: MSN could gain revenue not only from advertising, but also by sorting clients' rankings in its searches.

Consider the irony, then, in a recent Reuters report saying that Microsoft was going to challenge Google's No. 1 search status. MSN Search is powerful, but no one talks about "MSN-ing" something to find out more about it.

MSN, as it turns out, is not the only newly announced pretender to Google's throne. Yahoo!, following its purchase of search engine Inktomi, recently said it would try to take back its early reputation as the Web's best search provider. And Overture's recent acquisition of the first really good Web search utility, AltaVista, gave indication that its hat is in the ring, too. This is a lot of strange bedfellows. Google has been Yahoo's search provider, and Inktomi has been a longtime Microsoft provider. The musical chairs reinforce the notion that the act of searching isn't the key value of a search engine anymore.

No one is going to outdo Google by offering faster or more intuitive returns. Instead, the pairing of search with content is where the real mother lode lies. Despite its brand recognition and prowess, Google has growing vulnerabilities that its rivals rightly perceive. The first has to do with real-time searching. When significant news happens, the Web is the obvious place to turn for constant updates. Google is great at listing and prioritizing hits but usually has a lag time of a day or two.

Google has tried to address this deficiency by running breaking-news links with searches. But they are not comprehensive and lack Google's intuitive prioritization. Yahoo, on the other hand, offers one of the Web's best news services, especially on sports. It would seem like a simple step to offer a search utility that would give you the current on-field action, say, of a Mariners game.

Google's recent acquisition of Pyra and Blogger, its tool for Web logs, suggested that it understands its users' thirst for real-time content. Web loggers tend to be great news-linkers and will update their journals several times a day during fast-breaking events. Aside from news, the Web is becoming an ever-richer source for music, video and even movies. It makes sense that when a user does a search on "Purple People Eater," a link (or, better yet, several links listing pricing, etc.) to download the song should be at the top of the heap.

It's doubtful that search providers will ever own much entertainment content, although in the case of music it might make an interesting experiment for Google to "sign" a few bands and see where the searches lead. My guess is that search providers will partner with content sites. Amazon.com and Google announced a pairing recently that could be particularly powerful, as would, say, an MSN-RealNetworks alliance (talk about strange bedfellows!). In any case, search's role in connecting buyer with vendor might be described as the "new advertising." Certainly connecting a Thunderclap Newman searcher with a download for "Something In The Air" makes a lot more sense than running big banner ads on "Greatest Oldies" in hopes some Web users will click.

As someone who has written about Google's ingenuity and brilliance on the one hand, and the dangers of a single controlling search utility for the Web on the other, I'm encouraged by the sudden competition. I was surprised, however, by some sources who more or less dismissed MSN's comments as me-tooism. In the marriage of search with content, money will talk. And who has the loudest cash balance of all?

Story by Paul Andrews
Source: Seattle Times

Yahoo rolls out revamped search features

Internet media company Yahoo Inc., faced with stiff competition in the search arena, in some cases from its own partners, Monday unveiled a revamped set of products intended to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Yahoo, which recently completed the acquisition of search infrastructure company Inktomi Corp., has made no secret of its desire to control its destiny in search services, where sites like Google have increasingly pressured it.

"Commoditization of search is big business," Jeff Weiner, Yahoo's senior vice president of search and online marketplace products, told Reuters.

Yahoo's goal for the new products remains the same as always -- to boost users and revenue from Internet queries -- and Weiner was quick to deny the changes are a direct assault on Google's market share.

The new setup, however, includes a number of Google-like features, including a more tightly integrated image search and small boxed text ads on the right side of the page.

Source: Forbes.com

New test of search engine relevance

VeriTest has made a test of search engine result relevance for the Inktomi search engine company. The goal of the testing was to compare the relative quality of the top 10 web documents returned by Inktomi, Google, Wisenut, Fast, Teoma and AltaVista. The result listings were judged according to certain relevancy guidelines.

Weighted results show that Inktomi and Google are very close as regards content relevance, while the others lag somewhat behind. The study found, however, that the rate of acceptable documents fell more rapidly in positions two through ten for WiseNut, Teoma, AltaVista and Fast AlltheWeb than it did for Inktomi and Google. We have not been able to control the test results. In any case, quality testing of search results is a very difficult task, indeed. Nevertheless, it seems that VeriTest has done its best to obtained balanced results.

That being said, it is interesting to note that VeriTest did a survey for Google in 2000, where Google came out on top. In the Webmaster World discussion forum, the Google representative, GoogleGuy, points out that when AltaVista commissioned eTesting Labs/VeriTest to compare search engines, AltaVista was judged the most relevant (2000).

Anyone who has worked in marketing and politics knows that the trick is not to lie, but to find the indicators that tell your story. The most interesting thing about this study is not that Inktomi comes out on top, but that all of the search engines are so close. Obviously the non-Google segment of this industry has done a lot to catch up with the world leader.

Yahoo! is clearly contemplating a switch from Google to Inktomi at their search site. This is the kind of report that might strengthen such a resolve.

Source: Pandia

Google News tries to separate PR, News

Search engine Google Inc. is trying to change the way its News page handles press releases, after some releases appeared on the site without being marked as such.

Users can search Google News for recent stories from 4,500 news sites. Two months ago, the site started including press releases among the search results. Releases culled from PR Newswire and Business Wire, the major distributors of releases in the United States, are marked as such on Google.

However, as first reported by British Web site The Register, releases appearing on sites like Yahoo! News, Seafood.com, and Semiconductor Business News were not marked in search results Thursday. Nathan Tyler, a spokesman for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, said that the listing of unmarked press releases was "not intentional," and that the company was working to ensure that all press releases are marked.

"Google includes press releases in Google News because we believe they are an additional resource that offers our users a valuable perspective on the genesis of a story," Tyler said. He noted that press releases only rarely show up on the front news pages of the site, which are built without human intervention by what is essentially a robot news editor.

Google News was launched in September.

Source: Yahoo News

Overture joins Scumware company Gator

The Overture pay-per-click text ad company has signed an agreement with "scumware" deliverer Gator. Kalena Jordan of High Search Engine Ranking and other search engine optimization providers are mighty upset about Overture's move.

Gator's SearchScout program will deliver eight to ten Overture pay-per-click text ads in a pop-under window when a Gator user does a search on a selected keyword or phrase associated with those listings. Yes, the new windows will pop up even if you do a search at Google. This function follows when you download other types of software from Gator, which from an ethical viewpoint is questionable.

The main problem for search engine marketers, however, is that regular Overture pay-per-click ads may pop up in this fashion. Companies buy Overture ads to be included in MSN, Yahoo! and other serious search sites and portals, not to be associated with Gator and irritating pop-ups. In Kalena's words: "That's right - now thousands of blissfully ignorant Overture advertisers will have their ads appear in annoying pop-ups and pop-unders, courtesy of Gator's obnoxious Search Scout software - software that preys on unsuspecting Internet surfers by installing itself onto their computers, usually without their knowledge."

