September 26, 2004 - October 2, 2004
FyberSearch Launches Blog
Nathan Enns, the developer of FyberSearch, the small but feature-filled engine that I mentioned last Sunday, alerts us to the just launched FyberSearch News Blog.
Posted by Gary Price on October 2, 2004, 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Keeping Googlers at Google
Lisa Baertlein's article, Google Challenge: Keeping Wealthy Workers, takes a look at Googler "retention" issues post IPO. Baertlein mentions that more employee "perks" are coming.
>From the article:
To be sure, Google -- which has vowed to remain unconventional -- is seen as a very employee-friendly company. It has even promised to beef up perks, which already include an in-house masseuse and free lunches prepared by the former chef to the Grateful Dead.
While such extras are nice, if Google fails to instill a continued sense of mission among employees, "they're crossing their fingers and just hoping that good people will stay," said Vince Poscente, a management strategist and author.
Posted by Gary Price on October 2, 2004, 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google Norway & Kenya Up
Via the Google Blog, the company has opened two new sites for Norway and Kenya. And we learn that Google in Norwegian apparently means "sunglasses." Details here: Made in the shade.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 1, 2004, 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Feedster's Rafer Not Happy With Clusty
Feedster's Scott Rafer isn't happy that the new Clusty search engine is hitting his site without a licensing agreement, in comments he's left at Welsh View.
For its part, Vivisimo CEO Raul Valdes-Perez told SEW, "We did speak with Feedster in February 2004 and were told that meta-search is OK. We are using their RSS feed, clearly giving attribution, and linking back to Feedster. We haven't been contacted by anybody there, but are happy to remove them upon request."
The issue over the legality of meta search isn't new. eBay succeeded in a "trespass case" against Bidder's Edge. More about that and related articles here and here.
UPDATE: Scott Rafer just sent an email letting us know that he's updated his comments on Welsh View after having a phone conversation with Vivisimo's Valdes-Perez. It sounds like everything will be worked out between the two companies.
Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2004, 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Second MSN Search Tech Preview Online Briefly
A second technology preview of MSN's new search technology was online briefly for testing today. MSN says that it was run in a small percentage of its various country-specific markets, like the UK, to do load and stress tests. The previews have now come down, MSN says. When it was up, the site said:
- The database is larger than with Tech Preview One, according to its About page
- Cached versions of pages were available. Similar to what we've seen with other engines, the date the page was cached was included.
- Still no advanced interface to try on the US side. A UK version of the service provided a number of interesting
refinement tools, such as filtering by filetype, date, a numeric range feature and even some relevancy sliders or "equalizers."
- Up to two results per domain were visible on a results page. The second result was indented. A green button positioned next to a hyperlink reads, "See more results from..."
- Results were not numbered as they are at Yahoo.
Tech Preview One was available for a short period of time this summer (see our past article, MSN Search Gets New Look; Microsoft Gets New Search Engine).
Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread: MSN Search Preview 2 Up.
Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2004, 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
MSN Messenger To Gain Search
The beta for MSN Messenger 7, due out Monday, will add search capabilities to its client. Yahoo Messenger has offered this
About ten days ago, CitySearch released an IM "bot" that allows you to "interact" with their database using AOL Instant Messenger. You can also search the AOL Yellow Pages this way.
Details on the Microsoft move from InternetNews: MSN Putting Search in IM Beta. Thanks to Search Engine Guide for catching the article.
Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2004, 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
A Chat With Findory's Greg Linden
Searcher magazine (a popular publication in the library and info industry) has just published an interview I did with Findory Chief Executive, Greg Linden.
Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2004, 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Comparison Shopping Engines and the Small Retailer
In Comparison Shopping Threatens Smaller Sites, (posted on the WSJ's StartupJournal site, registration not required), Jeannette Borzo takes a look at comparison shopping databases from the small business owner angle.
Now, with e-commerce continuing to boom, big retailers have begun piling into comparison sites -- and making life a lot tougher for their small competitors. Not only is it harder for small companies to stand out when they're jostling with L.L. Bean, J.C. Penney and Circuit City, it's also more expensive. The rush of new competition has driven up the placement fees that companies pay for better spots in search results.
