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NuSearch utilises a Java applet that is embedded in the site that users have to opt-in to download before using.
NuSearch results are listed on the left side of the results page while the web sites themselves are in a Java powered window on the right side of the browser.
In the background, your browser has started downloading the first few target pages in your results list. Once each one is loaded, its entry in the list changes color and also gives you an indication of the size of the page.
The first page to be ranked is immediately previewed in the main area of the browser window. This means you get to see the page your searched for without having to go to it.
Once other pages are downloaded into the list, you can preview those too, simply by moving your mouse pointer over the list. The currently previewed item is highlighted.
NuSearch does offer some other cool features, like automatically sizes itself depending on the size of your browser window, an IE browser enhancing toolbar and an “Add UR"L function where users can submit their pages and have them indexed in realtime.
What else marks out NuSearch as revolutionary? According to Giles Chanot, Chief Software Architect at NuSearch “Well, that Applet that sits in the web page is really the key to the whole show.
Every time you perform a search and it downloads some web pages, it compares these with the copies on the NuSearch server.
If they’re new or have been updated, this information is sent back to the server (in a highly compressed form). This enables NuSearch to keep its index much more up to date than would otherwise be possible: the more people use NuSearch, the better it gets.”
At first glance the NuSearch rank indexing may need some help, but I think its a decent search tool with an interesting technology - best used with Broadband Internet Connections.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Various search engines and numerous databases provide instant access to an almost endless information stream on just about anyone or anything, but sometimes the search results can be deceptive.
To generate more-relevant answers, organizations including the federal government are using topic maps to index their data.
Topic maps are smart indices that improve search capabilities by categorizing terms based on their relationships with other things. For example, William Shakespeare is a topic that would be mapped to essays about him, his plays and his famous quotes.
Today's the Day. Organizing content with topic maps provides context for words that can have multiple meanings, according to Patrick Durusau, chairman of a topic maps technical committee at OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.
For example, searching Google for "Franz Ferdinand" mixes results for the alternate rock group and the doomed Austrian archduke for whom the group is named. If topic maps were used to organize the data, the musical and historical links would be separated, Durusau said. "The payoff (of topic maps) from the user standpoint is that you are no longer confronted with everything in the world that is known about the subject," Durusau said.
Durusau said the Internal Revenue Service began developing topic maps to organize its tax forms about three years ago. Topic maps are used to help IRS representatives answer phone calls more efficiently, as well as to create the small-business CD that the agency sends to taxpayers. The IRS also uses topic maps to compare its data with that of the Social Security Administration, which "is structured completely different," he said.
Computer automation and human intervention are used in building topic maps, according to Michel Biezunski, president of InfoLoom and a consultant on the IRS project. He said an artificial-intelligence application groups the data into a preliminary map that is then refined by people, he said. "You need experts to build the relationships" between terms, according to Biezunski.
Biezunski, who helped write the topic-maps specification that was passed by the International Organization for Standardization, said several U.S. Department of Defense agencies are building topic maps, and that the legal and pharmaceutical industries are the next ones likely to index their data. "We are only at the beginning" of adoption, he said.
George Kondrach, president of software company Innodata Isogen, has been consulting with several U.S. intelligence agencies on how to use topic maps to overcome regional variations in spelling. Kondrach said agencies are working to define suspected terrorists as topics so that differences in agency spelling, such as "Osama" versus "Usama," would no longer prevent linking to vital information.
"The same problem exists in tracing genealogy," where last-name changes are common, Kondrach said. Topic maps can accelerate building family trees, as family members would be defined by all of their relationships, simplifying the process of tracking previous generations and extended families.
Eric Freese, a software engineer for research company LexisNexis, helped to create the World Wide Web Consortium standard for creating XML documents so that they can be easily incorporated into topic maps.
Outside the U.S. government, Freese said the most interest in topic maps is coming from Europe, where companies such as Ontopia, Mondeca and Empolis are developing commercial applications. "The fact that it is gaining ground in Europe has me optimistic that we'll figure it out here," Freese said.
The sagging U.S. economy has slowed the adoption of topic maps in the private sector, according to Freese. "In 2002 (when the XML standard was finalized), nobody was spending on new technology except the government," Freese said. LexisNexis has a few prototype applications using topic maps but has not yet updated its commercial databases.
Freese said topic maps would allow a LexisNexis query of the word "Iowa" to differentiate between the University, the state and the jurisdiction. "It makes sense to present the multiple choices (of context) before returning all of the results," he said.
Freese said search engines such as Google could take advantage of topic maps to increase the accuracy of web search without any changes to the web pages they are indexing. He said the Open Directory Project is already taking advantage of topic maps.
Source: Wired News
Is Snap revealing too much of its own numbers?
Silicon Beat interviewed Bill Gross earlier this month to see how his Snap new search engine is coming on.
Gross unveiled Snap at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco in early October and vowed to do something we'd not seen at another company: share the daily financial details of his company with its users.
Sure enough, looking at Snap's stats page today, we see that:
--- They've served 2.6 million searches since they first launched
--- Snap made $55.88 yesterday
--- They have 1,235 advertisers
--- Snap had 624 clicks on ads yesterday that generated revenue
Digging deeper, we find that the most searches in one day was 59,723. In early November, the number of advertisers shot up from single-digits to the 1,235 that Snap has today. Last month, Snap made $1,176.40 in gross revenues. So far, this month it's made $1,558.56.
Now that the business is up and running, we asked Gross if he'd changed his mind about this level of transparency.
Not in the least. "Now whenever I want to find out how we're doing, I just go to the home page," Gross said from his Southern California office at Idealab.
Although Snap's revenues and search counts are but a sliver of its competitors, Gross is thrilled with the speed with which the Web site has grown.
"We never thought we'd see a million searches this fast,'' he said. "But now that we have, advertisers are starting to see that there's a market.'' (Snap crossed the 2 million search mark shortly after we chatted with him.)
Gross said that once the site opens up its self-serve advertising service -- similar to what Overture and Google offer -- the number of advertisers will shoot up.
"As soon as that goes up, we'll have thousands. We have a lot of pent-up demand.''
We asked Gross if it really made sense for companies to be so forthright about their financial situation, particularly if they are new and off to a slow start.
Won't investors and potential business partners, sensing a dud, shy away when they see the numbers. It doesn't give new companies much time to build momentum.
Consider, too, how the stock market would react to a company's daily business diary. On the one hand, investors would get to see the daily life-cycle of a company. But how would investors react to daily or weekly blips in traffic or revenues? (Witness the dip and then spike in searches and revenues that Snap experienced around November 20 as an example.)
"That's a good point. I would countercontend that we make the marketplace more interesting to advertisers. I'm predicting this is the wave. You can't write that story for a year, but I'm predicting this is the way to go.''
"It's kind of scary to put that data out there,' he added. "But it's liberating at the same time. I think it's good in the long-term. I think it will be a trend. In every aspect, it's better to be open.''
Source: Silicon Beat
Desktop search features and newer computer indexing tools such as Google's Desktop Search could cause security risks.
The reason is simply because companies that use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL protocol) to remote access or VPN, these protocols could copy content accessed during any SSL session and make it available to anybody that later uses the same computer.
Caches created by PC search tools get around the security many SSL vendors have put in place to purge cached data from remote machines as secure sessions shut down. These so-called cache-cleaning agents wipe out temporary files created during SSL sessions, but they don't wipe out the copies made by the search tools.
"You could end up caching and indexing files you don't want cached and indexed on machines outside your control," says Dan Harman, remote access administrator for real estate developer Lewis Group in Upland, Calif., which uses SSL remote-access gear made by Whale Communications Ltd.
One touted benefit of SSL remote-access technology is that any machine with a Web browser can be used to access a corporate network securely. The downside is that the PCs might not be owned by the corporation, so any number of unauthorized users could have access to them. "This tends to negate user authentication," says Rick Fleming, CTO of Digital Defense Inc., a vulnerability assessment company.
Besides Google's product, such search engines are made by Blinkx, Copernic Technologies Inc., ISYS Search Software and X1 Technologies Inc. Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are said to be on the verge of having them, too.
SSL VPN vendor Aventail Corp. says its Secure Desktop, a virtual desktop for SSL sessions that are destroyed when the session closes, prevents files downloaded during the session from being viewed by Google Desktop Search.
To solve the problem for its customers, Whale has a software upgrade that detects whether Google Desktop Search is running on a remote PC. If so, access to the corporate network is denied or restricted. The company is developing similar upgrades to address nine other desktop search engines, says Whale Chief Technology Officer Noam Ben-Yochanan.
Google Desktop Search makes it easier to find data on PC hard drives and doesn't address these security concerns, a Google spokesman says. Customers can manually turn off Desktop Search or put it on pause during SSL remote-access sessions to avoid having the sessions cached by the search engine, he says.
Ben-Yochanan says he installed Google Desktop Search on a PC, opened an e-mail attachment, altered the document, sent it as an attachment, then deleted the file from the hard drive. Desktop Search retained a copy of the original attachment and the modified version.
Fleming says such tools pose similar threats to shared PCs on corporate LANs. So a person working the 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift could access all the data accessed by the person working the 8 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shift, including personal human resources data or Internet banking information, he says.
Similarly, if a network administrator uses a random desktop to reconfigure a firewall, a desktop search engine will record those settings and the password used to gain access, Fleming says.
It also makes it easier for attackers to search machines they have taken over, says Fred Felman, vice president of marketing for Zone Labs Inc.
Source: ComputerWorld.com
Creative Commons has updated the beta version of its search engine, which scans the web for text, images, video and audio files that are free to re-use on certain conditions.
Creative Commons’ announcement coincides with the Mozilla Foundation’s release of its industry-leading browser, Firefox 1.0, which now features the Creative Commons search technology in its toolbar alongside such leading search services as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and Dictionary.com.
“The Creative Commons search engine helps companies, educators, and artists find content they can re-use without having to call a lawyer, and it offers authors and artists who want to share their work a competitive advantage toward having their work discovered online,” said Neeru Paharia, assistant director of Creative Commons and the search engine’s product manager.
For example, a documentary filmmaker could use the Creative Commons engine to search for “images of the Eiffel Tower free for noncommercial use,” and incorporate any or all of the many photographs indexed.
A DJ seeking songs free to remix or mash-up could browse listings of MP3s by their legal terms. An entrepreneur seeking illustrations for her slideshow presentation could reduce costs and liability by using a Creative Commons image-specific search. An educator building course materials could include texts and videos found by the engine.
What distinguishes the Creative Commons engine from other search services is that all of the above are possible without the hassle of rights-clearance, licensing requests, or royalty payments.
At the core of the Creative Commons search engine are two key innovations, one legal and one technological.
First, Creative Commons offers authors and artists a simple, standardized way to mark their work as free to share or transform, on certain conditions.
By applying a Creative Commons copyright license and (cc) notice to her work, an author invites the world to make certain uses of it without giving up her copyright. Rather than the traditional “all rights reserved,” a Creative Commons license declares “some rights reserved.”
Second, and complimentary to this free legal tool, is Creative Commons machine-readable translation of the copyright licenses.
When an author affixes the (cc) copyright notice to her webpage or MP3 or image file, it is automatically marked with Creative Commons “metadata” as well.
It is this metadata – akin to a library catalog card describing a particular book – that the Creative Commons search engine then reads, processes, and presents to users as it crawls the web for their search requests.
The search engine was developed with the help of Nutch.org, an open-source search developer.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Mobissimo launched a new online travel search engine on Tuesday, and the company said it added an additional service allowing users to search for rental cars at the same time.
The site, http://www.mobissimo.com, allows users to search for flights, hotels and rental cars. A test version was first made available to the public in March.
Competitors to the privately held, San Mateo, California-based company -- whose name means "the ultimate in mobility" in Italian -- include SideStep, Yahoo's FareChase, as well as comparison shopping firm NexTag.
Elsewhere, Time Warner Inc. unit America Online last week said it made an investment in Kayak Software Corp., another travel search engine.
Travel search engines work like referral services, pointing users to where they can find bargains on the Web. The sites that get the business, in general, pay finders fees to the search companies.
They compete and sometimes partner with larger and more established Web travel service providers such as InterActiveCorp.'s Expedia, Orbitz Inc. and Sabre Holdings Corp.'s Travelocity.
Those companies are more like travel agents and aim to offer one-stop shopping by finding and selling hotel rooms, airplane tickets and rental cars.
Source: Reuters
A recent report from eMarketer.com expects rich media could overtake search to become a dominant form of Internet advertising by the end of the decade. Although paid search continues to be the main online advertising medium, with Google's soaring stock price and SEO revenue numbers higher than expected, could rich media overtake search before 2010?
The drivers behind rich media's rise will be the swift adoption of broadband by consumers and the migration of traditional brand marketers to the Internet.
On the consumer side, eMarketer's numbers indicate that by 2005, 53% of US online households will access the Internet via broadband. On the advertiser side, Yahoo! reports that its 200 largest brand-advertising customers spent 38% more on branding ads in Q1 2004 than in 2003's corresponding quarter.
The online advertising environment is changing — it is beginning to look more like traditional media every day. By presenting ads capable of swaying emotions, not just generating clicks, rich media will break down barriers and draw in large traditional advertisers.
In fact, the new eMarketer report, Rich Media predicts that rich media will overtake search to become the dominant form of Web advertising by the end of the decade.
Rich media ad spending grew by nearly 37% in 2004, and growth rates of more than 25% are projected for the next three years.
The resistance to new media is rapidly falling as advertisers learn which rich media formats work best for their goals, how to implement rich media-based campaigns and how to track the results of the online portion of their campaigns. As a result, the market is becoming increasingly valuable for advertisers, agencies and Web publishers alike.
"The single most important factor supporting rich media growth is the audience," says David Hallerman, Senior Analyst at eMarketer and author of the report. "More people are going online, they spend considerable time online and do more things there and more of them are accessing the Internet using high-speed connections that make rich media ads palatable, if not always welcome."
That the Internet is a mainstream medium, an effective place for branding-oriented advertisers to reach part of their audience, is implied in a recent Online Publishers Association report titled "Generational Media Study."
When the trade group asked 1,235 US adult Internet users to choose two, and only two, media outlets (and jettison the rest), 45.6% made the Internet their first preference. As the clear-cut second banana among the respondents, 34.6% picked TV as their first choice, with every other medium in single figures.
"While the survey reflects the fact that Internet users are making the Internet their first choice among media, it also indicates that once people get accustomed to going online, they tend to make it primary in their lives — or at least secondary to television," says Mr. Hallerman.
This trend toward choosing the Internet first will continue, since more than 50% of users ages 18 to 24 made the Internet their main choice among the eight media surveyed.
Furthermore, 74% of the OPA respondents use the Internet for entertainment. That's more than for print media, and starting to approach TV levels (at 86%). The best of rich media entices its audience through being, in some way, entertaining — much like television commercials.
Brand marketers not advertising on the Internet today are like their counterparts 10 years ago who failed to embrace cable television: "No thanks — we find the big networks give us all the market reach we'll ever need!"
Just like you rarely hear that today about TV, most brands will soon make the Internet an integral part of their campaigns. And for brand marketers working online, the greater engagement of rich media advertising is essential.
Whether that engagement means offering entertainment, moving the audience's emotions or creating unique interactive experiences, rich media combined with targeting gives marketers tools they can't find anywhere else — but online.
"Moving beyond the numbers," says Mr. Hallerman, "the implications of all this portents huge changes in online advertising, and advertising overall — because the growth of online brand advertising will mean less ad dollars in other media."
Source: eMarketer
Despite some improvements done recently to help the indexing of websites created using Flash technology, there are still many major roadblocks left.
For sites designed using Macromedia Flash technology, most major search engines are anything but friendly. The major crawlers (spiders) used to discover content rarely dig deep into Flash, often missing pages or, worse yet, ignoring those sites altogether.
But a pair of Web designers detailed a new approach on Tuesday at the WebmasterWorld.com World Search Conference here to change that.
They are investigating a way to abstract the content and presentation layers of Flash sites so that search engines can spider the HTML that they favor and sites can take advantage of the multimedia and interactivity features of Flash.
"We want [Flash sites] to act just like HTML Web sites," said George Shaw, creative director at DivinePenguin, in Los Angeles. "There's no reason philosophically why they shouldn't."
Shaw is one of the designers behind a project called RichMediaSEO. The other is Gregory Markel, founder and president of search marketing company Infuse Creative, of Santa Monica, Calif.
While demand remains high for Flash-based sites in industries such as entertainment, which want to display multimedia, the lack of full search-engine support creates roadblocks, the designers said.
"The only issue we're running into is verifiability of the content," Shaw said. "It's a trust issue at this point. The search engines need to trust that the content they're searching is the same as the Flash [sites] are displaying."
The options for Flash sites today, though, remain limited. Shaw and Markel agreed that sites should avoid Flash if search engine optimization is a top priority and if the multimedia and interactivity features of Flash are not necessary.
Even sites using Flash need to take a hybrid approach by combining Flash and HTML, rather than relying exclusively for Flash in their architecture, Shaw said.