How does Overture feel about this? "This is a great opportunity to get more clicks to more advertisers," says Paul Schulz , Overture's senior vice president of marketing according to News.com. "Gator's been innovative in understanding a terrific opportunity in search--they are a strong player in the adware market, and it's an attractive channel for search." In a reply to Kalena Jordan, Overture says that before the company entered into this agreement, they "carefully evaluated Gator's practices and determined that its strict operating guidelines around permission, disclosure and attribution provide a high-quality user experience."

In spite of this many Gator users tell Pandia that they were not asked whether they wanted to install search generated pop-ups when downloading Gator software. And no, we are not going to try! It seems that Overture has become to obsessed with the number of profitable click-throughs (after all, they are paid per click-through), instead of the credibility of the advertising venue.

It does matter where your ad appears. If you are promoting a feminist manifesto, you will probably not like to see your ad in Playboy. As long as the advertisers cannot choose not to get their ads distributed by Gator, many of them will have to abandon Overture. Overture is not the only pay-per-click company associated with such software. FindWhat apparently delivers ads to the WhenU desktop software.

Google, on the other hand has ended their syndication relationship with a similar company called Xupiter, which means that they become the natural alternative for especially American advertisers.

Source: Pandia

Internet search engines: Google in the crosshairs

When you're so good at what you do that your brand becomes a verb, the competition starts to notice, big time. User-search engine Google is in this predicament, as both Yahoo! and Microsoft are trying to cash in on search products of their own.

A Nielsen/Net Ratings study from February 2003, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal, found that Google attracts more users than either Yahoo! Search or Microsoft's MSN Search, and that those visitors hang out longer on Google's site. An estimated 40.3 million users logged on to Google for the month, versus 36.5 million for Yahoo! and 35.1 million for MSN. Google visitors stuck around for 25 minutes, compared to 11 minutes for Yahoo! and eight minutes for MSN.

Given those disparities, Yahoo! and Microsoft see an opportunity to take market share from Google. Bob Visse, director of marketing for MSN, said last week that Microsoft "... view(s) Google more and more as a competitor." And although Google has actually powered Yahoo!'s searches for some time, Yahoo! signaled its desire to control the search game when it bought search infrastructure company Inktomi in December 2002.

Today, Yahoo! unveiled its new and improved search engine, which is supposed to better connect Yahoo!'s various services, such as news, weather, and local directory listings. The technology delves into Web pages and extracts information for users, much like Google does, rather than just answering a search request with a list of URLs. Registered Yahoo! visitors can also customize results, as on Google. Yahoo! will still make money off sponsored search results.

Microsoft's plans are more embryonic. The software giant is investing heavily in improving its search capabilities, but nothing concrete has been announced. When Microsoft calls you out as a competitor, though, you better believe it means business.

Google has smartly remained mum about Yahoo!'s and Microsoft's search plans. Surfers trust Google to give them the best results possible, and "Googling" has become an entrenched part of many users' experience. Convincing them that Yahoo! and Microsoft can offer the same or better results will require a significant shift in thinking. Any huge market share gains by either Microsoft or Yahoo!, then, will likely be a long time coming.

Article by LouAnn Lofton
Source: www.fool.com

Yahoo rolls out revamped search features

Internet media company Yahoo Inc., faced with stiff competition in the search arena, in some cases from its own partners, Monday unveiled a revamped set of products intended to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Yahoo, which recently completed the acquisition of search infrastructure company Inktomi Corp., has made no secret of its desire to control its destiny in search services, where sites like Google have increasingly pressured it.

"Commoditization of search is big business," Jeff Weiner, Yahoo's senior vice president of search and online marketplace products, told Reuters.

Yahoo's goal for the new products remains the same as always -- to boost users and revenue from Internet queries -- and Weiner was quick to deny the changes are a direct assault on Google's market share.

The new setup, however, includes a number of Google-like features, including a more tightly integrated image search and small boxed text ads on the right side of the page.

Source: Forbes.com

Scandinavian portal company chooses Google instead of Fast

Eniro is further strengthening its position as the leading online media company in Northern Europe. Eniro has signed an agreement with Google, the leading provider of web search services, concerning the European markets.

The co-operation involves mainly two areas:

- Eniro's general search solutions will be based on Google's search technology, web indexing and image search.

- Evaluation of future business opportunities, including search and advertising services.

Eniro has taken several important steps towards strengthening its position on the Internet market. Continuous expansion of markets, in addition to establishing new online services as well as developing and refining the company's search services and products, are a few examples of this. Through the acquisition of Scandinavia Online (SOL), Eniro obtained access to an established IT infrastructure as well as to in-depth knowledge within IT applications and search functionality. Today, Eniro is the leading company regarding directional services online in Northern Europe, with more than 600 million searches annually, and one of Europe's leading providers of search-related services online.

"Eniro's quality will be further improved. For all of Eniro´s users, this means that it will be even easier to find what they are looking for. In combination with our locally produced content, the cooperation with Google means that Eniro's Internet search service will be the most comprehensive alternative for everyone searching the web", says Lars Guldstrand, President and CEO Eniro AB.

"Through this important partnership with the Nordic leading online media company, Google will provide Eniro users with its fast, comprehensive, and relevant search results to help them find the information they are looking for", says Omid Kordestani, Google´s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations.

"This is the beginning of a partnership to provide the best search experience to users of Eniro in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland", says Omid Kordestani.

In April, there will be a successive exchange to Google from Eniro's existing web index. The change will start in the Nordic region, the countries affected by this are Sweden (evreka.com), Denmark (eniro.dk), Norway (kvasir.no) and Finland (suomi24.fi).

Source: Eniro AB

Microsoft says to take aim at Google

Microsoft Corp., the world's No. 1 software maker, on Wednesday said it is taking aim at privately held Google Inc., the Web-search company that's so popular its name is used as a verb.

"We do view Google more and more as a competitor. We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience. That's something that we're actively looking at doing," Bob Visse, director of marketing for Microsoft's MSN Internet services division, said.

Visse said the company was making some significant investments in developing a better search engine. But the company has not offered specific plans.

Microsoft would not be the first Web portal provider to step into the Web search segment. Last month, Internet media company Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) closed its $235 million purchase of Internet-search company Inktomi Corp.

Microsoft has said its been searching for ways to capitalize on its various technologies, for example data retrieval and analysis, by entering new markets. It has also targeted security software.

Google, the No. 1 Web-search provider, has become so pervasive that it is not uncommon for people to refer to searching the Internet as "googling."

A Google representative could not be immediately reached for comment.

Google has been seen as a top IPO candidate despite a lagging economy, but a company co-founder recently told attendees at a high-tech conference that going public is not on the front burner for the Silicon Valley company.