The article goes on to say that while all of this might be "chaotic" for the small retailer, comparison shopping engines, "can still be a great sales vehicle for retailers who know how to take advantage of them."
Posted by Gary Price on October 1, 2004, 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
FindWhat Opens AdRevenue Xpress Contextual Ads Program
FindWhat joins Google in offering self-serve contextual ads for publishers. The system also allows publishers to add sponsored search listings to their site, similar to the Google AdSense for search program (formerly Google WebSearch). At the moment, the program is only open to those also advertising with FindWhat. Details from ClickZ: FindWhat Unveils Answer to AdSense.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 1, 2004, 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Microsoft's "Search Champs"
Next week the MSFT Redmond campus will welcome a group of bloggers, researchers, and others interested in search to a two day event called "Search Champs" where the company will "preview" new technology and seek feedback on it. You can learn more in this eWeek article.
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Blink 2.0 Coming Soon
An InternetWeek article, Search Underdog To Take On Google, Microsoft, And Amazon, lets us know that a Blinkx 2.0 beta will be released in the next two weeks. The article also mentions that peer-to-peer MP3 file searching will be coming soon after the new version becomes available. Mac support is also still in the works. I've used Blinkx from time-to-time since it became available about three months ago and haven't found it especially useful but that might be just me. The company reports that Blinkx has been downloaded more than 1 million times since its launch. I'll take the new release for a spin and report back. Want to comment? Visit our forum thread: Blinkx Continues To get Attention
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ask Google Answers: Is the Googleplex on Fire?
Boy, the folks at Google Answers sure get some oddball questions. Yesterday someone posted a question under the subject google headquarters, flammability of, offering to lend a ladder if Google HQ was on fire!
Thanks JP for the tip.
Posted by Chris Sherman on September 30, 2004, 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Travel Search Continues to Heat Up
The travel search and booking sector continues to get attention most recently with the purchase of Orbitz to Cendant. InternetNews.com looks at the marketplace in the article: Chasing The Travel-Search Rainbow
Mobissimo, Kayak (a site I've been testing and really like), and the new FareChase offering from Yahoo (a beta was released a couple of weeks ago) are mentioned in the article.
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Feedster Does Job Search
New search services tools are coming fast and furious these days.
Feedster is testing a searchable database of job openings culled from thousands of RSS/ATOM feeds.
Listings can be viewed online or sent directly to your aggregator.
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
GoHook Offers Up a Database of PDF Content
We've just learned that GoHook is building a database of Adobe Acrobat (PDF) content.
GoHook used to provide an archive of completed eBay auctions. However, in March the service ended after the company ran into several problems with EBay.
The new GoHook PDF database includes about 500,000 documents. According to the company more than 10,000 documents are added to the database each week.
GoHook offers several options to view PDF content online. You can click the hyperlinked title and open the document in an Adobe Acrobat Reader or:
+ View the document converted into HTML
+ View a cached/archived version of the document in PDF.
Google, Yahoo, AJ, and other web databases that crawl PDF content DO NOT offer cached versions of these documents. The Wayback Machine does offer a small amount of archive PDF material.
+ View the document converted into text (txt) format.
GoHook results pages also contain the date the document was crawled along with its size.
You can use quotation marks to search phrases and a minus sign to exclude a term. A default "and" is used between terms.
Snippets do not show your search terms in context. This is a feature that would make GoHook much more useful. However, it's possible to quickly open a text version of a document and then use edit/find to locate your search terms.
The company is also developing a database of .WAV sound files. At the moment GoHook Audio search contains only 5000 files.
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ask Jeeves UK Cuts Sales Staff
Ask Jeeves cuts back UK direct sales department
Search engine Ask Jeeves has cut a number of jobs from its UK sales department as part of a restructuring drive as it prepares to expand into Europe.
But the company said that the loss of seven jobs would not see overall headcount reduced, as it's actively recruiting in other areas.
Adrian Cox, Ask Jeeves UK CEO, said that the move was in response to the fact that the balance of its revenue had shifted towards paid placement, and it had been considering the cuts for some time.
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Vivisimo Launches New Meta Search Engine
Vivisimo, known for its clustering technology that automatically categorizes web search results on the fly, has launched Clusty, a new meta search engine with some novel and exciting features that are well worth a look. In addition to searching a number of web search engines, you can also use Clusty to search news, blogs, yellow pages listings, "gossip" sources and much more.