The pair's efforts are not the first to try to tackle Flash's search engine problems, Macromedia Inc. in 2002 released a software development kit (SDK) for Flash to help search engines index the content.
Click here to read about multimedia search engine Singingfish's introduction of Flash support.
But the SDK has offered limited help, Markel said. He said that Macromedia in recent months has become more involved in figuring out how to optimize Flash for search engines.
Google earlier this year appeared to begin indexing Flash using its own SDK, but that effort has appeared to be on again, off again, Markel said.
Tim Mayer, director of product management for search at Yahoo Inc., said that Yahoo does not spider into Flash content for its Web index but could once it "helps our comprehensiveness."
Multimedia sites, though, can use Yahoo's paid inclusion program, Overture Site Match, to feed the content into its index.
"At this point, if you're using Flash you rarely are going to get a No. 1 listing, and that's a shame," Mayer said
Article by Matt Hicks
Source: eWeek
In the hours after Yasser Arafat's death on Thursday, the Web reacted with a lot of headlines, speculation and debate.
Arafat's death dominated nearly every major news Web site worldwide, including those of Al-Jazeera, Haaretz, the International Herald Tribune, Le Monde and The New York Times.
Headlines ran the gamut form Al-Jazeera's "Israelis shed no tears for Arafat" to the Times' "State for Palestinians and peace with Israel left unrealized."
Web portal Yahoo listed its coverage of the leader's demise as its most heavily e-mailed story less than an hour after his death was first reported. The story also garnered the top spot among the most popular stories on CNN's international news site.
His death came as little surprise. Arafat was admitted to a French military hospital in late October, and rumors soon began circulating that his death was imminent.
The contentious nature of Arafat's reign over Palestinian politics sent Web surfers to Internet message boards to debate the leader's track record.
A quick scan of the various subject headers in Yahoo's discussion area threw light on just how divided sentiments about the leader remain.
Some posters lavished praise on the deceased chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. One subject line stated: "He stood up to the white man." Other posters blasted Arafat: "Why are we honoring a terrorist?"
Source: C-Net News
Bizrate and the Kelsey Group studied nearly 4,000 US consumers and found that 27 percent of total online searching is for local listings.
Ranking types of search sites based on familiarity, frequency of use, and loyalty, the study determined that Internet mapping sites are the most popular, followed by general search engines and Internet Yellow Pages.
Kelsey and BizRate surveyed 3,887 consumers whose average age was 44. Roughly 79% of respondents had been online for at least five years and 72% had high-speed Internet connectivity.
On Friday, November 5, eMarketer attended the final day of The Kelsey Group's three-day conference, "Interactive Local Media."
Panelists from the day's discussions addressed developments made thus far in the market as well as the potential for the future. Speakers on the first panel discussion of the day cited issues such as ad inventory, how different search advertising should be measured and the idea that Internet Yellow Pages could be doing more to get an audience.
The keynote speaker from media giant The Hearst Corporation made an important point that traditional print news media can adapt to the Internet era and create an online presence whereas the ever-popular search does not have the same flexibility.
Search cannot create a local presence, this giving print news an advantage publishers need to note. Hearst also made the point that the media no longer owns publishing and the key to success in this new environment is convergence.
In the final discussion of the day, panelists did not agree as to when digital would eclipse print in the Yellow Pages market.
A panelist from Yahoo noted that industry players were only "five minutes into" the development of the local search market, while a panelist from local-i made the point that if the end user is not served, conference attendees would be in the same place in five years as they are now.
An InfoSpace speaker was pleased that this conference centered more around the consumer than the advertiser, and a panelist from Google hoped that in five years, there would be more hard data on local search usage to review, rather than just market projections.
Yahoo recently released a study on "Newspaper Loyalists" in the US — those who read the newspaper at least three times per week — and found that 69% go online for local information like news, weather and event information.
Source: eMarketer
Netherlands based 4C Software launched a new meta search engine called DonBusca.
A meta search engine gives users the ability to simultaneously search multiple search engines from one interface. Meta search engines benefit users by saving them time and effort from having to individually visit multiple search engines in order to find the desired result.
Features available at DonBusca.com include:
-- Searching in four categories (Web, Blogs, News and Software)
-- Clustering results
-- Displaying Wikipedia articles
-- Displaying thumbshot
-- Providing 3 versions of the site for every result: Cached, Archive, Site
One of the more unique features of the DonBusca search results is the "Site Info" option which allows searchers to see the Google pagerank, Alex information, geographic data, link popularity, keyword density, and Whois information for each site in the results. No other meta search engine offers this menu of capabilities.
Further features include the ability to add each result directly to a favorite bookmark manager (Furl, Yahoo, Simpy), and a "Fast Surfer" mode which enables browsing through all search results without leaving current window.
Along with web search, DonBusca also a directory based on data from The Open Directory Project.
Searchers can displaying related categories for their search from DMOZ, and access the DMOZ directory with thumshots. An advanced search and 6 language interface is also available, as is a search voyeur which displays current searches and the 100 most searched for terms.
DonBusca.com was created by 4C Software, a Netherlands based firm specializing in developing windows application platforms and specialized internet applications.
Source: The URL wire
Koders launches a beta search engine specifically targeting open source developers and programmers.
The new Koders search engine indexes open source code spanning numerous licenses and in a variety of many programming languages.
The verticalization of search has been coming for some time with talk of all manner of specialized search engines that are either free or pay to play.
The idea, of course, is to separate the wheat from the chaff and access tightly focused results instead of seeing '2,398,789 results for your search term' (while arguments could be made for more advanced training on search methodology for the end user - that is an entirely different discussion).
Some interesting functions:
-- As you review results, you can select the project it belongs to and use a provided calculator in the browser to identify the cost to build (i.e. build versus buy). You can input the number of person months you would use, the percentage of functionality you need, and your monthly labor costs to evaluate.
-- Koders has an enterprise tool coming soon that will allow larger enterprises to implement a server appliance with what looks to be index and search logic similar to the public search tool.
The server can inventory all of the company's source code, regardless of language (behind the firewall) and better enable code management, reuse utilization and licensing compliance/oversight.
An interview with Koder's founder can be read at Newsforge.
Reporter Joe Barr makes an interesting comment after the interview - should or will Koders offer some licensing guidance and clarification on usage of the code discovered during searches?
Source: Sitepoint
FyberSearch has acquired feed search engine FeedPlex, in hopes of integrating it to its portfolio of search tools.
FeedPlex is a feed search engine that provides Internet users the ability to find data in XML/RSS format on the web.
“We are very happy to announce this acquisition, and to have such a diligent search engine ‘make something out of it’,” said Sid Yadav, former CEO and co-founder of FeedPlex.
FyberSearch has the mission to “To provide users with the level of control they need to find the results they desire". FeedPlex and other feed search engines reach an audience that a general web search engines such as FyberSearch cannot reach alone.
General search engines display search results by matching keywords against cataloged data from all types of web pages. This works well in many cases but sometimes a user would like to find only data taken from web pages similar news, articles and blogs. This is where FeedPlex comes in.
FeedPlex and other feed search engines catalog XML, RSS, ATOM and RDF files. These files typically contain rich data from all kinds of news websites and blogs.
“I am looking forward to completing the FeedPlex redesign.
It was and should continue to be another useful tool Internet users can use to find the information they need.” said Nathan Enss, Owner and Founder of FyberSearch.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Amazon's A9 search engine offers visitors a large collection of quality adult products available on Amazon's website.
Who says a shopping search entity can’t turn up the heat and still not bow down entirely to the porn industry.
As some of the major online shopping and search sites have been laying down the law on riskee sex driven sites, Amazon.com signs on one of the largest companies in adult products.
Adam & Eve, a leader in adult entertainment, and Amazon Services, Inc. announced that they have teamed up to offer Amazon.com users the ability to purchase over 1,200 of Adam & Eve’s top quality adult products.
Amazon.com, which recently launched the a9 search engine in conjunction with Google, offers customers the biggest collection of anything you might want to buy online.
Now they can add adult toys to that list with the recent alliance with Adam & Eve adult products. Adam & Eve products can be found by doing a search on the Amazon.com website. For instance if you search for “adult toys,” you will see a large display of Adam & Eve-related products (notice how we did not include a link).
According to a press release from Adam & Eve “This new addition to Amazon.com brings an exciting blend of enjoyment and edgy shopping that customers of Amazon.com have not had access to before.
The 1,200 Adam & Eve adult products sold on Amazon.com are displayed with Amazon customers in mind so that only products that appeal to that audience are accessible.”
Sean Trotter, Chief Technology Officer of Adam & Eve, said: “We are excited to offer Adam & Eve products on Amazon.com.
We are able to reach a new audience for our products with this new relationship with Amazon. For years Adam & Eve has been the best-known company in the adult toys business and now we are reaching new markets with alliances such as Amazon.com.”
Source: Search Engine Journal
In DoubleClick's latest quarterly eCommerce trend study, it reveals that 2.1 percent of consumers who visited a retail website's search engine made an online purchase.
Those numbers are up from 1.5 percent in the third quarter of 2003.
Online marketers and eTailers who sell to consumers would be well-advised to purchase premium placement in retailers' on-site search engines, based on the findings by DoubleClick's report.
In total, 9.3 percent of e-commerce sales came from the search function on shopping sites, compared to 6.6 percent a year earlier. Of those who bought products through on-site search in the third quarter, the average order size per online buyer grew to $126 from $100 in the same period last year.
Search engines are particularly important because most online consumers still don't know exactly what they want when surfing for products online, said Patti Freeman Evans, a JupiterResearch e-commerce analyst. "On-site search presents a tremendous opportunity to influence purchasing decisions," she said.
Freeman added that retailers can also use their sites to highlight items that are high margin, overstocked, or close to out of stock. She said that many large marketers have a site similar to Macys.com's "We Recommend" section, which gives marketers the opportunity for premium placements on their on-site search pages.
The report says that marketers should also be aware that consumers shop in different ways. "Marketers need to understand how consumers use [retailers'] on-site search engines," said Richard Fleck, DoubleClick strategic services manager. There are searchers who are actively searching for specific products, and others who are simply browsing--waiting for something to catch their attention.
Jupiter's Freeman added that some active searchers don't do a lot of research ahead of time, while others plan their shopping strategies very carefully, visiting product pages an average of 2.5 times before making a decision.
Fleck said that marketers should react to the different consumers in a similar manner: through a call to action that leads them down a certain purchasing path.
Freeman said that online retail marketing should always be proactive, but there should be a specific call to action for different demonstrated behaviors. To achieve best results, Freeman said retailers need to deploy sophisticated tracking tools to aid marketers to that end. Behavioral targeting, for example, is something several retailers are looking into, she said.
Other e-commerce report data said that shoppers are spending 10 percent less time on commerce sites during their shopping sessions. Third-quarter 2004 data said users spent 4.4 minutes at each site compared to 4.9 minutes a year earlier, and far less time on each page--29 seconds in 2004 versus 43 in 2003. Users are also viewing more pages during each site visit--10.3 pages versus 7.7 year-over-year.
Those results jibe with a report of the Online Publishers Association released earlier this week, showing that consumers are spending a smaller proportion of their online time at commerce sites (See MDN, "OPA: Users Spending More Time At Entertainment And News Sites" Nov. 2).
It is unclear how much of that change can be attributed to increased broadband adoption; Nielsen//NetRatings reported in July that broadband usage surpassed dial-up among Internet users. DoubleClick said the report did not differentiate between dial-up and broadband users.
The trend report shows that shopping cart abandonment continues to grow. Of those who initially add something to their carts, 57 percent abandon the carts without making a purchase--up from 53 percent a year ago. However, once shoppers start the checkout process, more are going through with the purchase. Checkout conversion increased to 63 percent in the third quarter--up from 59 percent in same period a year ago.
The data for the report comes from DoubleClick's SiteAdvance, a hosted Web site measurement and analysis product for online marketers.
The results are based on hundreds of millions of unique visitors, tens of millions of online shopping carts, and over $1 billion in total e-commerce sales. DoubleClick began collecting and compiling this data in second quarter 2003.
Source: Mediapost
IceRocket and Blog Search Engine have partnered to bring MoBlogs, a form of cell phone picture blogs into the search engine world with a new search feature producing image results of the latest MoBlogs images.
Blog Search Engine has over 10,000 blogs indexed in its blog directory and this new feature gives them a jump on other cutting edge search engines in the blogging world.
The partnership between the two companies utilizes IceRocket search technology to serve search results from TextAmerica blog entries - a MoBlog only blog hosting service.
While Google and Yahoo are trying to accumulate the largest web image search index, bloggers and site publishers are finding other targets for web search.
TextAmerica’s MoBlog service offers some of the latest and most rapidly updated images online. If one is looking for some online pics of a John Kerry or George W. Bush rally, it makes much more sense to search via MoBlogs than 3 month old image search engine indexes.
“IceRocket’s MoBlog search technology brings a new dimension to the Blog Search Engine which we never had before, we’re a much better blog searching solution now with our new search functionality” said Loren Baker, owner of the Blog Search Engine.
Blake Rhodes, CEO of IceRocket notes “Blog search is incredibly important, sometimes you like to know what other people think besides the traditional media.
Besides, MoBlogs are fun, they really let you see what others are up to.” If you’ve heard of IceRocket before, it’s the search engine that Mark Cuban of Broadcast.com fame and the Dallas Mavericks invested in earlier this year. IceRocket has been hailed by many for their approach to “pioneering commercial search by putting the interests of wants and consumers before advertisers.”
What are MoBlogs?
MoBlog stands for mobile weblog which consists of content posted to the Internet from a mobile or portable device, such as a cellular phone or PDA.
According to Wikipedia, much of the earliest development of moblogs occurred in Japan, among the first countries in the world where camera phones (portable phones with built-in cameras) were widely commercially available.
Source: Search Engine Journal
On Monday, Amazon's subsidiary A9 launched a version of its Internet toolbar for the Firefox Internet browser.
A9 said the toolbar, which is available for free download, will offer the same features to users of the Mozilla open-source software as it does for other browsers.
Those features include the "bookmarks" function, which lets users save favorite Web sites and access them from any PC, and "diary," which lets users save notes to themselves.
The toolbar can be used with Microsoft's Windows, Apple Computer's Mac OS and the Linux operating system.
Executives at A9 said the company had received a large number of requests from consumers looking for a version of the software to run with Firefox. The open-source browser has spurred considerable interest among Web surfers, who have downloaded 7 million copies of the latest release of the browser since September, according to Mozilla's estimates.
A9 was launched in mid-September after a lengthy test period. Unlike its rivals, the search engine organizes query results into expandable columns that each represent a specific type of search result, such as "images," "reference" and "movies."
The search engine is powered by technology from Google and Amazon's Alexa subsidiary, and it draws on reference information from GuruNet and the Internet Movie Database, among other sources. It also displays Google-sponsored ad listings.
While industry watchers continue to ponder how e-commerce specialist Amazon fits into the search engine landscape, the company is pushing into the market with new products such as the toolbar.
Amazon may have a leg up on the competition because of its shopping focus. Shopping has emerged as prime terrain among the search engine companies, because many consumers use search before making a purchase. Amazon's jump into the market highlights the perceived importance of search in driving e-commerce sales.
In related news, Google on Monday announced plans to release a version of its desktop search tool for Apple's Mac operating system.
Google launched the desktop tool earlier this month, throwing itself in the mix with Microsoft and other companies that are building advanced search software for retrieving everything from Web results to documents stored on a computer's hard drive.
Source: C-Net News
Internet users are making far fewer searches for pornography and sex, and instead are searching for eCommerce and business topics as compared to seven years ago.
"Twenty percent of all searching was sex-related back in 1997, now it's about 5 percent," said Amanda Spink, the University of Pittsburgh professor who co-authored "Web Search: Public Searching of the Web" with Penn State professor Bernard J. Jansen.
"It's a little bit more in Europe, 8-10 percent, but in comparison to everything else, it's a very small percent," Spink said. "People are using (the Web) more as an everyday tool rather than as just an entertainment medium."
Experts aren't surprised by the results.
"They're not getting excited about using the Internet anymore," said Barry Wellman, a University of Toronto cyberspace researcher said of the findings. "Remember when cars came out, and people would say, 'Wow, we're going for a ride today!' Now they just go for a ride."
Or go shopping. Spink said her studies show queries for e-business or commerce increased by 86 percent in the past seven years.
"That makes sense because e-commerce in the last seven years has boomed," said Gary Price, news editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, a branch of Connecticut-based Jupitermedia.com, which reports on Internet surfing.
In one study detailed in their book, Spink and Jansen randomly selected thousands of search sessions from more than 1 million they culled anonymously from search engines such as AltaVista. They tracked the type of search terms used, how many search terms were entered and how deeply into the results computer users clicked for information.
What hasn't changed much in seven years is how hard people are willing to work at searching. The answer: Not very. Spink and Jansen found that people averaged about two words per query and two queries per search session.