Source: Yahoo News.com

Google licenses web search & sponsored links to Amazon

Amazon.com signed a multi-year deal to make Google Inc.'s Web-searching technology and sponsored links available on the Internet retail site.

Terms weren't disclosed and officials of both companies were unavaliable early Thursday. Amazon said in a press release that Google's sponsored links and Web-search functions will become available on Amazon.com in the next several months, giving customers the ability "to conduct research across the Web."

Amazon noted that some sponsored links are now available on some parts of its site. Amazon said partner Web sites of closely held Google, Mountain View, Calif., have opportunities for generating revenue through sponsored links from Google's worldwide network of more than 100,000 advertisers.

Story by Tim Paradis
Source: Dow Jones Newswires

Overture signs deal with Gator

Overture Services has signed a three-year deal with Gator to display its sponsored search listings on pages that pop under those of rival and partner Web sites.

The pay-for-performance search company has been testing a partnership with Gator's online advertising and information network (GAIN) for several months. In the last week, the company committed to a lengthy deal to distribute sponsored listings from its advertising network onto Gator's new paid search product, Search Scout.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Like previous products from Gator, Search Scout allows advertisers to reach members of the Gator network when they are visiting competitors' sites--a feature that has already drawn lawsuits in the context of banner and pop-up advertising. Gator's Search Scout, launched in December, triggers a pop-under window when a Gator customer searches on a site such as Google or Yahoo. The window lists search results tied to keywords purchased through competing search services.

The deal turns up the heat on a rivalry between Google and Overture--two of the dominant forces in one of the Web's hottest marketing sectors. In particular, it gives Overture access to visitors of its chief competitor and it helps the company broaden its own advertising search network onto a new platform.

"This is a great opportunity to get more clicks to more advertisers," said Paul Schulz, Overture's senior vice president of marketing. "Gator's been innovative in understanding a terrific opportunity in search--they are a strong player in the adware market, and it's an attractive channel for search."

Overture and Google, the two top companies in the marketplace, get paid when people click on an advertiser's listing in related search results. That money is shared with distribution partners, such as Yahoo or Microsoft's MSN, that display those search results. Because the formula has proven lucrative for all parties involved, competition to expand search advertising into new arenas is fast and fierce, with Google and Overture announcing new partnerships almost weekly. On Thursday, Google signed a deal with Amazon.com to provide Web and commercial search results to the online shopping site.

Gator's new service adds a twist to the search market by adding another layer to the desktop to display sponsored search results. In addition, for Search Scout, Gator draws on search results from Overture rivals Terra Lycos, FindWhat.com and eSpotting. The company said it may add other partners in the future.

"We're excited to expand our relationship with Overture and begin providing their results to Search Scout's millions of users," said Scott Eagle, chief marketing officer of Gator. "Our decision to make Overture a premier partner was based on their market-leading product quality as well as their ability to help us maximize search monetization."

Redwood City, Calif.-based Gator delivers pop-up and pop-under ads to millions of people who agree to receive ads in exchange for use of Gator's online wallet software or other popular applications such as Kazaa or DivX compression technology, which bundle the GAIN network into their own download.

Gator says it has about 35 million active users on the GAIN network and Gator wallet software, with about 600 advertisers targeting messages to those people, often at times when they're visiting rival sites.

Gator's practices and those of its advertisers have drawn much controversy in Internet publishing and e-commerce circles, sparking numerous lawsuits, including those from shipping company United Parcel Service, news agency The New York Times and direct marketer L.L. Bean. In February, it settled its suit with publishers, including The Washington Post, The New York Times and Dow Jones. Terms of the agreement were made strictly confidential.

Search experts have criticized Gator's Search Scout for its potential to alienate Overture's established advertisers, as well as those of other search providers. Because advertisers of Overture and other services expect to reach people contextually through search--for instance, when they are in a particular mindset--they could be disappointed to realize that they are delivering pop-under ads that people often open well after the fact.

Gator and Overture say that the numbers prove otherwise, however. Despite the indirect communication with consumers via a pop-under ad, "clicks"--the number of times people respond to the listings--on the Search Scout page are "at or above a network average" on Overture, which is to say in the double digits, according to Schulz. Gator's Eagle said that click-throughs can get as high as between 11 percent and 19 percent for specific keywords, including financial services or personals.

"What I like about it is that pop-unders are unobtrusive--they don't interrupt users when they're on a particular site, and you're really only clicking on those results if you haven't found what you're looking for," Schulz said.

Story by Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Google News: Press releases are OK

Pay attention: you may not think of Coca Cola, the Microsoft Corporation or the RIAA as legitimate news organizations, but Google News thinks so. It's redefined the term "news" so that press releases from corporate sites or lobby groups are acceptable content for the "automated" news harvester, Google confirmed to The Register today.

We say "automated" in inverted commas, because someone has to make decisions about what's acceptable - that's a human choice. And the choices that this human makes - for this he or she is very real - give us some interesting news clusters. There you have it: the RIAA is bona fide news organization. Maybe it deserves to join a guild, or qualify for 'embedded status' with the military in Iraq?

Tonight we found a Monsanto Company press release. and one from Exxon-Mobil corporation entitled "Avial Selects Exxon Elite Engine Oil for Use in its Husky and Pitts Aircraft") - how is this news? It's even more boring than CNET, whose distinctive headline style it attempts to emulate. But wait - guess who scooped the top lead in the business section? Phillip Morris!

Incredibly, a search for "cluster bombs" on Google News yielded five stories, and four of them were press releases. Only one was a "news story". These last three examples, unlike the RIAA release, take the reader to what Yahoo! calls "Yahoo! News". But they are genuine press releases, comfortingly free of the authentication, or scepticism, or context that a real news organization might add.

A spokesman finally explained:- "We use press releases, but generally we don't lead with them." But why use press releases at all? "We like to cover a broad range of opinion," he said. On Thursday we reported that an A-List of tech webloggers had changed the semantic meaning of the word "second superpower", which had been spreading in use by the antiwar movement and NGOs. Now Google has changed the semantic meaning of the word "news", to include press releases.

What word will change next? Tools you can trust? Transparency in the instruments we use is vital, to ensure the integrity of the system. So we need to know how these editorial decisions are made.

Fortunately, Google has promised to do a very rare thing: and actually publish its guidelines for what it considers as a news site in written form. To date, the rules have been vague and verbal (we were offered a verbal version several times today, but insisted on something in writing); and meanwhile, we are expected to be distracted by this soothing statement:- "The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program. "

No they weren't. This isn't some synthetic version of reality created entirely by robots. The selection and placement of stories were determined by a person, someone who thinks unedited press releases from lobbyists, special interest groups or corporations are "News". We will learn of these guidelines on Monday, and share them with you the moment we receive this historical document. We'll also be speaking to a Google representative.