Today's SearchDay article, Reducing Information Overkill, covers Clusty's cool new features in depth.
Why the awkward name? Apart from being a play on the company's clustering technology, the domain name and its variations (.com, .net, etc) were available for a mere $9, according to Vivisimo CEO Raul Valdes-Perez. This is clearly a company not in any danger of flaming out due to extravagant excesses we saw during the heyday of the Dotcom craze.
Posted by Chris Sherman on September 30, 2004, 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
New Tool Blocks Paid Search Engine Listings
I wonder what Google, Yahoo and others will have to say about a new version Super AdBlocker that removes paid listings from about 20 search engines?
Older versions of the product blocked pop-ups, pop-unders, rich media, Flash, and some spyware but this is the first time that sponsored results can be blocked.
A bit more from the news release and this page that explains why someone would want to block sponsored listings.
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Dipsie Says Online "Soon"
Along with Microsoft at the MIT conference Danny mentioned was Jason Wiener who continues to say that his Dipsie search
engine will be online soon. We've heard this before. Here's one example. I'll believe it when I see it.
Posted by Gary Price on September 30, 2004, 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Will Better Search Sabotage The Business Model?
Microsoft search researcher Eric Brill suggests that as search gets better, it will be less a money-maker: Microsoft Researcher Questions Search Engine Business Model from CRN, a nice catch from Search Engine Guide. Brill's comments were made yesterday at a conference at MIT. Brill's been involved in developing an answer engine for Microsoft, as Gary's blogged before: Microsoft Research Gets Serious About Search.
I'd love to have known more of the discussion. I'm guessing the idea is that if you give people the perfect answer naturally in the "free" results, they won't need to click on any of the ads.
Perhaps. But I also suspect we'll see that for very popular, very generic searches (think cars, movies, dvd players and so on), the "free" stuff simply won't be shown until well after ads. And as long as those ads are fairly relevant, it probably won't send most users fleeing from search engines.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 30, 2004, 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Froogle UK Quietly Launched
Froogle finally moves outside the US and opens a UK edition: Froogle UK. Being based in the UK, I plan to put Froogle UK to the test over the coming weeks against my longtime favorite UK shopping search engines DealTime UK, Kelkoo and Yahoo Shopping UK. FYI, Yahoo now owns Kelkoo but is still using different technology on its own site. Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread: Froogle coming to the UK.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 30, 2004, 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Microsoft 1995: Search Isn't A Business!
Another early search history lesson from one of Excite's founders, Joe Kraus, about when Microsoft considered buying his company. "I remember Nathan Myhrvold nearly yelling that search was not a business; that users would find their favorite site, bookmark them and then never go to search again." And a shy penis syndrome encounter with Bill Gates in the bathroom, as well. More here: Potty Talk.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 30, 2004, 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Internet Filtering and Censorship Around the Globe
Yes, I realize this isn't exactly search related but with so much recent attention about Google China not crawling certain news sites this new paper about Internet filtering and censorship might be of interest.
A Starting Point: Legal Implications of Internet Filtering
Source: Open Net Initiative
"In this paper, the Open Net Initiative (ONI) considers some of the legal implications of controlling access to Internet content through filtering. ONI -- a research partnership of the Berkman Center [Harvard University], University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, and the University of Cambridge -- documents Internet filtering by collecting empirical data about the parties who censor web traffic and the types of sites blocked in different countries. This paper considers the legal ramifications of this data."
Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2004, 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Search Engine Strategies Goes To China
A brief post on Alan Meckler's blog this afternoon that the Search Engine Strategies "World Tour" will soon be to China. The SES China conference is scheduled to take place in June 2005.
Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2004, 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Questions from the Google Labs Aptitude Test
Both G.L. and J.B. point us to this blog post by Adam Rifkin that includes questions from the Google Labs Aptitude Test.
UPDATE: Google Has Posted the Test on the Google Blog.
Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2004, 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Marvel at IBM's New Multimedia Search Tool
IBM's 'Marvel' to scour Net for video, audio
Source: News.com
Michael Kanellos writes about the Marvel project at IBM that's building a search engine to retrieve audio and video material. Content will be automatically scanned, parsed and indexed for concepts. In other words, automatically adding desciptive metadata to each video file.