"The searches are taking less than five minutes and they're only looking at the first page of results," Spink said. "That's why people are wanting to get their results on the first page" of search engine results.
That's one reason behind a proliferation of sponsored links that appear at the top of results pages, often highlighted or in bold print. And it's why search engine companies — and the creators of the Web pages they're sifting through — are trying to develop technology to help computer users hone in on desired results and filter out the rest.
Spink and Jansen have just begun a study on Pittsburgh-based Vivisimo.com. Their findings will be used to improve the "metasearch" engine, which culls results from other search engines and categorizes them for users.
"We were surprised that people weren't doing more complex searches," Spink said. "If you put a couple of words into the Web, you're going to get hundreds of thousands of results. I think people aren't trained very well to use the search engines."
Source: Yahoo News
BellSouth's Yellow Pages Online unit is helping sell advertisements on Google's search engines, a move that underscores the growing emphasis by search engines to reach local advertisers.
The two companies plan to announce an agreement today, under which BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Corp.'s close to 2,000 sales people in nine Southeast states will sell online advertising packages featuring Google.
The deal, one of the first of its kind, is part of Google's efforts to sell advertising to more small- and medium-size local businesses. Some analysts have questioned how Google could significantly reach that group with its traditional Web-based, self-service ad-sales model.
The Mountain View, Calif., search company and rivals including Yahoo Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc., have this year launched special sites to allow consumers to search for businesses and organizations in their neighborhoods, moves linked to their quests for more local advertisers.
The search engines' revenue related to such local searches should climb from $45 million last year to $2.5 billion in 2008, according to the Kelsey Group, a Princeton, N.J., consulting and research firm.
BellSouth aims to simplify the process of buying search-related advertising for businesses, by providing flat-rate monthly packages.
Search engines generally require businesses to bid on key words and then charge based on the number of times consumers click on an ad, a system that can sometimes be unwieldy and unpredictable.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
A number of search engine marketing professionals have founded the Search Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK), with the intention of promoting search engine optimisation and positioning services in the UK.
The group temporarily headed by Barry Lloyd of MakeMeTop, is looking to establish itself as the principle organisation for search engine marketers in the UK.
It is looking to provide legal advice on search engine techniques, promote best practice, publish data on the search engine business in the UK and generally represent the industry.
Lloyd said 'The UK search engine market is currently the second largest in the world outside the United States.
It has became apparent that the UK should have its own association for this growing sector, set up in a manner to reflect the specific way that both businesses and trade associations operate in the UK and other parts of Europe.'
The Search Marketing Association UK can be contacted via their web site at http://www.sma-uk.org/.
Source: PC Pro.co.uk
Copernic announces the availability of Copernic Desktop Search 1.1, an improved version of its critically-acclaimed desktop search product.
CDS enables users to instantly search their personal files, emails and attachments, as well as pictures, music, and videos. The company also announced that CDS 1.0 has been named as an “Editor’s Choice” by CNET in a review that included desktop search products from Google, Microsoft (Lookout), Hotbot, Blinkx, and X1.
In the CNET review, CDS was lauded by CNET editors as being “fast and easy to navigate,” and its interface was described as “the best of the desktop search engines.” With CDS 1.1, users will benefit from an even more refined search experience, thanks to performance optimizations, new customization options, user interface improvements, and better compatibility.
“The response we’ve had from users, analysts, the press, and many sophisticated bloggers since the launch of CDS is simply amazing, and the recent recognition as Editor’s Choice by CNET is another great validation of our product,” said David Burns, Copernic CEO.
“We improved CDS by listening carefully to our user’s feedback. For those seeking the absolute best desktop search experience available, we are already the clear market leader. And we will continue innovating to further increase our competitive edge. CDS 1.1 is just a beginning.”
Copernic Desktop Search 1.1 Includes:
* Performance – Faster scanning of Outlook emails and contacts; better monitoring of computer resource usage to pause the indexer as soon as another application requires CPU time.
* Customization – Scheduled indexing options now customizable for each category with specific minute/hour/day intervals; new option to configure custom music, picture, and video file types.
* User Interface – Ability to perform one query in multiple windows simply by clicking on category buttons; improved and faster loading of preview pane with easier access to contextual commands for email attachments.
* Compatibility – Better compatibility with Office 2000.
Search engines, portals and browser systems are trying to get off of the Internet and your desktop and into your hard drives, email, and private files.
By taking advantage of a basically lame Windows Search tool used by Microsoft since the dawn of MS Windows, huge public monsters like AOL and Google as well as smaller software developers are introducing desktop and email search which is filling the demands of Windows users.
Source: Search Engine Journal
While 26 percent of Americans has used a search engine for finding drug information online, still only a few are venturing into the online prescription drug marketplace.
The prescription drug market is enormous and includes millions of Americans who go online to get information about the medicines they consume.
According to the new Pew Internet & American Life Project "Prescription Drugs Online" report, 64% of American households contain a regular user of prescription drugs, and one in four Americans (26%) has used the Internet to look for information about prescription drugs.
However, just 4% of Americans have purchased prescription drugs online, because, simply, most Americans do not fully trust the online prescription drug marketplace.
While 62% of Americans think purchasing prescription drugs online is less safe than purchasing them at a local pharmacy, only 20% think online purchases are as safe as local purchases. The remaining 18% responded that they did not know or that it depends on the situation.
In fact, even though one in five said online drug purchases are safe, only a fraction have ever bought prescription drugs online. The survey found a mere 4% of Americans have ever actually purchased prescription drugs on the Internet. To put that in actual numbers, of the 2,200 American adults surveyed just 93 people said they had purchased prescription drugs online.
When it comes to why people purchase drugs online, even though the sample size was small, Americans who have ordered prescription drugs online cited convenience and cost savings as the main reasons why they decided to take the leap. Privacy was the least likely factor of the choices offered in the survey.
When asked about the last time they purchased prescription drugs online, the majority of Rx purchasers said they visited a site that was based in the United States, and only a few visited a site based in another country. In addition:
-- Three-quarters of Rx purchasers said the last time they purchased prescription drugs online, they bought a drug for a chronic medical condition such as high blood pressure or arthritis.
-- One-quarter said their last purchase at an online pharmacy was to aid weight loss or sexual performance.
-- Most were satisfied with their last contact with an online pharmacy and plan to order prescription drugs online in the future.
All in all, the survey was upbeat about the future of the online drug market, stating that "Ignorance and mistrust of the online prescription drug market may be dispelled by further research and good experiences," and indicating that many Americans may soon change their minds about the safety of online prescription drug purchases.
Drawing an analogy to the growth in another large online category, the report stated: "[Prescription drug purchasers] who research a product online often become customers.
Convenience is the number one reason why banking became the fastest-growing activity between 2000 and 2002 — and it is the main reason why current Rx purchasers made the switch from offline to online ordering."
Source: eMarketer
Northern Light releases a new version of its business search engine available to individual users as well as to enterprises.
The new version, called the Northern Light Business Research Engine, is available at http://www.nlresearch.com/
The Business Research Engine searches the Business Web of 20 million pages from 16,000 editorially-selected websites of public companies, private companies, trade journal and trade associations, venture funded companies, venture capital companies, corporate law firms, MBA programs, and the agencies of the Federal Government that regulate business.
Industry commentary and analysis from 5 million articles from 1,400 trade journals with the full-text and all the graphics, charts, and tables from the articles Current news with over 7,000 stories per day from over 70 licensed newswires covering every significant event in the business world around the globe, with the full-text index updated every two minutes.
All content in the search database is tightly classified to over 40 industries so users can drill down into the information most relevant to their jobs.
Before Clusty, Vivisimo, and others Northern Light was a pioneer in clustered search with their little blue folders.
Northern Light didn’t quite make it past the bubble burst and was shortly sold then dismantled by Divine, the Chicago firm which went on one of the more spectacular acquisition sprees of the dot-com era, taking stakes in nearly 90 technology companies before running through $500 million in investor dough and filing for bankruptcy protection.
Northern Light’s orginal owner then bought it back from Devine an a bankruptcy auction.
Washington Posts’ Leslie Walker reports that Seuss had regained the search-engine company he had founded in 1985 and sold to Divine last year, Northern Light, for a mere $81,000, about half a penny on the dollar of what Divine paid for it.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Recently, IceRocket added two new tools that help to position it more as an alternative search engine.
IceRocket’s Blog Search marks IceRocket as one of the first top to mid tier search engines that has opened its doors to blog searching and an interesting live time search reporter called IceSpy.
Blake Rhodes, CEO of IceRocket, notes on his blog “Hopefully by now everyone knows what a blog is, it’s a personal weblog where people can express their thoughts and views, an online diary of sorts.
2005 will be the year of the blog, mark my words, many people are just finding out about them and soon everyone will be blogging. We felt it was about time that a search engine created a section specifically for searching Blogs, so we did it.”
IceRocket’s Blog Search index works from a database of RSS feeds from blogs only. When asked what made IceRocket get into blog searching Rhodes told the Search Engine Journal “It is something we have been planning for a while now.
Both Mark and I love Blogs, we recently launched an official IceRocket blog (BlogIceRocket.com) and of course Mark has his blog (Blogmaverick.com).
As I have said before 2005 will be the year of the blog and we felt someone needed to provide a blog search.”
Rhodes added that IceRocket’s blog search updates as soon as an indexed blog posts a new entry and by rolling out a blog search before Google and Yahoo that “this is just another example of how we will differentiate ourselves from the pack.
We have a few other things we are eager to unveil this fall.”
Blake is looking for feedback on IceRocket’s Blog Search.
IceSpy is a real time tracker of IceRocket searches which holds no bars in its reporting. So if a couple of X-rated terms leave you queasy, IceSpy does give its viewers a forward warning - “The following page may contain search terms that some may find to be obscene and/or offensive.
You certify that you are of the legal age in the jurisdiction from which you are accessing this page, or any pages, containing adult material.
You acknowledge all responsibility for viewing the material that follows.” Other than the occassional silly term, IceSpy is a cool way to see what people are searching for on IceRocket and the different niches of search queries which are performed on an ongoing basis.
IceRocket has also release a new toolbar offering their search box (of course) along with a news ticker, Alexa rankings, related links, site info, and a dictionary.
While most toolbars are available only for Microsoft IE browsers, IceRocket offers a version for Mozilla FireFox at IceRocket FireFox.
Besides Blog Search and IceSpy, Blake also tells the Search Engine Journal that IceRocket is not finished with its future plans “We are about to add a phone pics section with only pictures taken from cell phone cameras(moblogs).
We have a lot of stuff happening right now.”
Source: Search Engine Journal
Unreal Marketing Solutions thinks small e-tailers have to keep it real when it comes to search engine marketing.
That fact is a prime reason why the company is to launch a new hosted service designed specifically for small catalogers, chains and business-to-consumer e-commerce sites.
The service, which Unreal Marketing, a Philadelphia-based search engine marketing and interactive advertising agency, plans to launch later this year or in early 2005, will include software for reviewing, extracting and indexing products, indexing into search engines, and centralized reporting.
Pricing has yet to be determined for the paid inclusion portion, but will be less than the rate for larger retailers, which ranges from 35 cents per word to $3 and in different merchandising categories, says Unreal Marketing CEO Michael Stalbaum.
"Research we’ve seen indicates that almost 100% of small businesses see a web marketing presence as critical and 40% see search engine marketing as an important tool to drive traffic and convert sales," Stalbaum says. "There are a lot of small retailers who need these kinds of services now."
Unreal Marketing Solutions is a full-service interactive agency specializing in search engine optimization and online media. The company`s search engine marketing services, which include paid inclusion, natural optimization, paid listings management and keyword buying, are utilized by a number of Internet and multi-channel retailers such as Foot Locker, L`Oreal USA, and Artbeads.com.
Source: Internet Retailer.com
Intelliseek launches the first of its blog-analytics applications built on top of its BlogPluse analysis service.
Dubbed "Campaign Radar 2004", no doubt to coincide with this year's US presidential election, the software aims to track political buzz, trends and insights on popular blog sites.
Blogs, slang for Web logs, are diaries or journals published and shared by users online. The content posted in blogs usually contains "word of mouth" opinion and viewpoints on various topics.
Radar 2004 is being offered as a free Web service that draws on Intelliseek's BlogPlulse software which tracks over two million blogs per day. BlogPulse was launched in May this year to showcase Intelliseek's blog analysis competency. It analyzes and ranks key issues and phrases posted in blog content.
The new service will provide a daily list of hot topics and issues as well as two daily trend graphs (via the Blogsphere Campaign Radar) - one tracking the presidential candidates and the other campaign issues like the Iraq war and the economy.
Blogs represent one of the fastest growing areas of new content on the Internet. Companies, particularly marketing departments, are now looking to tap into blogs as an additional source of market intelligence.
"Bloggers serve as a form of early radar on key issues and trends," said Pete Blackshaw, CEO of Cincinnati-based Intelliseek.
Source: Computer Business Review
BlowSearch will provide users with the ability to obtain search results in Spanish, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish.
Users simply have to enter a search term in a language other than English and BlowSearch will automatically provide results in that language.
In addition, users can set preferences that direct BlowSearch to search in a specific language. The Multi-Language search tool also offers adult filtering, spelling correction and the ability to highlight query terms in search results.
"As developers of online tools, we have to recognize the fact that the Internet transcends borders and languages.
It has a culture all its own," said Richard Kahn, chief operating officer of BlowSearch. "If you don't offer your online product in multiple languages, you're turning away potential customers."
BlowSearch's Multi-Language search is the most recent addition to BlowSearch's family of Internet tools.
BlowSearch also offers a proprietary Meta PPC search engine and the BlowSearch Toolbar, an application that runs within a Web browser.
The BlowSearch Toolbar provides access to BlowSearch services such as weather, a live ABC News feed and pop-up blocking, while visiting any site on the Internet.
Source: TMC Net
More than 30.3 percent of U.S. visits to music retail websites in July 2004 resulted directly from search-engines.
According to a new report from Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, this high rate of search-driven music shopping compares with 19.2 percent for the overall retail category. July 2004 visits to music retailers from search engines and directories have grown by 49.0 percent versus the same period a year ago.
"Search engines have long played a vital role in helping consumers navigate the Internet, however they now are playing a monumental role in connecting music fans with music retailers," said Bill Tancer, vice president of research, Hitwise.
"For music shoppers, search engines and directories offer an effective and comprehensive means for locating music products and seeking the best deals. For the music retailers, a major new customer-acquisition platform has arrived.
And with the increasing popularity of the Internet for music distribution and listening, retailers have no choice but to engage it."
Highlights of the August 2004 Hitwise Online Music Report (All findings based on July 2004 monthly data unless noted otherwise):
-- Among the top 100 search terms, 50 percent of search queries that resulted in visits to the Hitwise Music retail category were brand related (i.e. "bmgmusic"); 21 percent were navigational (included a URL, i.e., "www.columbiahouse.com"); and 29 percent were generic in nature (associated keywords, i.e., "music downloads").
-- Over 53 percent of search queries resulting in visits to music retailer sites consisted of three or more words, compared to 48 percent for overall online retailers (for the 4 weeks ending June 19, 2004). According to Tancer this demonstrates that online music shoppers tend to more specific in their search goals.
-- Within the music-retail genre, download sites increased 20.6 percent in market share of U.S. visits during the period of January 2004 to July 2004, while traditional music retailers lost market share at a rate of 9.1 percent. Nonetheless, as of July 2004, traditional music retailers captured 3.9 times the amount of US visits than music download sites.
-- The predominant demographic of visitors to online music retail sites is between 25-44 years of age and earning a household income of $30,000 to $60,000. While females represent 49 percent of all visitors to the retail-music category, women are heavily represented on several major music catalogue sites: www.bmgmusic.com (60 percent) and www.columbiahouse.com (58 percent).
-- Sony promoted its new music download service Sony Connect (www.connect.com) through a joint promotion with McDonald's. As a result, Connect's market share of U.S. visits skyrocketed 1,426 percent (week ending May 29 compared to week ending June 19), jumping from number 68 to eight in the 'Shopping & Classifieds - Music' site ranking.
This increase pushed Connect ahead of leading competitors - such as iTunes, Napster and Walmart Download - for the following three weeks. Sony Connect received 9.5 percent of its traffic from search engines for the week ending August 28, 2004, well below the average (21.3 percent) of the entire music retail category for the same week. -0- *T Hitwise Data Number of words per search query resulting in visits to the Music retail category for the 4 weeks ending June 19, 2004.
Source: TMC Net.com
Wotbox, an independent search engine better known for its advanced geo-targeting technology, launches eight country-specific search properties.
Wotbox, which displays a flag of the country of origin next to each result on its search pages, is growing and has launched a new search engine for eight major countries.
It also offers many other advanced features including allowing users to zone in and search only in their chosen country.
“The logical next step on from this was to create a fully localized version of Wotbox for each country.”
Says Director Mike Nott, “We’re trying to give international users more choice by providing another local search option for them. We also wanted the interface for non-english sites to be in the native language, making it easier for local users.”