Source: The Register.co.uk

New version of the AlltheWeb search engine

There is a new version of the AlltheWeb search engine. This has apparently nothing to do with the fact that Overture is to take over AlltheWeb from Fast.

In January AlltheWeb introduced true Boolean searching. This time the changes are more cosmetic. There is a leaner front page with a new color palette. The result pages have been simplified and the banner ads have been removed.

Search engine marketers would probably find the "AlltheWeb URL Investigator" interesting. By entering the Web address (URL) of a site into the search box the results will tell you who owns the domain, what language the site is written in, its sub domains and size, the date it was last updated, and a link to see how the site looked in the past.

AlltheWeb will for instance give the following data for a search for "www.alltheweb.com": Find all 3,204,867 external web pages that link to "www.alltheweb.com"

And no, AlltheWeb has not introduced a cache feature similar to the one at Google. The "used to look" link goes to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Source: Pandia

European search engine Kartoo given a radical facelift

European metasearch engine Kartoo has been given a radical face lift, presenting a dark blue and (we normally do not use such terms for search engine interfaces) beautiful interface.

While most other search sites including AlltheWeb (see below) presents stripped down text oriented designs that loads fast in any browser, Kartoo has decided to make use of the most advanced presentation technology. Flash included.

Kartoo is a visually "field" oriented search engine that presents results graphically. The sites found are like islands in an ocean of various search topics. You may click on these islands to get to the sites, or you may click on a topic to rephrase your search. Click on a plus sign and the term is added to your query, click on a minus and it is excluded from the results.

Experts have shown that perception is facilitated considerably by visual aids. Furthermore, quite a large percentage of surfers are said to be visually oriented. These surfers may find the text oriented search engines confusing, but might feel right at home with engines like Kartoo.

Note, however, that due to the use of advanced graphics, Kartoo may be a bit slow on some machines. Those of you who are more text oriented will find the sites and the search terms find in the left hand column of the result pages as well.

Source: Pandia

Search engines referrals nearly double worldwide

Search Engines Continue to be an Important Method For Discovering New Sites and Content

SAN DIEGO, CA — WebSideStory, Inc., the creators of HitBox, today reported that the percentage of search engine referrals worldwide has increased significantly over the past year. As of Thursday, March 6, 2003, search sites accounted for more than 13.4 percent of global referrals, up from 7.1 percent the previous year, according to WebSideStory’s StatMarket division (www.statmarket.com), a leading source of data on global Internet user trends.

StatMarket aggregates information from the millions of daily Internet users who visit sites using WebSideStory’s award-winning HitBox marketing analytics services. HitBox, among hundreds of live, interactive reports, shows exactly how visitors and customers arrive at a Web site, including specific URLs, keywords, search engines, e-mail campaigns and other marketing initiatives.

“People are more efficient in their Web use,” said Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing for StatMarket. “The trend is that they either navigate directly to a Web site they already know, or use a search engine to find a new one.”

Although the global average has increased worldwide, search engine referral percentages can vary between countries. For example, search sites in the United States accounted for over 15 percent of all referrals (up front 8 percent a year ago), while the United Kingdom had a search referral percentage of almost 18 (up from 11.5 percent the year before).

Source: Web Side Story

Yahoo announces completion of its acquisition of Inktomi

Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, and Inktomi Corp., a leading Web search provider, today announced the completion of Yahoo!'s acquisition of Inktomi.

"Bringing together a powerful combination of Yahoo!'s global audience and unmatched breadth and depth of services with Inktomi's leading search technology, will allow us to create one of the most relevant, comprehensive and highest quality search offerings on the Web for both our affiliate partners and Yahoo!," said Terry Semel, Yahoo! chairman and CEO.

"The acquisition enables Yahoo! to integrate Inktomi's world-class technology throughout the network as well as offer more value to consumers and businesses through programs such as paid inclusion, which provide higher-quality commercial search results," Semel added.

"We are very excited about gaining direct access to the end-product so that we can continue to improve and innovate Yahoo!'s leading search platform based on a clear understanding of consumer needs," said Vishal Makhijani, Inktomi vice president and general manager of Web search. "Results of a recent consumer blind test we conducted have already shown that Inktomi's search relevancy rates among the highest in the industry."

As a result of the merger, which was completed on March 19, 2003, each outstanding share of Inktomi common stock (other than shares for which appraisal is sought under Delaware law) has been converted into the right to receive $1.65 per share in cash. Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota, the Paying Agent for the merger, will within the coming week mail transmittal materials to Inktomi stockholders as of the merger date. Inktomi stockholders should not submit stock certificates unless accompanied by these transmittal materials.

About Inktomi
Based in Foster City, Calif., Inktomi is the leading provider of OEM Web search and paid inclusion services. A pioneer in Web search technology, Inktomi provides millions of users worldwide with the freshest and most relevant search experience, and ensures that thousands of online retailers have their content constantly represented. The company's customers and partners include Amazon.com, eBay, Lycos/HotBot, MSN, Overture and WalMart.com.

About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages.

Source: Yahoo! press release

Google joins with Daum for Internet search

Popular online search engine site Google is forging an alliance with Daum Communications, the nation’s biggest online portal as part of its move to challenge the domestic online search engine market where domestic companies, such as NHN and Empas, dominate.

Daum plans to launch an upgraded search engine, which offers better search services this month to local Internet users. ``To improve Daum's online search engine, we selected Google as our partner,’’ said Lee Soo-hyung, chief of the company’s online search engine division.

``Through integration of the world's best search engine with Daum's rich Internet contents, we are able to offer the best search service,’’ he said. Omid Kordestani, Google's senior vice president of worldwide sales and field operations, said Daum subscribers would benefit from its fast and comprehensive search results.

``With this partnership, we will be able to increase Google's exposure in Korea, one of the most important internet markets in Asia,’’ Omid Kordestani said. Google has introduced a new program that allows Web sites to be displayed more prominently by paying more money _ an advertising-driven system derided by critics as an invitation to deceptive business practices.

The system lets Web sites raise their bids to increase their chances for higher placement on the section of Google's site that's devoted to sponsored links. Currently, Google offers a Korean-language online search engine service, but it is an experimental service remotely run by the company’s U.S. headquarters.

Daum boasts of 34 million registered subscribers with two million online communities. Daum users view an average of 400 million pages a day. For the third quarter of 2002, Daum passed a break-even point and posted record earnings in the fourth quarter on the back of growing sales in online retailing.

In 2002, online shopping transactions topped six trillion won, up more than 80 percent from 2001 on growing Internet purchases of home appliances, computers, cosmetics and clothes, according to the Ministry of Information and Communication. Daum’s operating profit reached 6.9 billion won for the fourth quarter of 2002 on sales worth 77.1 billion won.

Article by Kim Deok-hyun
Source: The Korea Times

Search engines picking up steam

Mixing ads in with search results is paying off, and the big players are jostling to gain from the surge.