He writes that a full-fledged Marvel might be some 3-5 years away.
Subject metadata, what librarians often refer to as cataloging, is often searchable in many fee-based (Factiva, LexisNexis, Dialog, etc.) full text databases, library catalogs, along with specialized open web databases. In some cases the metadata is added by a human indexer who reviews each document and in other cases created automatically by scanning and parsing the text. Terms are selected from an agreed up list or thesaurus. Here's the thesaurus of approved terms that's used to index material in a well-known education database.
The New York Times Historical Database from ProQuest that indexes every page (full text and full image) of the newspaper (ads and editorial) from Vol. 1, No. 1 through 2001 was created using a combination of these techniques. The ability to search by subject indexing along with the option to conduct a full text makes for more precise searching that what you encounter web running a search on a general purpose web engine.
Btw, ProQuest offers searchable "historical" databases from other newsapers including The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Kanellos writes that for the "most part" this multimedia material and the method IBM is developing with Marvel, "can't easily be retrieved today on the Net." Yes, for the most part this is a correct statement. However, it doesn't mean that several very interesting search tools (both free and fee) aren't already online. These toools do not offer subject searching (like Marvel) but they do allow you to search the full text from various TV and radio shows. If you're interested in trying a few them out take a look at this post from about a week ago where I've linked to several resources.
Chris also just touched on multimedia search in this post about Comcast.
Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2004, 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
And Now We're Bullish About Google
Google's now selling for well within the initial price range it had for its offering but was forced to lower from after Wall Street dogged its value. Now its underwriters are apparently bullish on Google and think it will go even higher.
Hmm. Do you think that if Google had just done a traditional IPO, where a few banks made tons of cash, they have supported it going out higher? I sure do.
The New York Times has a good article looking at this today: Google Shares Just May Be Winners After All. I like the part where worries that Internet growth was slowing in August are cited for a reason for some analysts being shy of the stock then. Now growth appears to be accelerating, so everything's OK. In other words, we're valuing a company's long-term prospects off a one-month trend?
Predicting the value of a company is definitely a mystery to me. But sadly, it's stuff like this that doesn't leave me with a lot of faith in the predictions of those who are supposed to know how.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2004, 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sellling Online? Don't Overlook Shopping Search Engines
Specialized shopping search engines are rapidly gaining popularity. A recent Forrester survey found that nearly 20% of online users look to shopping search engines to help research and buy products.
In today's SearchDay article, Shopping Search Tactics, Shari Thurow reports on a panel at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference that focused on tips and techniques for optimizing and submitting feeds to these specialized engines, as well as the different approaches to measuring ROI and the effeciveness of a shopping search marketing campaign.
Posted by Chris Sherman on September 29, 2004, 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
IBM Releases New Product that Searches Disparate Sources Simultaneously
A couple of items from the enterprise search beat.
IBM uncorks Masala special brew
Source: Computer Weekly
IBM is releasing its DB2 Information Integrator software that will allow simultaneous searching of disprate sources (web, internal databases, proprietary databases).
>From the article, "In one fell swoop Masala [codename for the new IBM product] could solve three problem areas in managing enterprise-level searches: the rapidly expanding universe of data, the growing variety of mostly unstructured data, and the patchwork of databases and data stores...'What IBM will be able to do is offer a federated data model that brings together a number of disparate sources in one place so users can search, index and retrieve data without writing to individual data sources as they might have had to in the past,' said Stephen O'Grady, senior analyst at Redmonk. 'It is a fairly significant step up.'"
Another company (one of many) that offers similar technology, FAST Search and Transfer, continues to land clients. They just announced deals with the United States Army and AutoTrader.com.
Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2004, 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Challenges in Running a Commercial Search Engine
A presentation (PowerPoint slides) titled, Challenges in Running a Commercial Search Engine (3.5 MB; PDF) might be of interest to some of you.
The slides come from a keynote presentation by Amit Singhal, a Senior Research Scientist at Google.
The presentation was given in Israel on February 16th at IBM's Second Search and Collaboration Seminar 2004.
Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2004, 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Feedster Providing Content to New IDG Product Guide
The new IT Product Guide on InfoWorld.com includes news and weblog content via the Feedster database. A bit more in this news release.
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Posted by Gary Price on September 29, 2004, 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEMPO Gets New Advisors & Parody Site
SEMPO's gained three new members for its advisory board: Chris LaSala from Google, Neg Norton from the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association and Safa Rashtchy from Piper Jaffray. More from SEMPO in this release. The new members fill spots vacated by the departure of Chris Sherman and myself (more on that here: Reflections On SEMPO). To discuss, please visit this forum thread: SEMPO Announces Three New Advisory Board Members.
Meanwhile, a parody site lampooning SEMPO, SEMPO-Tahoe, has been moving up in the rankings for a search on the organization's name. Today, it jumped to fourth place on Google. Discussion of that site can be found here on our forums: SEMPO Gone To The Dogs?
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2004, 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google News In Beta To Avoid Ad Lawsuits?
Nice article spotted via Dave Winer, Google News: Beta Not Make Money from Wired. The article theorizes that Google has kept the "beta" moniker on Google News for so long because it's afraid that removing it -- and adding ads -- would cause it to be subject to copyright lawsuits.
Maybe. But the same argument about lifting headlines and lead paragraphs is already applicable to the long-standing Google web search service. No one I know of has seriously sued Google over that.
The reason, of course, is that people want to be listed in Google's web search -- to the degree that they get upset over lost business if there's any major algorithm change, as happened big time last December (see my What Happened To My Site On Google? article).
Given that Google News drives traffic to many publisher web sites (some of which like the New York Times earn off Google's contextual ads program), biting the traffic hand that feeds them seems unlikely to me.
In fact, the New York Times makes another good example, given that the publisher has specifically worked with Google to be accessible in Google News despite its password-protection on some stories.
Still, the two key points remain. Isn't well past time for Google News to come out of beta and when will ads finally appear? I'll let you know what I hear.
By the way, I see hardly any ads at Yahoo News -- a banner here and there and no sponsored listings that I can find. In addition, a keyword search at Yahoo News such as for movies or world series doesn't bring up any sponsored listings, in contrast to the case with regular web searching.
It suggests that if Google has some reason not to monetize Google News, the same reasons may also be happening with Yahoo News -- which in terms of keyword-driven searches, is as automated as Google. For more on that, see: Postscript On Google News & Bias.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2004, 7:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
New Google Traffic Estimator Tool Up - Got Suggestions?
Google's added a new Traffic Estimator tool that lets you discover traffic for a term without having to actually add the term to an account or campaign. You can see clicks per day, average CPC, cost per day and average estimated position.
The tool's gotten a good reception in our forums so far. But folks still want more features. Fortunately AdWordsRep, Google's official rep for AdWords on our forums, has been busy answering questions and gathering up the suggestions. So jump in if you've got feedback to share in this thread: New Adwords Traffic Estimator.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2004, 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
More On Mixing Contextual & Search Spending
Niki Scevak saw my Google's Revenue Is Not All Search-Derived post yesterday decrying the mixture of contextual and search revenues and points out that Jupiter Research's own paid search estimates appropriately don't mix the two: The Myths of Contextual Advertising.
He goes on to discuss how AdSense doesn't just mean contextual at Google any more. Instead, it's an umbrella term they now use to represent both "AdSense for search" and AdSense for content."
This came up on our forums earlier this month: AdSense for search? As I explained there, Google shifted to using the umbrella term internally a few months ago. You really saw it make its public debut in the Google IPO filing, when AdSense was used throughout those documents to represent any type of ads placed outside of Google.
Advertisers, of course, tend to think of two different things: AdWords (meaning ads that show up in response to keyword searches) and AdSense (meaning to advertisers the ads that show up contextually placed and which are considered by many of them as an option they can choose for their AdWords campaigns).
From Google's point of view, AdWords is simply the program that lets advertisers place ads into the AdSense program -- which means both AdSense for search and AdSense for content.
Niki goes on to outline that contextual ads are in his view a dismal earner for Google but one it can afford because they represent incremental income for the service, rather than its bread-and-butter. Don't forget, the deals also have the impact of denying Google competitors from gaining partnerships, denying them cash). He also notes Google is stepping back from some "vanity" deals which may have even cost it money.