The new country-specific Wotbox sites are for:
Australia - http://www.wotbox.com.au
Canada - http://ca.wotbox.com
France - http://fr.wotbox.com
Germany - http://www.wotbox.de
Italy - http://www.wotbox.it
New Zealand - http://www.wotbox.co.nz
Spain - http://es.wotbox.com
United States - http://www.wotbox.us
Source: Search Engine Journal
A spirited Steve Ballmer said yesterday that Microsoft is really determined in challenging Google for leadership in the search business.
"It'll be a lot of fun for the rest of you to watch," Ballmer shouted to the delight of several hundred guests at a meeting of the Massachusetts Software Council in Boston.
Ballmer, who took over as chief executive from cofounder Bill Gates in 2000, came to Boston for meetings with customers. He also visited the Timothy Smith Foundation, which runs computer technology centers in the Roxbury area. There, Ballmer and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino unveiled a donation of $400,000 in Microsoft products.
At the software council meeting, Ballmer scoffed at the idea that the technology industry's boom times are over. "The next 10 years will bring more positive changes . . . than the last 10 years did," he said. Then he listed a host of challenges the industry has not met.
For example, Ballmer wondered why many of his listeners were jotting down notes as he spoke. "Why isn't this meeting being recorded electronically?" he asked. "Why isn't it being broadcast on the wireless network in this room? . . . It's just a question of software."
Ballmer also pointed to healthcare, which he called "one of the least computerized businesses in the world."
And despite those ever-present ads on the Internet, Ballmer said, online advertising can still be vastly improved, to produce systems that consistently show Internet users exactly those ads that might interest them.
"I see a world of incredible possibility and opportunity," Ballmer said. But he conceded that Microsoft has barriers to overcome. There's the long-delayed new operating system, code-named Longhorn.
Last week, the company set a deadline of late 2006 to complete the new software, but gave up on including a new technology for managing data files. It was once one of Longhorn's key selling points, but Microsoft officials decided it was too complex to finish Longhorn in time.
In the near term, Microsoft's biggest challenge may be the perception that its software is riddled with bugs that let computer vandals seize control of sensitive systems or infect them with viruses.
"That's a major impediment," said Ballmer, "and so we as a company have made security our job one priority."
Ballmer urged those in the audience to install the latest "service pack" for the Windows XP operating system. The service pack is mainly a set of modifications to Windows XP that are supposed to make it far less vulnerable to vandalism.
Meanwhile, Ballmer left no doubt that Microsoft has targeted Internet search services for the kind of all-out competitive push that the company once used to seize dominance in Web browser software.
Despite Google's popularity, "the search market is still quite fragmented," Ballmer said, and existing tools still generate lots of useless results. Ballmer said Microsoft plans to invent new search technology that will change this, and make life more difficult for Google and other rivals.
Source: Boston.com
FAST is expected to license its search technology for online directory sites.
FAST said it would begin offering its FAST AdVisor search application to online directory sites like ThomasNet and Norway's Findexa and to career sites such as CareerBuilder. The FAST AdVisor search platform can sort both database and Web content while letting users drill down for more information by category.
FAST sees the chance to use its enterprise search expertise already tapped by clients like AT&T, Dell and IBM to help online directories compete with new local search engines from Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo introduced sites in recent months that integrate Web search, maps and directory content to connect users to local information.
"This allows e-directories to give end users a much more robust experience and at the same time allow the e-directories to compete," said David Isaacson, a product manager for Oslo, Norway-based FAST.
FAST AdVisor has several advertising-related features. It lets the site determine for itself when an advertiser listing is shown, setting parameters such as the amount bid for placement or the length of time as an advertiser.
Isaacson said Internet directory sites have advantages over search engines in the emerging local search space. Directories already have vast databases of local business information as well as large sales forces to introduce small businesses to online advertising.
"We think coming in and helping the e-directories with that technology really puts them in a much better position," he said.
The 23.7 million U.S. small businesses are seen as prime candidates for the expansion of search marketing beyond the roughly 200,000 now using it. According to The Kelsey Group, the market for local search marketing could reach $2.5 billion in 2008. Jupiter Research, however, thinks it will grow much more slowly, anticipating $824 million in 2008.
Source: DM News
Microsoft will release its long-awaited update to its Windows operating system in 2006, but without its advanced file search capability, the company said last week.
The Redmond, WA, company said the new operating system, code named Longhorn, would come without WinFS, a system designed to search for information scattered throughout a computer in different file types.
Microsoft was expected to combine desktop search with the Web search engine it is also building. Instead, it will release a test version of WinFS with Longhorn, in a delay the company characterized as a "tradeoff" for making the operating system available quickly.
The combination of desktop and Web search is seen as a key to Microsoft cutting into the lead established by rival Google in search. Google is reportedly working on its own file search system.
Ask Jeeves in June bought Tukaroo, a startup that makes software to search users' hard drive, local network and Internet.
Microsoft's MSN unit aims to release a Web search engine by next summer to compete with Google and Yahoo. The company has pledged to spend $100 million on its search efforts.
Source: DM News
While Internet search engines struggle to merge their search results with local yellow pages, in an effort to cash in on billions in potential revenue, Martin Garcia explains, "Local search shouldn't be about pay-per-clicks or keyword advertising".
It should be about promoting your small business as efficiently as possible so that folks in your home town can easily find you-whether you're a deli, an auto dealer, or spa."
"FindLocalWebsites.com is fast, affordable, and user friendly," he continues. "Best of all, the business owner controls all the categories in which he wants to be listed-virtually on-demand-in just minutes."
Studies by SearchEngineWatch.com claim that ten million small-and-medium sized enterprises conduct the majority of their business within fifty miles of their locations.
MSN admits that fifty percent of all searches fail miserably. Martin Garcia can attest to the frustration associated with both these statistics. Garcia vowed that no one should have to feel helpless because of a lack of local information. "FindLocalWebsites.com was born out of a need to help companies and customers connect."
In the race to make local search an accurate and powerful tool for consumers, FindLocalWebsites.com stands at the finish line with the revolutionary new generation of search engine technology. Adds Garcia, "We've been there for years without annoying pop-up or banner ads."
"Local search," he concludes, "is about uniting community and commerce. FindLocalWebsites.com is the People's search engine!"
Chief Executive, Martin Garcia, invites you to discuss with him the new generation of search engine technology FindLocalWebsites.com, the People's Search Engine.
Source: W3 Reports
Startup X1 Technologies updated its desktop search application with support for more complex queries and broader indexing of file attachments.
X1 Technologies Inc., of Pasadena, Calif., first launched its X1 Search application in February as a way for users to quickly find e-mails, attachments, contacts and desktop files.
It is competing in a space increasingly drawing the attention of operating system makers Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer Inc., as well as Web search providers such as Google Inc.
Rather than a plug-in within an e-mail client such as Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook, X1 Search is a separate client that supports multiple e-mail clients, specifically Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Netscape Mail.
With the new release, called X1 Search 04.08, X1 has added the ability for users to search for specific phrases by putting a set of keywords in quotation marks and to use Boolean commands such as "AND" and "OR," said Mark Goodstein, X1's founder and executive vice president of business development.
"It's what we call the 'Google standards,'" Goodstein said of the additional query support. "We're supporting a much more complex search syntax."
Beyond queries, X1's new release expands its ability to index and preview file attachments in e-mail. X1 already supported the indexing and viewing of file attachments from e-mail in Outlook and Eudora, and the new version adds attachment support for Outlook Express and Netscape Mail, Goodstein said.
X1 supports about 255 file types, such as PDFs, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Available now, the new version runs on Windows 98 and higher. Pricing starts at $99 for a single copy.
Click here to read more about Apple's preview of a search feature called Spotlight for Mac OS X "Tiger."
Beyond the new release, X1 is working on a version that plugs into Outlook and is considering adding support for Lotus Notes, Goodstein said. The company also is working to license its technology to other technology providers.
Desktop and e-mail search have gained renewed attention as Microsoft promotes its plans for all-in-one search capabilities in its Longhorn release of Windows. Last week, it demonstrated prototypes of integrated search.
The desktop search field also has attracted other startups. One, Outlook Software Inc., developed a search plug-in for Outlook and last month was acquired by Microsoft's MSN division.
Another startup, Stata Laboratories Inc., has created a search-based e-mail client as an alternative to folder-based clients such as Outlook. On Tuesday, the San Mateo, Calif., company announced the availability of the professional edition of its Bloomba 2.0 e-mail client.
As with the personal edition released in June, the professional edition adds an integrated calendar and an improved contacts feature. But it also more directly targets business users by allowing them to share their calendars and to sync their information with Palm-based handhelds.
Source: eWeek
About 67 percent of those polled by Harris Interactive and MSN, feel Web searches are the fastest way to find information, though what they are searching for varies widely.
Whether because of curiosity, boredom or perhaps the need to find someone from one's past, many people use search engines to find out about the activities and whereabouts of friends, family and ex-boyfriends or girlfriends (the practice is widespread enough that it has acquired a name — "googling" someone — though the sponsor of the survey, MSN, probably hopes to change that with its recently revamped search engine).
The most popular person-search of all, however, is users looking up themselves. Just under 40% of respondents have done a query on their own name to see where they pop-up. Searches for friends and family polled a bit lower, and, surprisingly, only 17% have searched for an old flame (or at least admit to it).
Aside from searches based on personal relationships, a wide variety of topics prove popular depending on the demographic group surveyed.
The popularity of each topic relative to each group is often logical and sometimes telling.
For example, respondents in LA are most likely to search for entertainment news, while New Yorkers are the biggest searchers for financial news.
Adults ages 59 and older tend to look up information about their family ancestry, as well as their investments, while baby boomers are more interested in topics like health, weather and recipes. Generation X tends to search the Web for online dating and relationship topics. Men are more likely to search for information on cars, technology and science, while women prefer information on health, fashion and celebrities.
Harris Interactive and MSN surveyed over 2,200 adults in six major cities in late June and early July 2004.
Source: eMarketer
Google is a popular search engine, and is one of the handiest tools for many hackers, said a security expert on Thursday. Google's ability to record Internet sites' content can be used to pinpoint those with weak security, Johnny Long, a security researcher and computer scientist for Computer Security Corp. told attendees at the Black Hat Security Briefings here.
Though the technique is not new, well-crafted searches turned up so many sites with vulnerabilities that even jaded researchers laughed during the session.
"It is an old dog with new tricks," Long said. "It never ceases to amaze people, all the vulnerabilities out there."
By searching for default server page titles, for example, an attacker can find easily exploitable servers. Applications left in default modes can also be found by searching for error pages generated by the software. And searching for specific file names can pinpoint vulnerable servers connected to the Internet.
"It is the first step to finding vulnerable targets," Long said. A simple search for the log-in page of Microsoft's Web server software, the Internet Information Server, turned up 11,300 sites on the Internet that exposed the page to the public. Gathering log-in information for poorly configured databases is also easy, he said.
The exploitation of Google's in-depth searching capabilities underscores how software with no malicious motive can be used to help online intruders.
The recent MyDoom.o virus hammered Google and other search engines with searches from infected PCs for additional e-mail addresses to which the program could send itself. Security researchers have also theorized that Google and other search engines could be used as a carrier of malicious code.
"I only use Google to find vulnerable servers," said Tim Mullin, security specialist for accounting-software maker Anchor IS. Mullin said other search engines don't have the advanced search option available on Google and don't cache old versions of Web sites. "Not only can I see what exists now, but I can see what the Web site looked like before."
A Google representative could not immediately comment, citing Securities and Exchange Commission regulations regarding the quiet period before a public offering.
For most, the depth of Google searches is just one more potential threat to worry about.
"It's not revolutionizing anything that people are doing now," Long said. "It is just adding another attack vector."
Source: C-Net News
Even if search engines have vastly improved access to information, search tools need to be refined to make it easier to cull information or conduct queries.
That was the word from researchers and speakers at the New Paradigms for Using Computers Conference, held at IBM's Almaden research lab here last week.
"We live in a world with lots of information but also lots of interruptions. It is a teriyaki of information. The question is, 'How do we survive in the marinade?'" joked Dan Russell, senior manager of user sciences and experience research at IBM Almaden.
Early attempts to better locate the world's information are already under way. The University of California at Berkeley, for example, showed off at the conference a prototype of a search engine called Flamenco that makes it easier to search for works of art or antiques. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Inxight, meanwhile, has created software that attempts to graphically represent latent connections between people or institutions by studying where and how they get mentioned on the Web.
On the desktop, companies such as Ingenuity Software, founded by former Apple Computer developer Bruce Horn, are creating tools designed to make it easier for people to index their photos and documents for subsequent Google-like searches on their hard drive.
These research efforts are in addition to new operating systems under development that will include better search tools.
Microsoft plans to add better search features to a future version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due sometime around 2006 or 2007. The software giant last week demonstrated a more general Web search "service" that's also in development.
And Apple's Tiger, a new version of the company's Mac OS X operating system that's due next year, will include a new systemwide search engine called Spotlight that will allow Mac users to quickly search and find any file, Apple says.
One of the surprises that has emerged from the Internet Archive, which is intended to become a repository of everything ever published, is that the body of public works can probably be corralled, said Brewster Kahle, founder of the organization.
About 100 million different books have been published in history, Kahle said, citing estimates from professor Raj Reddy at Carnegie Mellon University. About 28 million sit in the Library of Congress. On average, a book can be condensed to a megabyte in Microsoft Word. Thus, the books in the Library of Congress could fit into a 28-terabyte storage system.
"For the cost of a house, you could have the Library of Congress," Reddy said, adding that mass book-scanning projects are currently under way in India and China.
"Universal access to all human knowledge is within our grasp. It could be one of the greatest achievements of all time." -- Brewster Kahle, founder, Internet Archive.
Only about 2 million to 3 million audio recordings--mostly music--have ever been published for public consumption. The Internet Archive has begun to store digitized recordings of concerts as well and has about 15,000 shows in its database to date. There are between 100,000 to 200,000 theatrical movies--half of them from India--in existence and about 20 terabytes of TV broadcasts a month. The Web grows by about 20 terabytes of compressed data a month as well. (One terabyte equals 1 trillion bytes.) Since 1984, about 50,000 software titles, including CD-ROMs, have emerged.
Though the legal issues around storing and viewing all this information remain thorny, storing it is doable.
"Universal access to all human knowledge is within our grasp," Kahle said. "It could be one of the greatest achievements of all time."
Still, that's a lot to grasp. Similarly, individuals will experience an explosion in their personal catalogs of data. In the MyLifeBits project under way at Microsoft Research, noted scientist Gordon Bell is attempting to digitally capture all of the books, movies, TV shows, music and other media he has experienced in his life. He's up to 44GB of data so far.
E-mails, phone messages, photographs and personal video will also add to an individual's data trove. In another experiment, doctors in Cambridge, England, have equipped patients suffering from severe memory loss with a Microsoft SenseCam, a wearable camera that takes pictures when a person moves. One man is currently using it so he can show his wife, who has memory problems, a diary of the day, said Ken Wood, who works on the project.
Microsoft has also entered a three-year alliance with the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. In a likely experiment, attendees will wander about the arts fest with SenseCams around their necks, snapping shots.
One approach to mastering data overload lies in developing search engines specialized for certain topics and data sets. That's the tack taken by Berkeley's Flamenco project.
In Flamenco, a Yahoo-like interface categorizes artworks drawn from museum collections around the world by content (animals, heaven and earth, shapes and colors, and so on), century, artist, medium (such as painting, furniture, sculpture) and other identifiers. By going up and down the tree, users can browse through all the animal pictures found in the database, or they can zero in on, say, the years 1700 to 1709 and discover that the period, at least as represented by the database, produced only four paintings of hoofed mammals.
The search engine does not search on the visual information contained in the picture, said Kevil Li, a student on the project. Instead, searches are conducted on descriptive text submitted by the museums that digitize their artwork for such databases.
Other tools, such as Inxight and GeoFusion, produce graphical representations of data obtained through searches. GeoFusion, which makes software that can extrapolate from geographic data, was able to render a map of the movements of a tagged tuna.
By contrast, Inxight's software creates a map of relationships between names and topics. A search on the White House and business showed that Haliburton is the corporation linked most often to the White House. In a similar fashion, IBM's own WebFountain project is used to test how cohesive certain blogging communities are by how quickly and in unison they react to news events.
File systems will likely begin to disappear as search gains popularity. One of the phenomena that Microsoft researchers are finding in MyLifeBits is that files are largely ad hoc categories that become outdated, said Jim Gemmell at Microsoft Research.
Instead, data should be tagged so that if people remember a name or part of a name, they can find their way back to documents or pictures involving that person, or they can find documents created on the same day that they had a phone conversation with the person, even if the discussion involved something unrelated.
"The problem is not that we keep too much with MyLifeBits. The problem is how to use it," Gemmell said.
Poorer nations will also be able to take advantage of these advances, even without an electrical grid. The Internet Archive has created mobile bookmobiles in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard and others. The bookmobiles contain a printer hooked up to a satellite feed, which can print books for kids. Two are in operation in India, while another in rural Uganda prints about 1,500 books a week. The entire bookmobile, including the cost of the used van, is $15,000, and 100-page books cost about a $1 to print and bind in the van.