When GoTo.com went public in June, 1999, it barely blipped on the radar screen. The obscure Web-search company -- since renamed Overture Services Inc. (OVER )-- was valued at about 3% of Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ) Sure, search engines helped surfers locate Web pages.

By typing a few words -- Red Sox, Fenway, parking, for example -- a user might locate a lot near the ball park. But could Overture's searches make money? When Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Henry Blodget began covering GoTo in January, 2001, a client asked what was interesting about it, besides investment-banking fees for Merrill. Blodget's tart e-mail reply: "Nothin'."

Wrong. Actually, the Pasadena (Calif.) outfit was hatching a business model that is now resuscitating the Internet advertising business. In 1998, Overture was the first to charge advertisers to be listed in its search results. Now, all the major search companies have jumped in. So-called paid-search revenue grew 40% last year, to $1.4 billion. It's now up to 23% of the $6 billion Net advertising market, which shrank 17% last year, according to analysts' projections. U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray forecasts that search-related revenues, mostly from advertising, will grow 43% this year, to $2 billion. "This is an enormous opportunity," says Jeff Weiner, senior vice-president for search at Yahoo.

Placing ads near search results offers the simple appeal of the Yellow Pages, but with different economics. Search-engine companies such as Overture, Google, Ask Jeeves (ASKJ ), and LookSmart (LOOK ) charge most advertisers by the click. These ads can be presented among the search results, looking like any of the other Web links that have been rounded up. That's known as paid inclusion. More often, other search-related ads are featured as "sponsored listings" at the top or side of the search results. Advertisers say that search-related ads, whether overt or camouflaged, attract far more interest than regular scattershot Internet ads. Why so? They give people what they're already looking for.

Search advertising is also cheap. At an average of 35 cents a click, paid search undercuts the $1-per-lead average for Yellow Pages ads. The money is split between the portal, which generates the traffic, and its search-advertising provider. When a user clicks a search-related ad on Yahoo, for example, Overture keeps 14 cents and sends 21 cents to Yahoo. Pete Howard, vice-president for marketing at Staples.com, says the return on search-engine marketing "outpaces everything in print or online."

Changes in Internet usage also power this trend. As Web surfers grow more sophisticated, they focus on specific tasks, such as checking mail or finding a recipe. More are using search engines to hurry through their to-do lists. The percentage of Web site visitors who arrived via search engines nearly doubled in the past year, to 13%, says analytics firm WebSideStory. Increasingly, says Jupiter Research analyst Gary Stein, "people are tuned out on banner ads and tuned in to search results."

All this has fueled profits. Overture made $78 million last year on $668 million in sales, about half of the paid-search market. That's more than Yahoo made on $953 million of revenue, largely from traditional online ads such as banners. Paid search also pushed search specialists LookSmart Ltd. and Ask Jeeves Inc. into profitability in the fourth quarter. And the biggest potential initial public offering of an Internet company this year is Google Inc., which began offering pay-per-click search last year. Piper Jaffray's Safa Rashtchy says search ads will make up the lion's share of Google's revenue, which he estimates at $350 million to $400 million.

No wonder Internet companies are beginning to fight over this market. Search kings Overture and Google are grappling for leverage -- with Google looking stronger, thanks to its immensely popular Web site and much-ballyhooed search technology. But search specialists don't have the market to themselves. Internet portals such as Yahoo, MSN, and America Online (AOL ), which now split the spoils of paid search with search companies, are out for a bigger hunk of the pie. The wild card is cash-flush Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ), whose MSN online service looms as a potential acquirer of Overture, or even Google.

In the early days of the Net, pundits thought surfers would scoff at mixing advertising with search results. Instead, they're seeing shoppers and advertisers in sync because up to 35% of searches are for products or services. "You're finding a customer who's looking for Las Vegas hotels. You can't find a more qualified buyer," says Jason Pruismann, promotions director at Travelocity.com

Now, search engines and Web portals are jostling to gain from this surge. The keys to success are search technology, a big base of advertisers, and millions of loyal Web site visitors. Yahoo boasts the biggest audience, Overture the most advertising, and Google has the leading search technology. But the balance of power is shifting fast. All the major players are busy building or buying the pieces they're missing. In December, Yahoo bought search outfit Inktomi Corp. for $235 million, beefing up its technology. In February, to get its hands on search technology, Overture snapped up also-ran search engine AltaVista Co. and the Internet-search division of Oslo's Fast Search & Transfer for a total of $240 million.

That same month, Google snapped up Pyra, a maker of software for personal Web pages known as Weblogs. This could extend Google's reach to new frontiers, from pop journals to quantum physics. Google is building its own search technology in-house -- and for now is sitting pretty. Its popular Google.com Web site draws 39 million unique visitors a month, the fourth-highest on the Net. It doesn't share search revenue from its own site with anyone. That lets Google make more money than Overture, even though analysts believe it has less than half of Overture's revenue.

And Overture is facing a squeeze from the portals. Partners like MSN and Yahoo now demand about 63% of what advertisers pay Overture, up from 51% in late 2001. Those increases, together with expanded spending on technology, will mean a 50% fall in profits this year, analysts say -- to $39 million on $1 billion in sales. But Overture has no plans to try to generate ad revenues by turning its own Web site into a major destination for surfers à la Google. "We have no intention of competing with our partners," says Overture CEO Ted Meisel.

Yahoo and MSN are the best-positioned portals in search. Yahoo's acquisition of Inktomi gives it technology to build its own paid-search services. It's committed to carrying Overture's paid-listings ads through April, 2005. MSN has been partnering with several search providers, including Inktomi, LookSmart, and Overture. Though MSN won't discuss it, analysts expect the portal to buy search capabilities. "We'll have more clarity in six months," says Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker. "There's a lot of activity because there are very high stakes." Now that's a welcome change for the battered Web advertising business.

Article by Ben Elgin in San Mateo, Calif., and Timothy J. Mullaney in New York.
Source: Business Week Online

The changing face of search engines

Ken Abbott knows the ins and outs of search engine marketing: Dollars for clicks are in, directory listings are out.

Abbott, head of Web marketing for Integramed.com, which sells infertility treatments, considers obtaining an editorial listing in Yahoo's directory "a waste of time," given that 95 percent of his site's traffic comes from pay-per-click advertising in search networks Overture and Google.

"I paid for reviews with all the directories at the beginning of my marketing initiative (in 1999), but being in a directory is meaningless now unless you can rank on the first page," he said. "I have complete control with pay-per-click advertising--I can get to the top, I control the headline and message--whereas with a directory listing, it's what (Yahoo editors) decide to write."

