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Sootle re-launches

Christmas is a luckyday for everybody, but for Sootle, its something else.

Right on Christmas day, Sootle, a 7 month old search company, announced its re-launch. This time, the re-launch is going to stay permanent.

This re-launch is predicted to be more successful, We have added new features, such as Text Cache, A more "Advanced" search page, Clustering, Domain limiting and heaps more.

There will also be new services such as Paid 48 hour refreshes, Paid Site Search, Site Search and a Internet Explorer toolbar.

The new launch sets Sootle into "Alpha", which means - A so-called "Test" version, it will go in "BETA" next, and then, it will fully re-launch.

"Christmas is a very lucky day for a re-launch, we hope this brings us good luck and success" says Sid Yadav, the founder of Sootle.

"I believe we can lead Sootle from darkness into greatness, from dialup to broadband, from 19th century to the 21st century!" says Tom Toth, the new Sootle president.

Looksmart in the New Year

There will be a number of changes around the corner for Looksmart in 2004. Some of their new features are already rolling out. Below is an overview of the new features.

Beginning in January 2004, MSN will be removing the Web Directory Sites section of its search results, and will no longer have a direct partnership agreement with LookSmart. Current LookListings may still appear on MSN through the distribution partnership with Inktomi, but paid inclusion traffic will be reduced at that time. The LookListings will also continue to provide traffic from more than 85 other LookSmart partners such as Lycos, About.com, Road Runner, InfoSpace and CNET. Looksmart is negotiating with other portals and ISPs for additional distribution of LookListings.

Looksmart recently launched Sponsored Listings, a bid-for-placement keyword product. Sponsored Listings are fully integrated with LookListings, so you can use your existing login and password, get started with just a few simple clicks, and monitor the performance of all of your paid inclusion and pay-for-placement listings together in the LookSmart Advertiser Center.

LookListings now has other important new features, designed to give you greater control and flexibility. Starting December 16th, you can now pinpoint customers with specific keywords. Or reach a broader audience using relevancy-based inclusion targeting.

Create keyword-targeted listings
If you provided Relevancy Keywords for your LookListings campaigns, you will now see those Relevancy Keywords displayed as new keyword-targeted listings in your account. These new listings will appear in search results when users search for the associated keyword across the LookSmart network. If you did not provide Relevancy Keywords for your campaign, you may now access your account and add keywords to your existing LookListings campaigns to improve the precision of your targeting.

Combine targeting options in one campaign
You may combine two different targeting options within the same LookListings campaign. With "Inclusion Targeting" your listings will continue to be displayed whenever they are relevant across the LookSmart network, just as they were previously. Now, by adding "Keyword Targeting," your listings will only appear for searches that match the specific keywords you choose. Use both targeting options together to tailor messages to specific groups of customers.

You now have the ability to bid for higher placement on your LookListings keywords. Take advantage of the new "Max CPC" feature with auto-discounting: Set the CPC ceiling you are willing to pay for any given keyword. The actual CPC you are billed will be discounted to the minimum value necessary to maintain your desired position in search results. This means you will never pay more than you need, to show up where you want.

No fees to create or update listings
It is now free to create new listings, add keywords, and update your campaigns.

It will be interesting to see what new announcements Looksmart makes in the New Year prior to their deal with MSN ending on January 14th.

Resource:
Looksmart Looklistings

Jason Lane B.Sc.
Senior Search Marketing Strategist
jason.lane@enquiro.com

Yahoo Inktomi Anniversary

It was one year ago today, December 23, 2002, when Yahoo! announced that it planned to acquire Inktomi. Which leads to the question - What has changed?

The answer is; not much on the organic front. Yahoo! still displays Google as its'' primary organic results, and have not made any announcements as to their plans with Inktomi.

A while back I speculated that they would switch on Inktomi and boot Google, but to date it has not happened yet. Looking back, my logic was flawed somewhat. I predicted that they would try to switch within a year of the acquisition and while they did announce the acquisition on this date a year ago, it wasn''t actually approved by Inktomi shareholders until March of this year. Which leaves Tuesday January 13th open.

But back to my original question - what has changed?