"It takes about 12 to 15 minutes to make a book," he said. "It is cheaper for a library in the United States to print and give away a book than retrieve it."
Source: C-Net News
A press freedom group with international ramifications criticizes Yahoo and Google for allegedly cooperating with the Chinese government to crackdown on web access.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it, "deplores the irresponsible policies of United States Internet firms Yahoo! and Google in bowing directly and indirectly to Chinese government demands for censorship."
It called on the United States to apply the principles of its Global Internet Freedom Act on its private sector's activities in "some of the world's most repressive regimes."
The Global Internet Freedom Act, passed by the US House of Representatives in July 2003, aims to combat online censorship imposed by governments around the world.
RSF said it appealed to Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel last December but received no reply.
The rights watchdog claimed Yahoo had been censoring its Chinese-language search-engine for several years and rival firm Google, which recently took a share in Baidu, a Chinese search-engine that filters a user's findings, seemed ready to go the same way.
In their efforts to conquer the Chinese market, the two firms are "making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression," it said in a statement.
A keyword search in Yahoo's Chinese language site on "Tibet independence" Tuesday did not display any result, while "Taiwan independence" produced only mainland Chinese websites which condemn the move.
The same search on Google returned no listing for "Tibet independence" but "Taiwan independence" displayed a listing which included Taiwanese sites. They were blocked however when accessed.
A search of the name of one of China's most high profile dissidents, Wei Jingsheng, on Yahoo returned only mainland sites critical of him. A similar search on Google returned with a screen saying the site cannot be displayed.
Neither Google nor Yahoo were immediately available for comment Tuesday. Other US high-tech firms such as Cisco Systems have also helped the Chinese government acquire sophisticated technical means to spy on the Internet, its users and the messages they send, RSF claimed.
It said Cisco had sold several thousand routers to enable the regime to build an online spying system to spot supposedly subversive keywords in messages.
Beijing has long censored hundreds of websites of Western media outlets, political and religious dissidents and others that are viewed as a threat to the Communist regime.
RSF has also written to Lorne Craner, US assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights and Earl Wayne, assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs.
Source: Servihoo.com
If you've always wondered which companies are doing the most R&D in the field of search engines, you might find this information useful.
Search engine with natural language-based robust parsing for user query and relevance feedback learning.
Assignee: Microsoft
Method and system of ranking and clustering for document indexing and retrieval.
Assignee: SAIC
Method for promoting contextual information to display pages containing hyperlinks.
Assignee: Microsoft
Method and system for updating a search engine.
Assigneee: Micron
Hyper video: information retrieval using text from multimedia.
Assignee: Verizon
Method and apparatus for creating and displaying user specific and site specific guidance and navigation information.
Assignee: IBM
Systems and methods for structured vocabulary search and classification.
Assignee: Northrop Grumman Corporation
High volume targeting of advertisements to user of online service.
Assignee: NetZero
Extended functionality for an inverse inference engine based web search.
Assignee: Insightful Corporation
Techniques for finding related hyperlinked documents using link-based analysis.
Assignee: Google
Arrangement of information for display into a continuum ranging from closely related to distantly related to a reference piece of information.
Assignee: IBM
System and method for topic-based document analysis for information filtering.
Assignee: Satyam Computer Services Limited of Mayfair Centre
User Query Generate Search Results That Rank Set Of Servers Where Ranking Is Based On Comparing Content On Each Server With User Query, Frequency At Which Content On Each Server Is Altered Using Web Crawler In A Search Engine.
Assignee: Xerox
Method and system for creating improved search queries.
Assignee: NA
Flexible keyword searching.
Assignee: Microsoft
System and method for content retrieval.
Assignee: Microsoft
Recently Published Search-Related Patent Applications
+ Meta-search engine architecture
+ Assignee: NEC
+ Dynamically updating a search engine’s knowledge and process database by tracking and saving user interactions
+ Assignee: IBM
+ Search engine facility with automated knowledge retrieval generation and maintenance
+ Assignee: IBM
+ Method for searching media
+ Assignee: Google
+ Information storage and retrieval
+ Assignee: NA
+ Method to facilitate a search of a database utilizing multiple search criteria
+ Assignee: NA
+ Method and system for advertisement using internet browser with book-like interface
+ Assignee: E-Book Systems
+ Temporal link analysis of linked entities
+ Assignee: IBM
+ Method, apparatus, and program for refining search criteria through focusing word definition
+ Assignee: IBM
+ Method and system for combating robots and rogues
+ Assignee: NA
+ Method For Retrieving Documents
+ Assignee: NA
+ Apparatus and methods for semantic representation and retrieval of multimedia content
+ Assignee: IBM
+ Method and apparatus for ranking web page search results
+ Assignee: AltaVista
+ Method and system of ranking and clustering for document indexing and retrieval
+ Assigne: SAIC
Source: Gary Price,
The ResourceShelf
Mark Cuban is backing a new Internet search engine that aims to take over where Google left off.
Dallas-based upstart IceRocket is trying to throw a new twist on search results, along with some financial and advisory help from billionaire Cuban. The company is mixing its own Web search technology with "metasearch" features that tap into rival engines.
But it's hoping to set itself apart with features, such as more powerful image searching and an e-mail-based service that can be used on handhelds and other mobile devices.
"We don't need to recreate what (Google) is doing. There is a ton of room on the edges to do well things that they don't do well," IceRocket CEO Blake Rhodes said in an e-mail interview. Google users are now "facing an overwhelming volume of choices to the point where you always feel like you are missing something," he said.
IceRocket is part of a new generation of search engines, some of which hope to "out-Google Google," and some of which simply want to capture a narrowly defined portion of the Internet search market.
While none have anything but a tiny fraction of the audience of Google, the search giant's impending initial public offering--which is expected to raise as much as $3.3 billion--has been tantalizing for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists of all stripes.
The market is facing new competition from the other side of the spectrum, too. Microsoft has made it clear that it is devoting increasing resources to search, both on its MSN Web site and in future software products that will also search computers' hard drives, e-mail folders and other now-obscure corners of a person's digital world.
News.com publisher CNET Networks relaunched its own metasearch site, Search.com, on Wednesday.
Like previous generations of metasearch engines, IceRocket relies on some of its primary rivals, ranging from Yahoo and Ask Jeeves' Teoma to littler sites, including LookSmart's WiseNut.
Each search result provides a small thumbnail snapshot of the site it points to, which the company says will help users decide if they actually want to visit or not.
A feature still being tested enables cell phone or PDA users to send an e-mail with a search term to the site and get an e-mail back with the top five search results.
Rhodes said Cuban was an investor but declined to say how much money the Dallas entrepreneur provided.
On his Web log, Cuban said he was helping suggest features that would be useful.
"I've offered to help come up with some unique features that hopefully can allow them to separate from the pack," Cuban wrote. "To me, this is a unique way to 'design my own search engine.'"
Source: C-Net News
The Associated Press is to develop a tool that would search online news content, past and present.
The goal is to offer a search engine with more participating news organizations and more content than is currently available today, said Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO. He added that the search solutions are expected this year.
"We feel news consumers deserve the most current and relevant information they can find online," said Burl Osborne, chairman of the AP's board of directors.
The news cooperative's board hopes the new enhanced search tool and technical standards also will provide the AP's member news organizations with greater protection from unlicensed use of their material online.
In addition, the AP is developing tools that would help its members capture more online traffic and track usage of their content, Curley said.
The AP board set the course in motion at its July meeting last week in Beaver Creek, Colo.
The AP, a cooperative of U.S. newspapers and broadcasters, provides global coverage of news, sports, business and entertainment in all media formats to some 15,000 news outlets in more than 120 nations.
It reaches more than 1 billion people a day.
Source: Daily Press.com
"Most search-engine technology is based on the keyword," company co-founder Suranga Chandratillake said. "What's different with Blinkx is we take into account the entire text."
The future of search lies instead with bigger concepts. Blinkx, which last month quietly launched a beta of its desktop search application, is getting ready to take on the increasingly competitive Web search market. On Friday, it plans to formally launch the company and its new approach to search.
Blinkx, which installs its own search client and mini toolbars within Windows applications, distills large amounts of text—from Word documents, Web pages or e-mails—into concepts in order to retrieve search results, its founders told eWEEK.com.
Based in London and San Francisco, the company bases its search results on its own Web index, which stands at about 65 million pages, almost 40,000 news sources and thousands of Web logs. It also scours a user's hard drive to find relevant e-mails and files, supporting more than 200 formats.
Chandratillake started the company with co-founder Kathy Rittweger. Chandratillake's background includes three years as the chief technology officer at enterprise software company Autonomy Corp., while Rittweger was one of the early employees of now-defunct Web personalization company Firefly.
Blinkx joins a growing array of new search companies taking on major players such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., but it is one of the few to build its own Web index. Others such as Vivisimo Inc. and Groxis Inc.'s Grokker have focused on new approaches for displaying and sorting through results from the major engines.
By also concentrating on the desktop, Blinkx also will be squaring off against the large search engines. Google reportedly is working on a broader desktop search tool, while Microsoft Corp.'s MSN division and Ask Jeeves Inc. both recently bought small desktop search companies and are likely to integrate the new technology into their search offerings.
At its heart, Blinkx uses what it calls "self-learning" algorithms in order to figure out the context of what a user is reading and to initiate searches in the background.
Results are then available when users scroll over a toolbar that appears in the upper, right-hand corner of Windows applications such as Internet Explorer, Outlook and Microsoft Office applications. The toolbar displays six icons that represent results from the Web, news sites, blogs, video and audio sources, the local hard drive, and related products.
Users can initiate their own searches from the Blinkx application, with results displaying as a user types.
To co-founder Kathy Rittweger, Blinkx's approach changes the dynamics of Web and desktop search by allowing results and information to flow to users as they read and work.
"The whole idea behind Blinkx is to provide information in the most non-distracting way," she said.
Blinkx is available as a free download and requires Windows 2000 or XP as well as Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher. The business model for the 10-person company is to earn revenue from affiliate relationships and advertising.
Already Blinkx includes product search results in its toolbar that displays related Amazon.com books. The company plans to expand such product searches and consider search-based advertising, Rittweger said.
Source: eWeek.com
With Ask Jeeves and MSN eliminating paid inclusion listings from their search results this month, Yahoo is the lone holdout among major search engines to let advertisers pay to have their Web pages in its search results.
Unlike paid placement, advertisers paying for inclusion in a search index are not promised placement. Instead, they are promised that their sites will be included in a search index. The practice has advantages for businesses with constantly changing Web pages that are not indexed as frequently by Web search spiders.
Search leader Google has taken a firm stand against the practice, vowing never to accept payment for inclusion. Its IPO filing makes its stance explicit: "Our search results will be objective and we will not accept payment for inclusion or ranking in them."
Google’s stance has gained converts. Ask Jeeves this month banished its last vestige of paid inclusion, Site Submit, which let Web publishers pay to ensure Ask Jeeves’s Teoma spider scanned their sites. The Emeryville, CA, search engine eliminated its Index Express XML paid inclusion service in March that charged each time a listing was clicked.
MSN followed suit this month when it unveiled a new look to its search pages. A longtime user of paid inclusion pioneer LookSmart, MSN removed all paid inclusion from the search engine, including Site Match listings provided through its use of Yahoo’s Web search technology.
Yahoo remains committed to its 6-month-old Site Match paid inclusion program. When it debuted the program, Yahoo executives explained that it would address the problem of search spiders not reaching all the Web’s content.
As a companion to the paid program, Yahoo operates the Content Acquisition Program, which lets noncommercial sites feed their Web pages through for free. Yahoo has signed National Public Radio, the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library and others for the Content Acquisition Program.
"We are still committed to the Content Acquisition Program," Yahoo spokeswoman Stephanie Ichinose said. "We continue to work with content providers to consider ways to evolve and improve the program."
Nate Elliott, a Jupiter Research analyst, said paid inclusion still has a bright future because search engines simply cannot refresh their indexes quickly enough to offer the best possible search results. Jupiter expects paid inclusion spending to reach at least $200 million next year.
When it dropped Site Match from its listings, MSN did not rule out returning to some form of paid inclusion, including through Yahoo, as long as it is clear to users which listings are paid and the index is improved.
"I wouldn’t be surprised to see MSN back in the [paid] inclusion game," Elliott said. "They clearly don’t have any philosophical problem with it."
Fredrick Marckini, CEO of Arlington, MA, search marketing firm iProspect, said most of his clients use Site Match, benefiting from the guarantee that Yahoo will crawl their sites every 48 hours. Since iProspect estimates up to 70 percent of all clicks occur in the algorithmic search results, Site Match has been useful, he said.
"Without Site Match, you’re never assured that more than 50 percent of the Web site will be included in the index," he said.
Critics contend Site Match gives the appearance that Yahoo favors paid inclusion listings over non-paid, since it charges a fee each time a paid inclusion listing gets clicked. Marckini does not think Yahoo gives Site Match listings favorable placement, but a submitted listing is easier for Yahoo’s search algorithm to consider than a crawled Web page, giving a paid inclusion Web page a de facto boost.
Jim Lanzone, vice president of product management at Ask Jeeves, said the search engine found combining structured content of paid inclusion feeds with unstructured content of Web search like mixing "apples and oranges."
"We found that it affected relevance," he said. "Sometimes that would be positive, but that was an accident. More often than not it was negative."
The Federal Trade Commission two years ago issued guidelines for paid inclusion, recommending that search engines "clearly and conspicuously" disclose that some sites paid to have their Web pages included in the index. Yahoo provides that disclosure under an "about this page" link at the top of its search results page.
Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Watch, an industry Web site, has criticized Site Match for not disclosing which listings paid to be included in the index.
"I don’t like the way it’s currently offered on Yahoo," he said. "It goes against how Web search is traditionally supposed to operate."
The greatest concern for Yahoo could be Site Match affecting its standing as a search engine. It ranks behind Google in search share, drawing 30 percent to Google’s 36 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix. MSN ranks third with 16 percent of searches.
"The only way this could really hurt them is if consumers dislike Yahoo because it uses [paid] inclusion," Elliott said. "But consumers don’t know it’s happening."
Source: DM News
The BBC is investigating the possibility of launching its own low-cost PC terminal, bundled with cheap broadband internet access.
In an interview with the Guardian, the corporation’s new media director, Ashley Highfield, said that he is committed to using the BBC to overcome the country’s digital divide, and a BBC low-cost broadband service would advance this, similar to the success of the BBC’s DTT project, Freeview.
The offering is still in the planning stages. “A few people have come together to see if we could put a low-end connected PC into the market. Could we do it? I don't know, but we would have to be clear about why," Mr Highfield told the UK newspaper.
Mr Highfield also outlined plans to launch a BBC standalone search engine that would compete with Google and others.
While the recent government review of the BBC’s online activities suggested the broadcaster had perhaps extended beyond its public service remit and was undermining private sector online services in the UK, the chair of the report, Philip Graf, did say that the BBC’s existing search services were to be welcomed, as search technology is currently dominated by American firms and thus there was value in spending public money on a UK-oriented web search service.
Nonetheless, the moves will most likely anger private sector internet players in the UK, many of whom are opposed to the BBC’s online activities to begin with and want a curtailment of them, not an expansion.
Source: DM Europe.com
Travelzoo, an online travel marketplace launches a search tool that lets users query low-cost and discount travel and carrier sites, by entering specific travel-related information.
Called "SuperSearch", the search engine carries performance-based listings from airlines and discount travel sites. Unlike meta-search engines, SuperSearch does not return combined listings on a single page. It gives searchers one-click access to results from each travel site that serves a route. Searchers’ flight information is then automatically fed into the selected travel site, which opens in a separate browser window.
"We’re making sure we balance the needs of the users and advertisers," said Jason Dailey, SuperSearch’s product manager. "Consumers want control over how they visit the different sites."
Travelzoo, New York, shows customers discount travel deals through its Web site and e-mail newsletters. SuperSearch is available through Travelzoo’s Web site. Searchers can use it to find prices for flights and hotels. The company plans to add other travel-related products, such as car rentals and vacation packages.
Unlike paid search providers such as Google and Yahoo’s Overture Services, Travelzoo is not operating an auction. It charges a flat fee. Advertiser Web sites are displayed with logos. Non-advertiser sites are available through a drop-down menu. Dailey declined to disclose pricing. Advertisers include JetBlue, Travelocity and Expedia.
Dailey said Travelsearch developed the search technology. It incorporates user data to become more relevant over time.
SuperSearch will compete with more established travel search engines like IAC’s TripAdvisor and SideStep.com.
Source: DM News
For many years, Sun Microsystems worked hard to boost Java on personal computers, by licensing search software called "Watson" that's used to find information from the Internet.
Sun licensed the software from a small company in Alameda, Calif., called Karelia, which worked for years on a version of Watson for Apple computers.