Once the primary road signs to navigating the Internet, directories have moved to the shoulder. They are being displaced by algorithmic search tools and commercial services that many people--Abbott among them--now believe do a better job in satisfying Web surfers and advertisers. The transformation is bringing to an end an altruistic era of human editors, who once wielded significant clout in driving traffic to Web sites through recommendations made without regard for commercial considerations.

The transition has sparked a power shift in the search world that is forcing directory leader Yahoo to reinvent its search business to better compete with an uprising of algorithmic and commercial search providers, most notably Google and Overture Services. In response, Yahoo over the past year has continued to distance itself from its noncommercial directory roots, adding paid search links from Overture, demoting directory listings on its search pages to results provided by Google and scooping up algorithmic search provider Inktomi.

The recent flurry of activity at Yahoo has company watchers wondering what the future holds for the portal's search tools, and what place, if any, there might be for its once dominant directory. "In October, Yahoo made the directory secondary to Google," said Danny Sullivan, editor of the industry newsletter Search Engine Watch. "Suddenly the value of getting listed in Yahoo seemed to disappear. Now, if you're not listed with Yahoo, it may not matter."

Clearly, it pays to be in the paid search business. Yahoo's deal with Overture has helped it achieve three consecutive quarters of profitability and has allowed management to boost financial expectations. Yet the success in partnering with commercial search providers raises the inevitable question, why pay dozens or hundreds of people to search the Web when another company wants to pay you to do the same?

Yahoo keeps the operations of its search editors close to its vest. Company executives will not comment on how many editors it employs. A Yahoo representative said "on average" the company employs "a building full" of directory editors. At least one search engine marketer has said that Yahoo has scaled back on its directory editors slowly over recent months, giving people new duties or emphasizing paid search listings.

But Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's vice president and editor in chief, denied the company has recently laid off or redeployed members of its editorial staff. "The state of search technology thankfully has improved," Srinivasan said in an interview. "That said, we firmly believe there continues to be a gap between the best technology and what we can provide incrementally with the human experience."

Conceived by co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo in a Stanford trailer in 1994, much of Yahoo's popularity was built on the directory's ability to give order and organization to the unruly Web. As legend has it, Yahoo was developed by Yang and Filo as a way to categorize their favorite sumo wrestling Web sites. Even the company name--originally the acronym "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle"--highlighted its directory roots.

Unlike the other search competitors that emerged in the mid-1990s, such as Excite, Lycos, Infoseek and AltaVista, Yahoo did not develop its technology to crawl through millions of Web sites. Instead, it hired humans to manually search the Web to find, organize and review sites about thousands of topics. Yahoo's editorial team became an emblem of the Internet's rise where legions of college graduates would do the heavy lifting to help Web newbies find what they want.

Yahoo did not rely exclusively on its directory, signing partnerships over the years with algorithmic search engines such as AltaVista, Inktomi and Google to provide backup results. But up until October, these third parties were never the centerpiece of Yahoo's search results. In late 1999, Yahoo began to tinker with its coveted directory service. Under then Yahoo CEO Tim Koogle, the company launched a new fee plan, requiring sites to pay $299 a year--$600 for adult sites--in order to be considered for inclusion in its directory listings. If accepted, companies would be required to pay the fee annually to retain their listing.

Yahoo does not break out results for this business, but said it has no plans to discontinue it. While many analysts called the move to paid inclusion overdue at the time, others believe the decision hurt the directory's credibility. "One has to wonder how the economic interests of search is messing with the altruistic agenda of the directory," said Lance Loveday, president of Web marketing consultancy Closed Loop Marketing.

Altruism vs. cash
Yahoo isn't the only directory facing criticism these days. Search engine marketers also point to the Open Directory Project (ODP) as an example of how far directories have fallen behind algorithmic search providers, both in terms of the reach and quality of the results they provide. AOL Time Warner-owned Netscape runs the ODP, which launched in June 1998 under the name NewHoo. It uses about 210,000 volunteer editors to catalog the Web, many of whom are search engine marketers. Though Google and AOL both draw on this directory for specialized searches, the service is thought to be plagued with troubles. Hardware failures over the winter holidays caused the directory to be out of commission for several months, for example.

Elisabeth Osmeloski, a search engine marketer and a volunteer editor with ODP, said that more than 50 percent of the sites submitted for review are spam links, causing a major sap to volunteers' time. "The ODP has a huge backlog from bad submissions; there are sites waiting for two years to be reviewed. It would be better if Netscape got (more) behind it," she said.

Bob Keating, editor in chief of the ODP, said that it's fighting the good fight against the encroachment of the profit motive into what is rightfully an editorial process. "We're trying to combat the commercialization of search," said Keating, whose ODP has a catalog of 3.8 million sites, compared to some 4 billion for Google. "A lot of Web directories have gone the other direction. As search gets even more commercialized, the Open Directory is the only one that's left that's really grounded in the original concept of the Net--that it's an information source and not a money-making vehicle."

He added that the ODP has checks and balances to stop spammers from controlling the directory. LookSmart, which launched in October 1996 and was originally backed by Reader's Digest, started as a directory of the top sites in any category on the Web. It employed hundreds of editors and writers to handpick sites. Now, it employs about 100 editors, but they largely review commercial sites that have bought into the directory, which is licensed to Microsoft's MSN. It also runs a noncommercial directory called Zeal.com that is staffed with about two or three editors and a team of volunteers.

Many small sites say they still see value in a listing in directories like Yahoo's, LookSmart's and the ODP because such links are given weight by Google's PageRank, a system for evaluating the popularity of a Web page. Google rides on the back of human-screening of Web sites, and many people see directory links as an easy step on the road to popularity in major search engines.

Tim Mayer, vice president of Fast Web Search, which was recently acquired by Overture, said that directories are largely treated like any other link on the Web, and some may be thought of as more authoritative than others. But he said the influence of the directories has faded as they have become more commercial. "The more authoritative the site or directory is that is linking to your site, the more weight given in the link popularity," said Mayer, adding that link popularity is only one feature of many in the relevance algorithm. Still, he said, it's less important "in many search engines in the past years as directories have moved from purely editorial to pay-for-play."

Story by Stefanie Olsen and Jim Hu
Source: CNET News.com

Looksmart bets on distributed computing

LookSmart is hoping to spin a small acquisition into a big project that will use distributed computing to improve its Web search results.

In January, LookSmart quietly bought the assets of Grub, an Oklahoma-based developer of technology that lets people donate their computers' otherwise unused processing power to run spiders, or software programs that continually crawl the Net, indexing pages and words. This collective, or distributed, computing power could be used to find new, outdated or updated Web pages daily.

LookSmart, which licenses editorial and commercial directory listings to Microsoft's MSN and other Web sites, paid US$1.3 million in cash and stock for Grub, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. LookSmart said it is testing the Grub system and plans to unveil the distributed computing project in early April.