As I mentioned, Yahoo! still displays Google organic results which have gone through a major transformation recently so Yahoo! has in effect changed it''s rankings as well.

It is noteworthy, however, that we have seen increased activity with Slurp, Inktomi''s crawler, in the past few months. This is an obvious sign that Yahoo! is ramping up the Inktomi database. What the final results will be, or when the change will happen is anyone''s guess.

This also doesn''t take into account what future plans Yahoo! has for Overture, which they also purchased this year. While they are busily signing new contracts worldwide with advertisers, they have not disclosed what their plans are for their North American properties, as they relate to Overture or Inktomi. (An interesting side note on this - Overture just announced today an agreement between Overture and Yahoo! with Lycos Europe, despite the fact that Lycos in the US is suing Overture because they were bought by Yahoo!).

12 months later and still no change on the organic side of Yahoo! This should make 2004 an interesting year for the popular search portal.

Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning specialists

Search engines like India

India has long been a place to turn to if you need inexpensive quality programming. Microsoft has done it for years. Now it appears that others are looking to India as well including search engines.

Google recently announced plans to set up an engineering research and development office in India early in the New Year. AOL also announced recently that, much to the chagrin of laid off AOL developers; they are looking for developers in India as well.

In addition, many other large technology companies have stated that they are going to begin or increase development using contractors and companies in India.

Despite Dell pulling out some technical support jobs from India, others such as Microsoft, Aviva, HSBC Bank, Lloyds TSB, Prudential, National Rail Inquiries of UK, Siemens and Bank of America are moving thousands of jobs to India. IBM Global Services India doubled its manpower last year while UK-based Vertex (which services Cable & Wireless services to the UK) also plans to double its capacity in India next year. Infosys, an India based company, will be adding around 7,000 professionals during the current fiscal year, the highest in its history.

The reason for this migration? Indian development tends to cost less than North American development; as much as 80% less. This can make a huge difference to a company’s bottom line.

So, while AOL and Google appear to be the leaders in terms of outsourcing search engine technologies development I don’t believe they will be the last. Microsoft already has a campus in India so it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine them moving some or all of their search engine/portal development to the India campus, dubbed the MIDC (Microsoft India Development Centre).

Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
www.Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning specialists

Froogle Featured More Prominently

Google is now featuring its shopping search engine more prominently, just in time for the end of the Chrismas shopping season. It is not only advertising Froogle directly on the main Google page, but at the top of some search results (only for specific query words), Google will list "Product Search" results. They have been experimenting with this since earlier this month, but these results are now live. As with other recent Google initiatives, it is a bit of a guessing game when the Product results will show. A search on wooden spoons had no Product links while tea kettles had the standard three (even though wooden spoons has more than 100 results in Froogle).

Some Shared Databases at AlltheWeb and AltaVista

AlltheWeb and AltaVista are now owned by Yahoo! when they bought Overture. For now, AltaVista and AlltheWeb continue to be available at their historic locations and have separate databases for their Web search results. However, since at least sometime in November, AltaVista and AlltheWeb seem to have merged their image, news, and video databases. Both continue to have differences in the search interfaces and search features but the content appears to be the same. The audio searches are getting more similar and perhaps share a portion of their database, but the Web results still are quite different.

Google Number Shortcuts and a Potential New Look

Google has added a few more shortcuts for specific number searches and for airport travel conditions. Basically, five databases will have shortcuts: U.S. Patents, UPS Tracking Numbers, FedEx Tracking Numbers, FCC Equipment IDs, and FAA Airplane Registration Numbers. Note that some require a prefix like patent, fedex, or fcc while others do not and the airport weather needs the suffix of airport. Not all of the examples given work, or they only work at some data centers, but since it is a new feature, those bugs should be worked out soon.

Also, Google is trying out a new design and look on a very small portion of searchers. Whether Google will decide to implement the new look in this screen shot (or here or here) remains to be seen. But based on these samples, it looks like they are experimenting with doing away with the tabbed interface and moving those links above the search box, removing the color background on ads, and adding a "define" link after the search terms. Or is this just a response to Danny Sullivan's predications of multiplying tabs?