Sun has created a new version of the software--code-named Alameda--that runs on any Java-enabled computer, said Peder Ulander, senior director of marketing for Sun's Desktop Solutions Group.
Watson and Alameda--and Apple's very similar Sherlock software--harvest information from Internet sites such as Amazon.com, eBay, and Epicurious and present it in a customized interface that's faster than a regular Web browser.
Ulander said Sun believes the software also could be useful for employees scouring internal networks--corporate data mining, in effect.
Sun's version of the software is in rough form, but the Santa Clara, Calif., server seller is showing it at its JavaOne trade show. Java is software that lets the same program run on different computers--for example, those using Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
Sun has tried for years to establish Java as the preferred foundation for software on desktop computers, but hasn't made much progress pushing Microsoft Windows aside. Sun now hopes performance improvements with version 5.0 of Java, the release of some open-source components and security problems with Windows will give Java another chance.
Alameda could be useful in convincing people of Java's utility, polish and claimed speed boost. "The biggest thing to demonstrate (Java's usefulness on PCs) is an application people can use, download and judge for themselves. And this technology has the potential to be interesting to a wide audience," said RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady.
Sun isn't the only company interested in using better search tools to make sense of the profusion of information computer users must grapple with. Microsoft and Apple are working on advanced search, while Google hopes to cement its search position through a $2.7 billion initial public offering.
It appears likely Sun eventually will own the Watson technology outright. For example, Karelia will support Watson through Oct. 5, the company said on its Web site.
After that, the company said it hoped, Sun "will have announced a new product that Watson users should be able to migrate to....We have also discussed possible migration paths for existing Watson users, but nobody can promise anything at this time."
Sun didn't commit to specific plans for Alameda, but it is likely people will get to see more of it.
"If it's a Java application, it's likely it'll be available on Java.com," Sun's Web site for Java software from a variety of companies, said Ken Oestreich of Sun's software and Java strategy group. He declined to share schedule details.
According to an Alameda survey on Sun's Web site, the company is considering whether to offer a software developer kit that would let programmers develop "channels" that could be plugged into Alameda software.
Also at JavaOne, Sun is showing another Java application for desktop computers called the Collaboration and Communication Project. This software puts instant messaging, e-mail, calendars, telephony and file sharing under one interface.
Source: ZD Net
Apple Computer focusses on search technology, as it develops a new content indexing and search engine planned for Mac OS X 10.4.
During Steve Jobs's keynote presentation for this week's Worldwide Developer Conference, Jobs took the wraps off the new technology, titled "Spotlight", and compared it with the database file system Microsoft has promised for its 2006 Longhorn release.
Noting that Spotlight and Tiger will arrive a year ahead of Longhorn, Jobs quoted one of the promotional banners Apple had hung outside the auditorium: "Redmond, start your photocopiers."
In some respects, Spotlight resembles a capability originally planned for Mac OS 8 under the name "Live Folders." Like that earlier Apple project, it lets users create "smart folders" based on a query against a metadata index of all the mounted drives on a Tiger system.
But the search engine also works contextually within applications such as Apple's Mail, Address Book and System Preferences—and Apple is giving developers at WWDC a software development kit to help them build Spotlight into their own applications.
Every file stored in the Tiger file system will be mined for metadata and indexed accordingly on the fly, making it instantly searchable by keyword. And developers can add their own metadata definitions—for example, searching on "Wi-Fi" within System Preferences causes the network-settings icon to be highlighted.
Apple also previewed a new visual scripting tool for Tiger, called Automator. The script builder, which currently has a library of more than 100 configurable "actions" it can automate within the Tiger OS and current Mac OS X applications, can also be used to build workflows and tie together application events with custom AppleScript and Unix shell-script macros.
Automator can also drive Spotlight searches and act on their results, automating tasks such as sizing and uploading images found with a user-entered search string.
Developers at the show were generally upbeat about the new features, even if they weren't entirely surprised. "Most of this was expected," said Bo Holst-Christensen, a computer scientist with Cutisan Laboratorium A/S of Denmark. "And some of this [like Spotlight] is old Copland material, so it's about time."
Spotlight "will definitely affect the way we handle the development of our next Macintosh version of our software," said one software engineer from a major cross-platform publishing software company who asked not to be identified. He said his company is focusing on leveraging more of the native elements of Mac OS X in future releases of its applications.
But others who build applications across multiple platforms were less enthused. "There's nothing [Jobs] said that really affects us," said Steve Poole, a development manager at WRQ Inc. of Seattle. "We're doing our cross-platform development with Java."
At the same time, Poole noted, "We've had people make Mac OS their primary development platform. I feel crippled when I sit at a PC now."
Source: eWeek
The Kelsey Group today is slated to deliver an analysis of the major changes that it predicts will happen in the local search segment.
The market research firm anticipates seeing a flow of advertising dollars from small businesses with very small ad budgets, and little to no Web presence.
The report comes on the heels of Overture's introduction Tuesday of Local Match, the Yahoo! company's local search product for advertisers and Web publishers. Recent initiatives by Google, Overture, FindWhat, and interactive Yellow Pages (IYP) provider InfoSpace have shifted the search spotlight somewhat from paid search to local search.
"Local" is the next major advertising keyword expected to open the online media floodgates.
Local media spending in the United States is over $90 billion annually, according to Robert Coen, Universal McCann's senior VP and director of forecasting.
The Kelsey Group says that $22 billion of that spend comes from small- to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs comprise 98 percent of all U.S. companies--some 22 million enterprises. These are the advertisers that the new report--"'Local Match' Expands the reach of Geotargeted Search"--says will be the most difficult to lure online.
According to Kelsey Group analysts and report authors Greg Sterling and Neal Polachek: "Getting advertisers, especially small businesses, to sign on will be at least as challenging as building the back-end technology and getting distribution partners to make the necessary efforts to show consumers the way to a better local online shopping experience."
Sterling notes that paid search is on track to generate $3.5 billion by 2004. By 2008, TKG projects local paid search to reach $2.5 billion. Other research groups, notably Jupiter Research, are less bullish over the revenue prospects of local search, as an air of uncertainty still hovers around the prospect of monetizing local search.
The TKG report notes that the Local Match feature that enables advertisers to build a paid search campaign without a Web site is "the most innovative aspect of the program," and adds that Ingenio and FindWhat are expected to launch similar product extensions in the third quarter.
However, a key question remains as to whether local--and primarily offline--businesses with small ad budgets will adopt local search because of Overture's new product offering.
TKG notes that history is not on Overture's side.
"In all probability, a business that is ready to undertake a search engine marketing campaign, or at least understands its potential benefits, is already going to have a Web site," the report states.
It also indicates that the adoption curve of Internet advertising suggests that a Web site presupposes a paid search marketing campaign; this was true because it was impossible to run a search campaign without one. Essentially, it remains to be seen whether the new product offering will be effective or not.
However, recent data collected by TKG and ConStat, Inc. from the Local Commerce Monitor shows that 61 percent of small businesses are convinced that the Internet "represents a big opportunity to target and acquire new customers."
But local usage is still far from critical mass, according to local search and IYP industry panelists at TKG's "Drilling Down on Local Search Conference" in March. The report states: "Without exception, the panelists, which included executives from Yahoo!, America Online, AskJeeves, and InfoSpace, said that local search still 'wasn't ready for prime time.'"
Report authors Sterling and Polachek note that "organic" growth for local search will take time, although February 2004 TKG data showed a 44 percent increase year-over-year in consumer searches for local business information.
Meanwhile, Overture, Google, and others face the problem of driving sufficient traffic to local advertisers and educating SMEs about the benefits of local search. The report states emphatically: "TKG believes that at some point, somebody's going to need to do some major marketing around local search."
Source: Mediapost
Find.com is a business search engine that delivers search results from three different types of sources.
Results from business sites that charge for their content, such as Gallup and Frost & Sullivan, appear at the top of the search results pages.
Users can then buy the content. Results from a list of 3,000 business sites appear in the free organic listings, along with results from a variety of search engines.
Find.com, a search engine designed for business professionals, was launched in beta this week by partners FIND/SVP, Empire Media and TripleHop Technologies.
"This is in line with the trend toward specialization we've seen over the last 6 to 12 months," said Peter Hershberg, managing partner of Reprise Media, a search marketing firm. "We've had quite a bit of success with alternative or vertical search engines because they reach such a specific audience."
Find.com also has implemented an innovative navigational scheme that's reminiscent of that used by clustering firm Vivisimo.
"In the upper-left-hand corner is a graphic you can use to organize results by topic and source, putting them into an organizational structure that makes the most sense for the user," Hershberg said.
Results can also be organized using tabs perched directly above the search box. Clicking on the "Research" tab causes only search results from the premium business sites, those charging for their content, to be displayed. "News" displays only news stories, "Directory" produces a searchable listing of sites by category from the open directory, and "Web" produces results from all three sources.
Established research and consulting firm FIND/SVP picked the paid subscription sites used for premium content, as well as the 3,000 business sites used for the free listings.
These sites, along with a number of search engines, are indexed by TripleHop Technologies. The third partner in the Find.com enterprise is Empire Media. This company will organize the advertising sales on the site, both sales done directly by Find.com itself and sales from third-party sales organizations. Empire will also do outbound marketing, advertising Find.com via channels including print and online.
Empire and FIND/SVP each own 47.5 percent of the business, with TripleHop taking the balance.
In developing Find.com, the partners relied on the results of a FIND/SVP study that 52 percent of business professionals are only "somewhat confident" that standard search results come from credible sources. The Internet study surveyed a random sample of about 300 professionals in April and May.
"Users can trust the results they find on Find.com because they come from trustworthy sources," said Chris Travers, CEO of Empire Media. "You can feel confident putting the information in a business plan, using it in a presentation to a client or showing it to your CEO."
There are two components to the site's revenue model, Travers said. When a user clicks on one of the premium listings displayed at the top of the search results, an intermediary Find.com page appears through which the content can be purchased. Find.com gets a cut of the revenue.
The site will also use advertising in multiple forms. Currently, sponsored listings from Clicksor are displayed on the right-hand side of the page.
However, the site will soon sell its own sponsored links using technology vendor Zedo, Travers said. "We will work with them to deploy keyword-based advertising," he said. The company will also work with two or three other keyword and contextual advertising groups, which Travers would not name. He did say that IndustryBrains "will be adding contextual advertising for us."
Also, Empire has a co-registration business, and is now investigating the possibility of using co-registration on Find.com, Travers said. He said the company has seen interest from advertisers but would not name any specific advertisers who might be coming on board.
"Their premium research is interesting because it's occupying the same space where we're used to seeing sponsored listings," said Hershberg, who felt this was a good idea.
Source: Click Z
Thunderstone Software announced its sale of a search system for the Hollywood.com website.
Thunderstone's Webinator product will provide an up-to-date indexing of around one million movie reviews, entertainment listings, and related information appearing on the re-designed new and improved Hollywood.com web site.
Webinator is one of the original web-search software products, introduced in 1995 and now in major release 5. Webinator powers search features for many hundreds of web sites in many languages around the world.
Hollywood.com is one of the leading movie-related sites on the Internet, featuring movie reviews, showtimes listings, entertainment news, and an extensive multimedia library. Hollywood.com serves more than one billion web pages annually.
"We found Webinator the best technology for searching our content under our requirements," said Laurie S. Silvers, President of Hollywood.com. "Its many advanced features were crucial, such as its ability to reindex fast-changing subsets of the site quickly, and its ability to crawl through JavaScript links. Our site structure is somewhat complicated but Webinator handles it beautifully."
Thunderstone's general manager, John Turnbull, said: "We built many features into Webinator to optimize it for indexing large complex web sites. We're happy to see that effort put to good use on Hollywood.com."
Thunderstone's Webinator is available in a variety of configurations including a free version.
Source: Thunderstone
Even if the two companies are acknowledged competitors, Yahoo has begun advertising on Google, using Google's AdWords program.
AdWords works by having clients bid on keywords that can be used to query search engines. These keywords, when searched, will cause Google AdWords to display text ads associated with the content of the search.
The keyword which Yahoo is using to advertise on Google is "RSS." RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary, is a format for, according to XML.com, "syndicating news and the content of news-like sites." When users search the term RSS in Google, Yahoo's keyword related advertisement garners the top AdWords position.
If Yahoo's AdWords ad is clicked, the user is taken to a landing page for Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo's shopping portal. The landing page is a Yahoo Shopping SERP.
In Google's AdWords program, clients who won the keyword bid must pay the cost for the click to Google. This applies to Yahoo as well.
MarketingVOX suggests "the campaign may be an effort at keyword arbitrage. In keyword arbitrage, Yahoo would pay for clicks with the expectation that the Yahoo advertisers will pay more once the original Google visitor arrives."
Who says competitors can't work in unison to benefit each other. Google is receiving money each time Yahoo's RSS ad is clicked.
Meanwhile, Yahoo has the opportunity to sell items and gain click revenue from advertisers on their landing page, once the user reaches Yahoo's ad destination.
Source: Web Pro News
Siemens Technology announces plans to introduce a cellular phone search engine feature.
The search engine technology that will be integrated in mobile phones was developed by MotionBridge, a French company initiated and founded by Siemens.
According to an article that appeared in PC World, the search engine will work with all mobile Web standards.
These modes consist of WAP, i-mode, and UMTS. Siemens goal is to have search engine improve mobile web use by 50-70%, meaning users will be able to access sites that much faster when using Siemens' search technology.
Another feature is when users enter a name of a popular web presence like Amazon, they will be taken directly to the site, instead of a search results page. The system will also feature an automatic correction tool to deal with typographical errors.
PC World gave the example of a user typing in "weater". Siemens' search function would offer suggestions of what the user may have meant, much like Google and Yahoo do.
With this system users will also be able to enter numbers that correspond to letters to perform searches. For instance, instead of typing the word "travel", users can just enter the appropriate numbers (872835 for travel) and the correction tool will infer what the user meant.
The search function will also feature a statistical program that will keep track of keywords searched and provide the user with the 20 most frequent. Siemens search has already been deployed in Europe and can be used by 75 million users.
Source: Web Pro News
Despite their differences, Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves said they have the same mission, and essentially the same message to those seeking to improve their search engine rankings: it's all about relevancy.
Yahoo! Search Director of Product Management Tim Mayer began his part of the session with a presentation outlining the new Yahoo! search platform (YST).
Though many of the features were announced in February it was clear that the majority of session attendees were unaware of the width and breadth of the enhanced Yahoo! offering.
"For the launch we aimed to provide a superior experience to the users of Yahoo! than they had been getting previous to the switch to YST," Mayer said, noting that the size of the search engine had grown dramatically due to the new technology and that the listings will continue to sift through the YST spidering/crawling efforts.
"We think we should be able to find all of your content just by following links," Mayer said.
Just in case Yahoo! doesn't crawl a site on its own, it has now re-instated the Add URL free function that allows users to submit a site for inclusion in the index. Mayer said the Yahoo! index will also continue to grow via the Yahoo! Deep Web Initiative that aims to index public domain information from public libraries and various government agencies.
According to Mayer, the critical factors in how YST indexes a site are based on four criteria: ranking, comprehensiveness, freshness and presentation. Among the large array of new features that Mayer presented are RSS feeds, flight tracker results, sports scores, smart view and integrated search within Yahoo! Messenger platform.
"If you look at a lot of the features we're launching, we've got the answers and the technology to provide users exactly what they're looking for," Mayer said. "Yahoo! is in a unique position as we have over 100 million registered users so we already have a lot of user data, we know a lot about our users and we can use that to increase the relevance of our search result."
Though clearly the search engine race has of late has been dominated by Google and Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, which is powered by TEOMA technology, wants to be perceived as the engine that provides the most relevant results.
"I don't want to be outdone by Yahoo! so I'll have to come up with something good. The gloves are off," Micahel Palka, director of search at Ask Jeeves told the capacity audience. "TEOMA yields more relevant results and that's what search is all about."
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, TEOMA search technology powers 25 percent of all web searches. Palka said what's unique about TEOMA is its ranking system called Subject Specific Popularity. The system is based on social networking theory and the notion that communities are formed around certain subjects.
"Looking at those communities and seeing how they're built -- identifying experts in those communities -- that's really going to provide expert validation and give the user the most relevant information as opposed to information that may be linked to today's most popular sites," Palka said.
Current industry leader Google measures and indexes pages based on Page Rank. Jen Fitzpatrick, director of engineering at Google, explained that Page Rank is a rating of how important a page is relative to the rest of the Web.
Google also combines Page Rank with text analysis to come up with the most relevant result for a particular site. There are over 100 different factors that Google's algorithm considers when doing text analysis to consider appropriate relevance to a particular search.
"The most important thing that you can do for the perspective of search engines, or at least Google, is to really look at building sites that have appropriate relevant content for your users. If you're focusing on that, that's well over half the battle," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald added, "The central issues is how do you direct users to the best possible page that has the content they're looking for."
Source: Internet News
Porn websites had more than three times the visitors of the major search engines combined during the last week in May, says Hitwise.