"Most engines only update their entire document catalog once a month, because there's an inherent computing problem: They can't do it any faster," said Pete Adams, chief technology officer of LookSmart. "The goal of this technology is to be able to crawl every document on the Internet every day. We can only do that if we can grow the number of people that are running the software--the computing power we would use is a function of how many people we have donating their computer power."

The Grub buyout underscores growing interest in distributed computing, in which computing jobs are farmed out in small chunks across the Internet to the otherwise untapped processing cycles of ordinary PCs. The movement has had grand ambitions--to find a cure for cancer or signs of intelligent life in the universe, among other things. But thus far, its chief successes have been curiosities such as the discovery of gigantic prime numbers.

LookSmart's long-shot bet on Grub highlights the race to innovate in the search engine arena. A handful of companies are vying for control in the niche, one of the few areas of the Net economy to have generated strong revenue and profit growth since the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

Yahoo just completed its acquisition of Inktomi, while Overture Services recently decided to snap up AltaVista and some of the assets of Norway's Fast Search & Transfer. Meanwhile, Disney has suggested that it might be interested in selling its Infoseek search engine.

Story by Stephanie Olsen
Source: ZD Net

Ask Jeeves launches outdoor ad push

Search company Ask Jeeves (Quote, Company Info) on Monday launched a billboard ad campaign in three major cities, hoping to capitalize on the success of an earlier outdoor campaign in the fall.

For the next month, Emeryville, Calif.-based Ask Jeeves will employ its natty butler, Jeeves, in outdoor advertising campaigns in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. The advertisements will use the search engine's theme, "Search for it. Find it. Ask.com."

Each city has different creative specific to the region. In Los Angeles, Jeeves is identified on bus ads as "The Leading Man of Search," while he is tabbed as "Search Star" on phone ads. In San Francisco, bus panels feature Jeeves as "Savvy Searcher," and transit shelters say of Ask.com "The first place you search will be the last place you look." New York City creative has the theme "Search that never sleeps" running on bus panels and phone booths.

The outdoor campaign follows Ask Jeeves' similar push in the fall. Then, the company ran outdoor ads around New York City, laying the groundwork for Jeeves' third appearance as a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Ask Jeeves said the New York campaign resulted in 20 percent higher traffic in the aftermath of the campaign -- much of which it was able to retain. On the West Coast, Ask Jeeves has run advertisements at the Staples Center during Los Angeles Lakers games.

The use of bus panels and phone kiosks is a marked departure from the brand-building approach taken by Ask Jeeves in the dot-com days, when it spent an estimated $100 million building its brand with expensive TV buys.

With the dot-com crash, Ask Jeeves took a year off from advertising, instead investing to fine-tune its search technology. This process was accelerated, according to company executives, by the purchase of the Teoma search technology in September 2001. Ask Jeeves got quite a deal, paying less than $2 million in cash and 2.5 million shares of company stock for Teoma.

The Teoma acquisition was well timed, as the search industry soon exploded in the next year with the success of paid listings on the most-trafficked search engines, AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and Google. With companies scrambling for position in the market, Overture recently agreed to pay as much as $240 million for AltaVista and the Web search unit of FAST Search and Transfer.

Since buying Teoma, Ask Jeeves has established itself as a top second-tier search site, with enough traffic to attract advertisers to its paid listings provided through Google's AdWords service. Since ditching Overture for Google as its paid listings partner last July, Ask Jeeves has rode the wave of search mania, more than tripling its market capitalization since November. In the fourth quarter, the company was profitable and cash flow positive for the first time in its history.

Story by Brian Morrissey
Source: Internet News.com

Serious search engine optimization starts with analyzing visitor behaviour

Anyone being serious about search engine optimization needs to analyze visitor behavior -- where they come from, what search engine they are using, their search queries and so on.

US company ClickTracks Inc has launched a new version of their ClickTracks Analyzer, a tool for measuring site metrics.

Version 3.3 includes a new report for analysis of click throughs from Google's AdWords partners.

"The syndication report shows the URLs which hosted the syndicated advertisement and the number of click throughs from each URL," says John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks. There is also a new client/server Enterprise version.

Unlike other Web metric solutions ClickTracks present results directly on a copy of your Web page. The tool as become very popular among some search engine optimization experts, partly because it presents result in such an innovative way (the aaah! factor) and partly because it helps you measure the rate of return for search engine visitors. It will also present the optimum path taken by visitors that results in a purchase.

ClickTracks closest's competing product is Site Clicks™ and is offered at a comparable price.

Source: Pandia

No plans to take Google public

There's no IPO in Google's future, at least not yet. Sergey Brin, the company's president and co-founder, said he's thought a lot about taking the popular search site public, but currently the cons outweigh the pros.

"It's something that's definitely been debated. Thus far, laziness has always won," Brin said Wednesday at the PC Forum conference, an annual gathering here of technology executives, entrepreneurs and inventors convened to reflect upon the future of digitized data.

The comment came in response to a question from conference organizer Esther Dyson, who said she considered it "inevitable" that eventually the popular search site would launch a stock offering.

Brin cited his dislike of filling out forms (a key part of the IPO process), the distractions of monitoring stock performance and the hassles of filing quarterly financial reports as some of the main drawbacks to going public.

On the other hand, Brin said, a public offering would be a good way to raise money and to give employees a chance to cash out some of their Google stock options.

Source: Wired.com

Google: a knowledge operating system?

Computers forty years ago did not have such a thing as an operating system; a computer in those days ran one program at a time.

Now, even the smallest of computers has an operating system as a means to manage the computing device. Today, the Internet is going through a similar development. Search Engines are becoming sophisticated enough that very soon we are going to consider the most developed search engine, Google, to be an operating system.

If Google is an operating system, what does it manage and what benefits do we get from adopting it as an operating system. This article considers Google as a Knowledge Operating System (KOS) of the Internet.

In general terms, an operating system is a management system. The operating system that runs your computer manages the demands that each of the different programs you are running at the same time, handles your filing system, hard drives, printers and more.

Applying the concept of "operating system" to Google, a Knowledge Operating System (KOS) manages your knowledge activity on the Internet. Google, as a KOS, manages your requests for information, indexes your web pages, responds to applications you may be running on your computer that interface to it via the Google APIs, and integrates knowledge and information from millions of computers into a single large managed database.

Website owners and webmaster who build more static websites do not gain the same degree of operating system-ness of Google, as do bloggers who have a closer relationships with Google.

I can write a page today, and have my page indexed and readily available for recall in the Google Database within a day. This is like a massive disk drive directory -- only there is a time lag between when I saved the file and when it is accessible. As Google becomes more adept at sending Googlebot around to collect new pages, this sense of "saving something to disk" will increase, thus making Google not only indispensable for others to find my pages, but also, a great tool for me to locate my own pages.

Already I use Google as a bookmark manager. No longer do I remember URLs - it is much simpler to remember how to obtain a site's listing by remembering a word to locate that site.