According to Melbourne, Australia-based Web-tracking firm Hitwise, visits to the top three search sites--Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search--accounted for just 5.5 percent of all Internet site visits during the week ending May 29.
Porn sites, lumped by Hitwise into a category appropriately dubbed “Adult,” received 18.8 percent of all Web visits in the same period.
When all search and directory sites--including those such as AskJeeves and MSN.com--are combined, the porn-versus-search skew doesn't look so bad.
Overall, search engines and directories accounted for 13.8 percent of the total Net visits during the week.
Source: TechWeb.com
While Google provides the highest percentage of all search engine traffic going to shopping sites, MSN Search drives the highest proportion of its own search engine traffic to shopping sites, Hitwise says in its recently released Search Engine Report.
Google sent 4.73% of all search engine traffic to shopping sites in April, compared to 2.73% from Yahoo Search and 0.66% from MSN Search, Hitwise says.
Hitwise includes in its shopping site category “classified” sites such as DineOutFreeToday.com and YourGiftCards.com.
The rest of the top 10 search engines in terms of their share of all traffic going to shopping sites in April:
Ask Jeeves, 0.22%
My Web Search, 0.16%
iWon, 0.15%
Dogpile, 0.12%
Google Image Search, 0.09%
Excite, 0.06%
Alta Vista, 0.05%
MSN gets bragging rights, however, to having the highest proportion of its own search traffic that goes to shopping sites.
Of all the searches that took place at MSN, 10.07%, of users went to shopping sites, edging out Google, at 9.26%, and Yahoo Search, at 8.85%, Hitwise says.
Source: Internet Retailer
Baidu has beaten Google, in becoming the fourth largest Internet website in the world in terms of web traffic, according to the latest Alexa traffic rankings.
Another leading Chinese search engine, 3721.com, ranked seventh.
Baidu.com claims that it has become the world's largest Chinese language search engine with over 300 mln Chinese language website pages, and over 60 mln page hits every day.
In China, it covers over 95% of Chinese netizens, with more than 80 mln users. According to Shanghai-based Internet research house, iResearch, Baidu.com has a market share of 48.2% in China in terms of search engine traffic, while the global Internet search giant Google.com accounts for only 29.8%.
Baidu.com has accelerated its expansion in China, with staff numbers doubled to over 300 from around 100 one year ago, Zhu Hongbo, COO of Baidu.com, told Interfax. Apart from traditional search services, the company launched or is planning to launch several new services.
The latest addition to its services, "Posted Message Bar", enables users to search messages on various Chinese BBS, while the under-testing "Download Bar" service enables users to share files with other netizens for free mutual downloads.
Other new services include weather information, with which a user can search a city's weather and have exact weather information displayed on the top of the search result list, rather than from a link to this information.
"All these new services aim to bring convenience to netizens. They are free of charge, but they will be helpful to boost our page views and improve our website popularity," Zhu pointed out.
Source: Interfax
Geico, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, filed suit against Google and Yahoo-owned Overture on May 4, in federal court in Alexandria, Va.
Auto insurance company Geico has sued Google and Overture Services for allegedly violating its trademarks in search-related advertisements, in the latest legal salvo against the Internet companies.
The insurer charged the two companies with infringing on its trademarks when they sold them as keywords to Geico's rivals, so that the protected terms could appear in sponsored search results. According to the suit, that practice causes consumer confusion, in violation of the Lanham Act, the primary federal law covering trademark registration and protection.
"This practice deliberately misleads consumers and allows Geico's competitors and these defendants to illegally exploit for their own commercial purposes Geico's investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in its brand," company spokeswoman Janice Minshall wrote in an e-mail.
The insurer is seeking damages and an injunction against Google's and Overture's use of its service marks in their advertising programs.
Geico, the largest direct marketer of auto insurance in the United States, is the most high-profile American company to have filed a complaint against Google and Overture over their ad-selling practices. It launched its lawsuit only weeks after Google announced plans to limit concessions made to trademark owners regarding their rights to keywords sold in its popular ad program.
The suit also comes only weeks after Google filed to raise $2.7 billion in an initial public offering. In its S-1 filing, the company highlighted the financial risks it would face if it were forced to limit sales of keyword ads to generic words. Roughly 95 percent of Google's $1 billion in annual revenue comes from search-related advertising, according to its filing.
Complaints abound about misuse of trademarks in search engine ads. Google and Overture have built billion-dollar businesses by marrying text ads with search results; the technique has been effective because Web searching is such a common method for people to find products and services. Consequently, more companies have sought control over their brand names and trademarked terms in paid search. Businesses including American Blind and Wallpaper Factory have filed trademark complaints against search engines.
Still, U.S. law is unclear about how far search engines must go to make sure trademarks aren't infringed upon.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In the past, representatives from the company have said that trademark law allows for the use of registered marks, as long as there is no likelihood of consumer confusion.
An Overture representative said the company cannot comment on pending litigation. But Overture employs a fair-use policy for evaluating requests from trademark owners.
"In cases in which an advertiser has bid on a term that may be the trademark of another, Overture allows the bids only if the advertiser presents content on its Web site that (a) refers to the trademark...without creating a likelihood of consumer confusion...or (b) uses the term in a generic or merely descriptive manner," according to a notice posted on the company's Web site.
In contrast, Google has adopted a more hands-off approach, opting to review fewer trademark complaints. In April, the search company began allowing U.S. and Canadian advertisers to bid on any keyword, including trademarked terms, in its sponsored listings service.
Previously, Google had granted requests from advertisers, including 1-800 Contacts and eBay, to bar competitors from bidding on their trademarked names. Google will now only review trademark complaints that relate to text appearing in sponsored listings on its Web site and those of its partners.
According to Geico's complaint, the insurer considered Google's policy change before pursuing legal action: "Google's recent change in trademark policy constitutes a deliberate decision to use the registered trademarks of other companies, including Geico, for the financial benefit of Google and to the detriment of (others)."
Google faces a number of lawsuits similar to Geico's. Louis Vuitton sued Google and its French subsidiary for similar alleged trademark infringement, and a French court ordered Google to cease the practice and pay a fine. In January, American Blind and Wallpaper Factory filed suit against Google in a New York federal court, alleging trademark infringement.
In an effort to preempt American Blind's suit, Google late last year asked a U.S. District Court judge in San Jose, Calif., for a declaratory judgment in the dispute. American Blind still insists, though, that Google stop selling keyword phrases that the company claims violate its trademarks.
Overture faces two pending U.S. trademark suits, one filed by JR Cigar and another by Pets Warehouse.
Paid search is one of the fastest-growing and most closely watched segments of the online advertising business. According to Jupiter Research, paid search will grow from $1.6 billion in sales in 2003 to $2.1 billion this year, and it will continue to grow at a compound annual rate of 20 percent through 2008.
At least some of that growth could be jeopardized if legal rulings bar Google and other search engines from selling off well-known terms such as "Wells Fargo" in their ad programs, legal experts have said.
Research shows that many inquiries at search engines are for brand names or trademarked terms. Within the finance category, for example, more than half the total searches are for branded keywords such as Wells Fargo, according to ComScore Networks, a market research company.
"This is yet another reminder we have to question the core revenue-generating practices of Google and Overture and whether it's sustainable as a legal proposition," said Eric Goldman, an assistant professor of law at Marquette University Law School.
Source: ZD NET and C-Net News
For guidance, many look at Yahoo, another Internet company with a business similar to Google's and which has been public since 1996.
But Yahoo and Google don't count revenue the same way, making it hard to compare many aspects of the two companies' finances. Google uses a more-conservative definition that has the effect of damping its revenue and increasing its profit margins.
Yahoo Inc. reported first-quarter revenue of $758 million. Looked at another way, Yahoo said revenue totaled $550 million. Rival Google Inc. said its first-quarter revenue totaled $390 million. Or maybe it was really $652 million.
Confused? Pity the investors trying to place a value on Google for its highly anticipated initial public stock offering.
The differences demonstrate that accounting standards may be "generally accepted," but they aren't always uniformly interpreted. And details about revenue-recognition policies buried in the fine print of financial statements can trip up less-than-seasoned investors.
In this case, the difference revolves around the way that Yahoo and Google treat revenue from small-text advertisements that they place on other companies' Web sites.
The two Internet companies effectively act as technological intermediaries and quasi-advertising agencies, bringing together Web publishers and advertisers. Yahoo and Google get paid each time an Internet user clicks on an ad, then give some of that money to the Web publisher on whose site the ad appeared. (Yahoo and Google also accept ads for their own sites, and both companies account for them in the same way.)
In accounting terms, however, that is where the similarities end. Yahoo counts as revenue the "gross" amount it is paid. It counts its payment to the publisher as an expense, labeled as a "traffic acquisition cost." Google, by contrast, counts as revenue only the "net" amount remaining, after it pays the Web publisher.
Here's how it works in practice: XYZ Corp. places ads on the sites of UVW Corp., through Yahoo, and RST Corp., through Google. Both ads generate $5 in revenue, with $3 going to the publishers. Yahoo would count $5 revenue and book a $3 expense. But Google would record only $2 in revenue.
In the case of Yahoo and Google, the proper accounting treatment depends on whether the company is merely an "agent" facilitating a deal, or a "principal" that stands to lose money, if, for example, an advertiser fails to pay.
A Yahoo spokeswoman says the company reports gross revenue "based on our interpretation of the accounting guidance and our contractual terms." In SEC filings, Yahoo says it must use gross revenue because it is "the primary obligor" to the publishers.
Google, by contrast, says in its SEC filing that it reports net revenue because "we are not the principal to transactions." Instead, Google says users view the ads on the Web sites of independent publishers, who determine what ads they accept. A Google spokeswoman declined to elaborate, citing the quiet period around the pending IPO.
"You have to know what all the mechanics are under the transaction to be able to say that is right or that's not right," says Jack Ciesielski, publisher of Analyst's Accounting Observer.
The accounting choices result in very different images for investors. For those who value companies based on revenue, or revenue growth, Yahoo's formal presentation makes its revenue appear to be larger, and growing faster. Yahoo's as-reported gross revenue grew 168 percent in the first quarter; net revenue grew a robust, but less-impressive 94 percent.
Likewise, Google's choice of net revenue slows its growth rate, because revenue from the ads Google places on other sites is increasing faster than total revenue. In the first quarter, Google's revenue grew 122 percent. On a gross basis, however, revenue grew 162 percent.
Source: Wall Street Journal and Contra Costa Times
In hopes of offering more information, computing researchers have developed a new search engine that can mine catalogs of three-dimensional objects, like airplane parts or architectural features.
All the users have to do is sketch what they're thinking of, and the search engines can produce comparable objects.
"The idea of information and knowledge, and retrieval of knowledge, has been something I've been intrigued with for a long time. This gives it a more solidified meaning," said Karthik Ramani, a Purdue University professor who created a system that can find computer-designed industrial parts.
Ramani expects his search engine will serve huge industrial companies whose engineers often waste time and energy designing a specialized part when someone else has already created, used or rejected something similar.
Rick Jeffs, senior engineering specialist at a Caterpillar Inc. engine center in Lafayette, Ind., believes Ramani's technology could help the company simplify its inventory. Jeffs' center alone has tens of thousands of different parts.
With the purdue search engine, designers could sketch the part they need and instantly see dozens in inventory that might fit the bill. If an item seems close, but not quite right, designers can see a "skeleton" of the part and manipulate it on their computer screens -- make it longer or shorter or curved, for example -- and then query the database again. Mainstream search engines, meanwhile, are still trying to master 2-D images.
For example, Google Inc.'s picture search program delivers pretty good results but can't actually examine the images it serves up. It mines the text surrounding the photos, and hopes for success. However, 3-D search engines have begun to emerge as improvements in computing power and interactive modeling software have deepened the pool of designs available to query - not only in industrial settings but also in highly detailed online virtual worlds.
Princeton University professor Thomas Funkhouser and colleagues have put a 3-D search engine on the Web that lets anyone sketch an object using a computer mouse, add a textual description, then search for similar models in design databases. The results can be startling. Draw a big potato, and the system responds with a bunch of, well, potato-looking objects -- and a few urns.
Those seem wrong until you rotate your potato, orienting it vertically instead of horizontally, and see your sketch actually does resemble an urn, narrow on top and bottom and bulging in the middle. Certainly this makes old-fashioned keyword searches seem a blunt instrument.
Source: Manorama Online
More than 60% of Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL users selected a natural search result over paid search advertisements as the most relevant on a sample query.
iProspect today announced more results from its recent Search Engine User Attitudes Survey that indicate:
60.5 percent of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL users selected a natural search result over paid search advertisements as the most relevant on a sample query.
60.8 percent of Yahoo! and 72.3 percent of Google search engine users chose a natural search result as the most relevant.
71.2 percent of MSN users clicked on a paid search advertisement as the most relevant to their search.
AOL users identified both natural search results and paid search advertisements equally as often as the most relevant.
Looking specifically at the two largest search engines, according to market share, it is vital for online marketers to ensure that their Web pages are found in the natural search results of Google and Yahoo.
More than 60 percent of Yahoo! users and over 72 percent of Google users clicked on a natural search result when looking for the most relevant listing for their query.
“These findings clearly indicate that in both search engines there is a wide gap between natural search preference and paid advertisement preference.
This means marketers who fail to optimize for natural search or human-edited paid inclusion neglect a large percentage of user clicks and the relevant traffic,” stated iProspect CEO, Fredrick Marckini.
“This could bode well for Yahoo!’s revenue picture because, like Google, they receive the majority of their clicks in the natural results and unlike Google, Yahoo! has a way to monetize the actual search results through their Site Match Xchange program” said Robert Murray, President of iProspect.
“What is interesting is that the Google IPO filing document stated that 95% of Google’s revenues come from their paid search ads – while the results of the iProspect survey indicates that less than 30% of their visitors click on those ads. Imagine the impact on Google’s revenues if they could find a way to get more people to click on their paid advertisements.”
During the survey, respondents were first asked if they use one search engine more than any other. Those who answered “yes” were asked which search engine they use most often.
Those answering Google, Yahoo!, MSN or AOL were provided with a sample search result screen from their preferred search engine, displaying the results of a search for “used cars” and were asked to click on the result, on that page, which they found to be most relevant had they been in the market for a used car.
According to iProspect Director of Business Analytics, Dr. Naga Krothapalli, “this methodology ensured that these users were allowed to select a search result from the search engine with which they were most familiar.
It ensured the greatest degree of accuracy by guaranteeing that a Yahoo! user was not asked to select a search result from AOL search results or a Google user was not asked to select a search result from an MSN search. In theory, each searcher who indicated a ‘preferred’ search engine, would be familiar with the layout of the search results from their engine of choice.”
The survey shows the opposite preference among users of MSN’s search engine. Over 71 percent of MSN users identified a paid search advertisement listing as being the most qualified result returned for their query.
“This could be attributed to how pay per click (PPC) ads are identified within MSN’s returned results. Users who may shy away from paid search listings when they see them may have difficulty distinguishing between the two types of results.
Despite this potential case of mistaken identity, the survey shows it is important to have a strong paid search advertisement presence in this specific search engine, “Marckini added.
“It will be important for search engine marketers to track these metrics going forward as Microsoft scraps their existing search service and replaces it with their new and improved search engine anticipated in the forth quarter. Because MSN’s new search service is rumored to be similar in look and feel to Google, it could change everything later this year.”
The survey also shows that users who listed AOL as their search engine of choice were evenly split on a preference for natural search results or paid advertisements as the best result to answer their query.
Reasons for this split could range from the balance AOL employs between algorithms ranking organic search results and human-edited paid search advertisements, to paid advertisements being more clearly identified as such on AOL than on some engines.
Nonetheless, this result shows online marketers who focus solely on one type of result will miss 50 percent of potential interest and traffic from Internet users. Focus within this search engine needs to be divided equally between the two types to have optimal results.
Search engine marketing firms that offer both natural search engine optimization and paid media management services can ensure their clients web pages are consistently found in both types of results in Google and Yahoo!, which leads to a more positive return on investment.
According to Marckini, “taking a detailed look into how a particular search engine distinguishes between natural search results and paid search advertisements will allow online marketers to maximize visibility and increase traffic by tailoring their efforts to meet the users’ ‘preference’ of each engine.”
Source: iProspect and eMediaWire
The majority of North Americans use search engines for consumer research states a focus group research product undertaken by the search marketing firm Enquiro.
The results showed that 65% of North Americans use search engines to come to a purchasing decision.
Enquiro President Gord Hotchkiss commented on some of the more interesting findings of the study, “We were more than a little surprised by some of the things we found. For example, search engines are much more likely to be used to research a purchase than to make the actual purchase.
Yet the majority of search marketing campaigns are aimed squarely at the purchaser. We also found that there are distinct search behaviors out there. For example, we found that many of the women in the group had different search behaviors than many of the men.”
One other interesting finding of the study was that many search engine users are still drawn first to the traditional, free search listings, rather than the sponsored ones.
This tendency was most noticeable in Google users, where the sponsored listings have always been clearly labeled. The Federal Trade Commission has warned many search providers that sponsored listings have to be clearly marked on the search results page.
This move was spurred by complaints from a group led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader who filed a complaint in 2001 against misleading advertising practices used by some of the major search portals.
Source: Search Engine Journal and Enquiro.com
Search engine users can now breathe easy. Previously, using a search engine could generate less than desirable content.
The Juvio search engine screens out adult content and offensive language making for a family friendly environment.
Juvio Corporation has added yet another service to its already expanding portfolio of technology-based products and services with the launch of a unique, family friendly search engine.
The Juvio search engine allows viewers to target search results in a safe and friendly environment, free from adult material and offensive language.
Each site listed on the Juvio search engine is screened by a staff member so as to ensure that the site meets a rigorous standard of quality. Currently over 2 million screened sites have already been approved and listed with the Juvio search engine with that number expected to increase profoundly in the near future.
“Search engines have become the most popular method for users looking to find targeted results on the web, that’s a given.” says Juvio President, Paul Burg.
“Almost all other engines have virtually no filtering process in place, meaning that a child could perform a search for a female pop star idol and be flooded with websites offering pornographic content. We believe that people who want to search without coming across these types of sites have that right, as do their children.”
Advertisers can also enjoy Premium Member status for a nominal fee. These special accounts will have their URL and description listed above non-member sites that share identical keywords thereby giving them preferred placement in the Juvio search engine.
Juvio Corporation, operating with over 10,000 sales associates in 86 countries, has already given the approval for its representatives to begin offering Premium Memberships to websites looking to gain much desired consumer traffic.
In addition to a firm commitment to filter out improper sites, the Juvio search engine also allows users to rank sites they have visited and submit their own reviews. This consumer-based ranking service can increase an advertiser’s overall rank status within the Juvio search engine through positive reviews.
“We have created the first content approved, consumer feedback fueled search engine,” says Burg. “Over time, it’s our belief that those with Internet access will no longer tolerate their innocent children becoming exposed to adult-only sites.
Where these users go, the legitimate advertisers and their websites will follow.”
Source: Juvio
Search engine toolbars for the Internet Explorer browser have become nearly essential tools online: They can block pop-up ads, alert you to new e-mail, even protect you from scams.
You'd need a half-dozen to combine all the best features, the Internet equivalent of leaving home in the morning with six different wallets.
So to narrow the choice I tested 11 - two of which, from America Online and EarthLink, debuted Monday.
Toolbars from the search leaders - Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL - all have decent pop-up blockers that kill windows I don't want (ads) and permit ones I request (shipping details, for instance). And they're all a snap to download and install.
The Google Toolbar includes an extremely useful feature for frequent online shoppers. It automatically fills out online forms, such as name and address. A password protects stored credit card information. And if you keep a Web journal using Blogger software, which Google bought last year, you can add entries from the toolbar.
A small bell appears on the Yahoo! Companion Toolbar when users of Yahoo e-mail accounts have new messages. You can also access bookmarks of favorite Web sites that you've stored on Yahoo. What I like best about the Yahoo toolbar is its portability. Settings are stored online, so you can customize it or add bookmarks wherever you are.
As for Microsoft, you can launch Hotmail and Messenger from its MSN Toolbar, but there's nothing special once you're there.
The AOL Toolbar displays the number of mail messages you have - if you're logged on already through AOL's regular software.
Yahoo outperforms MSN and AOL by allowing sign-ins from the toolbar, but Google outshines all of them. I found its search engine and extra features most useful. It even has a green bar that shows the relative popularity of the site you're visiting.
Among the rest, toolbars from Dogpile and Ask Jeeves have decent pop-up blockers. AltaVista and EarthLink make mistakes recognizing legitimate pop-ups, and Alexa keeps popping up annoying prompts asking whether I want that pop-up or not.
Dogpile, Ask Jeeves and Alexa have buttons for mailing Web links to a friend. Alexa's was the best.
Beyond that, each has its own handy features:
-Dogpile supports an emerging technology called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. With it, headlines from your favorite Web journals, news or other RSS-enabled sites scroll across the toolbar.
-Ask Jeeves lets you shrink and expand entire Web pages - not just their text in the more limited manner of the Internet Explorer browser.
-Alexa, owned by Amazon.com, suggests related sites, as in "People who visit this page also visit ..." It's similar to Amazon's shopping recommendations. And should a Web site disappear, a copy at the Internet Archive may be reachable with the click of a button.
-AltaVista has a button for translating text to and from other languages. With it, you might get at the gist of what's going on.
-EarthLink blocks fake EarthLink, eBay and PayPal sites that try to steal your passwords or credit card numbers. It also searches your computer for malicious programs known as "spyware," though to remove them, you need an EarthLink account.
Among these features, EarthLink's ScamBlocker is the most promising, especially once sites identified by the anti-spam company Brightmail are added next month.
I also tried GuruNet, which helps you cull useful information from the junk by narrowing results to reference materials like encyclopedias and maps. It reduces clutter. But unlike the others I tested, GuruNet requires a cash outlay - $29.99 a year.
I like Dogpile's RSS scroller and Alexa's recommendations. In both cases, there's a trade-off. They collect information on surfing habits, so read their privacy policies carefully.
Most people will probably be fine with either the Google or Yahoos toolbar, unless there's a specific feature they'd use a lot - perhaps because you frequent foreign sites (then download AltaVista's as well) or have poor eyesight (use Ask Jeeves).
Sadly, however, all these toolbars work only on Windows computers running Internet Explorer. For other browsers, try GGSearch, a standalone application that looks like a toolbar. You get basic Google searches but not extras like pop-up blockers.
Or use Opera's browser, as I do. It has the Google search box and pop-up blocker built-in, though its form filler isn't as good.
Source: News Observer.com
The first electronic vote counting system was introduced in South Korea, even though counting in Seoul and Gyeonggi province was slower than expected, and Internet portal sites and wired and wireless telecommunications services updated poll results as they were released.
On Thursday during the National Assembly elections, about 15 million subscribers at SK Telecom, the largest mobile service provider in Korea, used their cell phones to place 319 million calls. The figure was about 33 million more than the average for a holiday.
"The increase is attributable to the election," an SK Telecom official said. The power of information technology was illustrated during the election.
KTF, the second largest cell phone carrier here, said text message traffic on Thursday was 12 percent higher than on other holidays. The voter turnout was nearly 3 percentage points higher than in the Assembly elections in 2000; in Seoul, the increase was about 6 percentage points. "Information technology, such as mobile phones, must be credited for the increase in turnout," an industry official boasted.
The electronic ballot counting system was set up by SK C&C. The system scans paper ballots and tallies them. Safeguards include a system that puts ambiguous ballots aside for scrutiny by poll officials.
KT, the nation's dominant landline telephone carrier, was on watch to ensure that its lines were available for precinct polling stations to transmit results electronically to the National Election Commission's computers.
Internet portal sites updated the election data as the commission released it, and political junkies pounded their keyboards in chat rooms.
The downside, though, was the increase in Internet election law violations. Campaign violations on the Net rose from 25 four years ago to 254 in the 2004 campaign.
Source: Joong Ang Daily
As great and powerful search engines are today, some sensitive issues can lead to a lot of controversy.
Google Inc., the leading Internet search engine, said Monday that it had no plans to alter its search results despite complaints that the first listing on a search for the word "Jew" directs people to an anti-Semitic Web site.
The dispute points to one of the most difficult challenges that has plagued Web search engines: what to do when the results of a search are offensive to some, but legal?
In this case, the first listed site on a search for "Jew" is "Jewwatch .com," which promotes itself as "Keeping a close watch on Jewish communities and organizations worldwide" and offering references to anti-Semitic research, documents and organizations.
A Web site calling itself "Remove JewWatch.com from the Google search engine!" is circulating a petition asking Google to remove the site from its listings. Google search results rely on a complex set of algorithms that ranks sites based on the number and quality of the links to them.
The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., said it had no plans to remove the site from the search results list because it trusts its automated program to rank Web sites accurately. The search engine has been listing "Jewwatch.com" as the first-ranked site for three years.
"We find this result offensive, but the objectivity of our ranking function prevents us from making any changes," said David Krane, a spokesman for Google, adding that an exception is made only in cases where a site is illegal. Mr. Krane said the company has, for example, removed sites from its rankings that promote pedophilia, which is illegal.
For example, until February 2003, a user searching for a guide to the English city of Chester would have been presented with "Chester's guide to molesting young girls" as the second entry. After officials from Chester complained, Google removed the site.
But offensive material is often a matter of opinion, not legality. Conduct a search on Google for "George W. Bush," for example, and the fifth and sixth sites are critical of the president.
Because Google's search results are determined in part by the number of links to a given page, as well as the number of times the search term appears near a link, even sites criticizing the "Jewwatch" site may be contributing to its high-ranking simply by linking to it. The top Google ranking for Jewwatch.com was discovered recently by a Google user, Steven Weinstock, who began the petition drive to force Google to remove the site from its listings.
In a letter posted on its Web site on March 30, the Anti-Defamation League explained that the ranking is "in no way a conscious choice by Google," but rather the result of an automated system.
"The longevity of ownership, the way articles are posted to it, the links to and from the site, and the structure of the site itself all increase the ranking of 'Jewwatch' within the Google formula," the letter said.
Over the years, some Web site developers have learned to manipulate the automated system by building links to make a site appear even more popular than it may be. And some commercial Web site developers have become quite adept at using this practice to raise the ranking of their businesses.
Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, a newsletter based in Darien, Conn., said Google was in a difficult position because it cannot be seen as treating material differently because it is offensive.
"Google would certainly come under fire if they were to choose to change it," Mr. Sullivan said.
Source: NY Times
The power and use of on-line purchase is growing. Google and other search engines have more power to influence the selection and immediacy of Internet purchases, and in more industries than ever.
Subject to any niceties and distinctions of the purists, there is broad agreement that Google controls almost 80% of web search requests. What threats and risks does that situation pose, if any? Google remains a privately owned company, whose technology is available at no cost to end-users.
However, Google does record and store, as no doubt do other search engines, by individual details of everything searched through the Google engine.
This may be released where legally demanded or to satisfy national security or other state interests but that is a separate issue altogether. Its revenues derive primarily from licensing its technology to a number of web based service providers as well as sales of text advertising, the often irritating paid for listings which accompany web search results.
How should we view this apparent monopoly? In a strict commercial sense it seems that Google "has got there through its own merits; the adaptive use of the technology to date has enabled to rise to the top of the pile."
It has not threatened or stifled competitors. Search engines seek to differentiate themselves.
Some do it technologically and this is the route by which Google has become so prominent and, of course, others suggest that superior technologies are coming to market, which will outshine Google, thus providing that competition.
Of course, if Google goes for a public offering of its shares, certain to be a very popular offering, one of the risks could be that the relevant national competition and anti-trust will take a more intrusive look in the nature of Google's monopoly.
Two areas of "monopoly" which do concern commentators and commercial organisations are only indirectly commercial. In one sense, although it is a search engine, Google has some of the powers of a major newspaper or periodical. It does and can exercise editorial control and influence.
Some say this is understandable, if only to avoid exposure of itself and others to action for defamation by the more aggressive organisations who use the instrument of litigation to suppress critical comment. So it may and has edited out links and content of this nature. Unless Competition Authorities view search engines companies as "media company " akin to newspapers or television it is unlikely they will be subject to investigation on this count.
Secondly, the power and use of on-line purchase is growing. Google, and other search engines for that matter, have more power to influence the selection, availability and immediacy of purchases in the way it sets the so-called algorithms for prioritising and selection of websites, bringing distinct commercial advantage to some and disadvantage to others.
Much of that will invariably be determined by the commercial power of advertising revenues. This could trigger investigation by Competition Authorities.
Source: IT Analysis.com
GoRank.com just analyzed over 20,000 top 10 ranking sites in Google for single word queries.
There is a wealth of information contained in this data. Here are some of the averages:
For the top 10 results (single word queries)
* Average number of words on a page: 893
* Average number of keyword repeats on a page: 5.3
* Average overall page keyword density: 2.1%
* Average number of words in a title: 6.7
* Average number of words in #1 Ranking site title: 5.9
* Average number of keyword repeats in title: 0.8
* Average title keyword density: 17.3%
It helps to unlock the secrets of ranking on the first page of Google. GoRank took the approach to just present the data rather than interpret it, so they think it would be very valuable to have people post their insight into the data. There is also an interactive reporting feature that allows you to build custom reports and query the data directly.
Source: GoRank.com
The Shop.org / BizRate 2003 eHoliday Mood study produced some interesting results.
The top 5 marketing promotions that have been most successful in driving business for the holiday period are; free ship with conditions (59%), online only sale (27%), free ship no conditions (24%), offline-online sale (22%), and free gift with purchase (14%).
When asked what promotion vehicle has been most successful in driving business, the response was their own email promotion (86%) (?), search engine marketing (58%), affiliate marketing (50%), catalog drops (37%), and portal shopping listing (17%).
[Full story: Holiday Season Finishes Strong For Online Retailers - Shop.org].
What is truly hard to understand is when participants said their email marketing campaigns were more successful than their search engine marketing efforts.
Given the extremely high levels of email spam that are rampant everywhere these days, the opposite would have in fact been largely expected.
Source: A.M.G.Y.
Nearly two thirds of marketers now see digital marketing as having a very high or high level of strategic importance within their organizations, and over 75 percent of respondents plan to increase spending on digital marketing as a percentage of their marketing budget this year, according to a survey of marketing executives released today.
The online poll, entitled the Digital Marketing Dialog, was commissioned by Responsys, Inc., a premier provider of email marketing solutions, and sponsored by the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine and USA TODAY in the fourth quarter of 2003.
The study received over 400 responses from top marketing decision makers regarding the impact, role, value, and uptake of digital marketing technologies and programs across all industry sectors.
Digital marketing techniques, including email campaigns, website interaction, online advertising, and e-newsletters are growing rapidly in strategic importance, according to the study findings. Over 70 percent of respondents said brand awareness is a key use of digital marketing, second only to customer lead generation.
Spending on digital marketing is expected to increase significantly in 2004 from last year, with the biggest year-to-year increase expected for those who spent between 11-20 percent on digital marketing last year. Nearly 40 percent of those who forecast spending for 2004 said they would spend more than 20 percent of their marketing budget on digital marketing.
"The study confirms digital marketing is an essential component of a marketer's overall marketing mix," said Kathy Gogan, Vice President of Marketing for Responsys, Inc. "Those who hesitate to embrace the digital channel will miss a critical opportunity to build stronger relationships with customers, promote their products, and cost-effectively build their brands."
Business to business (B2B) companies appear to be engaging in digital marketing techniques like never before. 63 percent of the survey respondents are from the B2B sector, and these marketers are spending more and allocating a higher percentage of their marketing budget toward digital marketing.
The survey reports B2B companies are employing digital marketing for new customer lead generation (87 percent); website traffic generation (58 percent); and customer education (54 percent). Business to consumer (B2C) companies are using the channel to improve customer relationships (74 percent), as well as for cross-selling/up-selling to existing customers (63 percent), and product sales.
"Although business-to-business companies are dramatically increasing their spending for digital marketing in 2004, they seem to be focusing on one-way information transfer," added Gogan. "The business-to-consumer market has recognized digital marketing as an effective vehicle for personalized, two-way dialogs which are critical for maximum results from the online channel."
Increased spending levels on digital marketing are due in large part to the ease, speed, and measurability of the online channel. 60 percent of respondents said digital marketing campaigns are gaining in popularity primarily because of the low cost of implementation, speed of delivery, and measurable ROI.
"We have found that online channels, including online marketing tools, are an effective and engaging means of reaching our customers in new ways," said Alan Gellman, former Vice President of eBusiness at Blue Shield and a survey respondent. "We've increased revenues, decreased costs and improved consumer satisfaction through the effective use of the digital channel."
Despite the clear advantages of digital marketing techniques, many marketers gave themselves barely passing grades when it comes to digital marketing. Nearly 40 percent graded their use of online marketing at a C, D, or F, admitting there is plenty of room for improvement utilizing digital marketing more effectively.
The top areas of improvements identified by respondents included better analytics and more multi-channel integration. Half of all respondents said top improvements would include better customer profiling and analytics, integration of both online and off-line channels and touchpoints, integration of email campaigns with personalized website interaction with customers, and integration of customer information and eCRM/e-support systems.
Respondents noted three primary barriers to effective digital marketing results. Spam and other email filters and email inbox clutter were mentioned by over 60 percent of respondents as key barriers, followed by the development of qualified email lists. Recent anti-spam legislation and privacy issues are also impacting e-marketing efforts. Nearly half of survey respondents said they would place more emphasis on the quality of email lists and over 40 percent have adopted a policy of "opt-in" email communications only.
The survey included all major industry sectors, including financial, retail, travel/hospitality, healthcare and consumer packaged goods. Almost 70 percent of the respondents held the title of Director of Marketing or above, with CEOs representing nearly thirty percent of the sample.
Source: CPU Review.com