For example, to get to my site, it is much easier to tell people to simply type Microdoc News into the Google search field than to tell them the URL. I go to all my favorite sites with a single word or two-word combination. What are the benefits of considering Google an operating system? From a user perspective, it places Google in a position of centrality to my tasks. It is where my knowledge is indexed, it is where I locate new knowledge, and it is the system that underlies my writing in Word, preparation of weblogs, and so on.

This concept also help me to understand and order the world. From my knowledge of other operating systems, such as Windows, I can see how Microsoft has tried to become the be-everything-to-everyone company. From this perspective, I then draw in my mind some distinctions between Google as-an-operating-system and the rest of the Internet.

Thus, how many applications does Google Inc., control and do I expect to see applications that operate on the Google Operating System. Of course, we should be looking to see applications of all types being generated that operate on the Google Operating System. Already we see some stand-alone tools in their infancy, such as the Google API Search Tool produced by Softnik. We also see hundreds of sites being powered by Google. But what I am looking for are some powerhouse type tools that use the Google operating system.

For example, what about a blogging tool that enables me to click a right-hand menu up and then select to search Google for a certain term, select the webpage that I want to quote in my blog, select the text to be shown in the blog from that page, click OK, and there is a complete quotation from a webpage, plus link automatically created. Now how cool would that be. And when I run my spelling check, why could not my blogging tool use the Google speller?

And what about having the same Google Search tool as a right-hand click on my blogging editor, and then I could perform a search and choose to create a hyperlink in my text to that search?

Thinking of Google as a Knowledge Operating System could also be instructive for Google Inc. as to how to develop this monster into the future and how to protect what it is they have. I believe that Google Inc., is already thinking along these lines. This is why we should be thinking along these lines as well to know what to expect from our favorite search engine.

Source: Microdoc News

Business Blogs to help your rankings

For the past several months now, there has been a new development used more and more by businesses and companies of all sizes: Business Blogs. First, for those of you who may be wondering what “blogs” actually are, they are an abbreviation for “web logs”. First popularized by journalists, tech geeks and by teenagers, “blogs” are now increasingly in use by the business community and Fortune 500 companies.

If you have new ideas or a new product your company would like to promote, business blogs are a good, inexpensive vehicle. And there are many other advantages to using blogs too: major search directories and search engines such as Yahoo, Google Alta-Vista and most of the others crave on fresh and new information that is frequently updated, sometimes many times a day. Business Blogs consist of many links, written with fresh content that is propagated everywhere on the web.

The more search engines like Google find daily and updated content, the more often their search spiders will visit that business blog, resulting in high search engine rankings for a good part of your business blog-powered data. If you still have your doubts on business blogs and are wondering if they are just a passing fad, for your information, in February of 2003, Google bought Blogger, itself a blogging software pioneer. Google publicly said they don't even know how they are going to use the company, but they will certainly have some use for it... (!) (Quoted in the New York Times).

If you are still asking yourself why should your business start a business blog (b-blog), here are a few answers to ponder about:

1. If you have timely information to share with your customers
2. If you're unhappy with the results and ROI from email marketing
3. You would like your web site to have top-ranking positions in Google
4. Many observers think that blogging will last for a long time

Here is a list you might want to read of the many business benefits of starting a good and serious business blog:

Higher search rankings on Google with no paid-submission
Other search engines will most likely position you higher too
Pay-per-click (PPC) is great but free marketing has infinite ROI
Create visibility with information by sharing with your customers
Fresh information appears on Google in only a few days, not weeks
Other business bloggers will point prospects towards you for free

Now all of this is great and can help companies a lot in their search engine rankings. But Business Blogs should not be viewed as the single winning “solution” that will “do the magic”. Business blogs should be viewed as an added, parallel solution to increase communications and ideas to your prospects and customers, while at the same time helping your web site in the search engines.

To be real successful, a business first needs to have its web site properly optimized by a professional search engine optimization firm, one that knows search engines and truly understands your specific business needs. After a serious optimization campaign and the ensuing positive results that can be analyzed in detail and carefully measured, business blogs should be considered as an added way to help increase search engine rankings in the major search engines, while at the same time more effectively communicating new ideas, products or services to the business community, your clients, prospects, suppliers, business associates, etc.

Be prepared to see a lot more developments in this area. Already the Internet is seeing a new wave of business blogging software and related applications claiming to propel your web site to the top of the search results. Be careful before choosing any such software. While some can be of help, as with anything that is new and “revolutionary”, careful analysis, due diligence and product evaluation is necessary before deciding on one final choice. We will continue to monitor this development closely and will keep you posted on our findings through this web site.

Note: Slated for January 31st, 2004, Rank for $ales will have a Business Blog solution ready for it's clients. Interested parties please enquire here. In the mean time, you are encouraged to visit www.escalate.ca for more information on blogging news and business blog technology. If you would like to see an example of a personal blog website (with a touch of humour) that is already online, then you can visit www.bloggers.ca

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Duplicate sites and mirror sites

In the process of my day-to-day job optimizing and positioning corporate web sites for my clients, I often get emails and correspondence similar to the one you are about to read. The field of search engine optimization is littered with so-called "SEO experts" and people that promise you high search engine rankings with techniques that are forbidden by most search engines. The following is a true story.

Hello Serge! Just wanted you to know that I diligently read all your articles that you write on search engine optimization and I have learned so much from you since. I'm writing you regarding an article you wrote on your website about doorway and gateway pages. After listening to a number of people around me, I had planned on getting increased visibility from search engines to my site and some have told me that making a mirror of my existing site or a few "duplicates" might help me in the engines.

They also told me each site should have a new, unique URL and unique domain name, a unique title and description tag, and body text "slightly" modified to focus on different keywords and key phrases might be a splendid idea. While I am at it, I also taught of a newer, fresher "look" with different background colour and font.

Now I just read your article on doorway and gateway pages and I strongly realize that the whole thing is a real bad idea. Instead you suggest creating keyword-rich content pages for my main website, and one should really concentrate on that single site for maximum long-term results and increased visibility in the search engines.

My questions to you about this whole matter are:

1) Are you saying I need new pages or to rewrite just the marketing copy?
2) If you mean rewriting just the marketing copy, isn't it necessary that the keywords I want to focus on should be in the page's title and meta description tags? Let's say I want to focus on five search phrases, the title & description would look pretty crowded, don't you think?
3) I would like to concentrate on different search phrases that are related to the terms "career goals," "get higher education", "get a better future", etc.

I think it is very tricky to try to make for example five new keyword-rich content pages and make them "merge in" with my current website, since the search terms are so general. I am aware that some companies put up "mirror sites" to accurately measure how small changes to their site might affect overall sales. Isn't this forbidden?

I sincerely hope you can help me with all my questions. Thanks again for such good professional advice and I am looking forward to more of the same!

Best wishes,
Muriel Westgate