Meanwhile, Kevin Ryan takes another look at those IAB search projection figures I blogged about earlier, the ones where contextual doesn't appear to be broken out. In his Why Search is Slowing, Ryan gathers a few comments about the fears of a slowdown in search, despite still incredible rises. In short, some leveling off was in order.
He also notes that keyword search emerged as an ad format in 2002. To be correct, the ad format was there well before this. It was just that no one bothered to track it.
Spending on paid search ads began with Overture back in 1998. It happened even earlier than that, if you want to count keyword-linked banners. Google started carrying paid ads at the end of 1999.
All this spending could have been tracked back then. It wasn't. It took the rosy public financials of Overture to wake up Wall Street, research firms and even advertising organizations to something advertisers were already doing: spending on search in droves. My Search Engine Marketing Finally Getting Respect article from 2001 looks at this more.
Meanwhile, tracking of spending on "free" or "organic" or "natural" search seems non-existent. That's something that research by SEMPO may help correct. It's long overdue. Not having these figures is like trying to predict the state of any type of marketing solely on ad buys but not public relations efforts.
Postscript: The IAB figures do apparently track spending on search engine optimization as well as advertising.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2004, 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
iZito & Ujiko: Meta Search With Personality
iZito is a new meta search engine with a clever feature. Click on any listing you are interested in using the P icon next to the listing title. That "parks" the listing into your to do list. Click on the P tab, and you can see all the pages you've culled.
It's an easy, handy way to make a custom result set. Also interesting is the ability to show listings in up to three columns across the screen, letting you see more results at once. Seen a site before?
Want an easy rundown? If you've got Flash and broadband, watch the demo. It only takes about a minute. Don't have Flash? Then don't bother with iZito, because it's required.
The iZito to do list is almost as good as my current favorite feature, the trash/heart icons at Ujiko. Do a search on that meta search engine, and you can easily eliminate any listing you hate by clicking on the trash can icon. Very slick -- it immediately is removed from the screen.
Love a listing? Give it a few hearts. Similar to Eurekster, the next time you search, it will be at the top of the list. You can also edit the description of any listing and organize results into folders.
These features sound similar to "personal search" features out recently from Ask Jeeves and a9, though Ujiko outdates them by several months. Unlike those services, I like how the Ujiko "memory" of a page you've annotated shows up right within the regular search results.
In other words, say you did a search, found a page you loved and gave it a couple of hearts plus a custom description. If that page comes up again in another search, you'll see your custom annotations shown.
On the flipside, Ujiko requires Flash. Ask Jeeves and a9 do not. So be sure to try out the features there, if you lack/dislike Flash. Personally, I've been playing much more with a9 recently, liking the fact that I can get Google results and also have it automatically keep track of things I've selected from the results.
I've done a short write-up of Ujiko in the past here. Gary's done a longer one here: Kartoo Launches a New Search Product: UJIKO. As for Ask Jeeves, my thoughts on the new product were blogged in Ask Jeeves Personal Search Goes Live. Also be sure to also read Gary's write-up: Ask Jeeves Serves It Your Way. For more on a9, see Gary's coverage: Amazon's a9 Launches.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 29, 2004, 5:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Bloglines and RSS Bandwidth Problems
A busy day in the RSS world.
First, the removal of the beta moniker to the RSS/ATOM section
on My Yahoo along with a searchable directory of feeds.
Second, news that Bloglines has released new tools (open API, Web Services) to help with RSS bandwidth issue which has been in the news recently. You can find more details in this news release and eWeek story
Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2004, 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Political Groups Dabbling in Search Engine Marketing
Political Campaigns And Issue Groups Take Search Baby Steps
Source: Media Post
The article takes a look at how the Republican and Democratic National Committees and several issue advocacy groups are using search engine marketing.
>From the article, "Once political advertisers and issue groups realize that Google ads don't just appear on Google, but alongside articles on other Web sites, use of search advertising 'will skyrocket,' predicts Clay Johnson, co-founder of Blue State Digital, an Internet communications firm that rose from the ashes of Howard Dean's primary campaign. Buying keywords related to issues and opposing candidates, says Johnson, 'was done very effectively by a lot of candidates in the democratic primary.'"
Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2004, 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google Responds to China News Censorship Story
Last week we linked to a New Scientist report about Google omitting some controversial "sources" in their Google News China crawl.
In a new post on the Google Blog the company shares their viewpoint.
For last week's launch of the Chinese-language edition of Google News, we had to decide whether sources that cannot be viewed in China should be included for Google News users inside the PRC. Naturally, we want to present as broad a range of news sources as possible. For every edition of Google News, in every language, we attempt to select news sources without regard to political viewpoint or ideology. For Internet users in China, we had to consider the fact that some sources are entirely blocked. Leaving aside the politics, that presents us with a serious user experience problem...We also considered the amount of information that would be omitted. In this case it is less than two percent of Chinese news sources.
Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2004, 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
New Yahoo A-Z Index Page
Along with the new My Yahoo beta release and the tweaks to the Yahoo home page that we've mentioned today, the company has also made a new A-Z index page of all Yahoo available online.
Posted by Gary Price on September 28, 2004, 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Commenting About Posts
Want to comment on something in our blog? Our Search Engine Watch Forums are where we invite you to remark on any blog posts, just as we currently use them for those who want to comment about regular news stories that we write.
Registering to use the forums is free and easy. OK, we know it's not as easy as simply entering your name and email address, as some other blogs allow. However, channeling comments into our forums does help us avoid comment spam.
In addition, using our forums ensures that discussions at Search Engine Watch happen in only one place. We think it would be confusing to have the same topic being discussed both within the comments of our blog posts and also in one of our forum threads.
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Want to comment about this? Please contribute to this forum thread: New Search Engine Watch Blog.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2004, 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Search Marketing: Reaching out to Europe
If you've concentrated your search marketing efforts in North America, you're missing out on one of the largest and most developed markets in the world. But reaching out to Europe should be a considered move, taking into account the cultural differences and nuances of SEM that can help--or hinder--your efforts.
In today's SearchDay article, Search Marketing in Europe, Patricia Hursh reports on a recent panel at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, offering an account of what it takes to have a successful search marketing campaign in Europe.
Posted by Chris Sherman on September 28, 2004, 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Yahoo, How About A Feed Search Tab?
I've only begun to play with the new My Yahoo Beta that Gary blogged about earlier. I was excited that it was now possible to easily search for just web feeds, rather than having to do an entire web search and hope that feeds might also show up in association with a web page listing. But man, what a pain to get to this.
When you're in your My Yahoo page, you need to click on the Add Content button you'll see just below the search box. That brings you to an entirely new box where you can search for just web feed content. Below that box is also a browsable directory of feeds. Alternatively, you can jump directly to the page via this link: My Yahoo! - Add Content.
Now how about making web feed search its own tab, similar to the others listed on Yahoo's pure search interface? You can use advanced search to narrow your query to just RSS/XML content, but it's not as nice as the new feed search and directory offered from within My Yahoo.
By the way, New Beta Version of My Yahoo! is a good rundown from Yahoo itself about the new features, on its blog. Jeremy Zawodny, who works for Yahoo and a big feed advocate there, provides his own take here: New My Yahoo Beta, Featuring RSS and Atom.
Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread: NEW: MyYahoo! Beta Upgrade.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2004, 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google's Revenue Is Not All Search-Derived (AKA Gmail Isn't Search)
So Gmail ads might be bigger than search ads for Google, we learn in this New York Post story: You Got Mail (& Ads). How about an important correction? Almost all of Google's revenue does NOT come from placement on its search engine.
Go back to my write-up on the Google IPO filing: Google IPO To Happen, Files For Public Offering. See the chart on ad revenue sources about mid-way down. In 2003 and 2004, the share of revenue earned off the Google site itself rose dramatically. As the article explains, this was almost certainly due to growth in AdSense contextual revenue.
In short, rather than search placement making up nearly all of Google's revenue, it seems closer to making up about three-quarters of it. And AdSense is nearly two years old now -- so the quote about Google realizing they need to do more than search overlooks entirely the fact that contextual ads ARE NOT SEARCH.
Gmail ads, by the way, are simply contextual ads. It is new that Google now has an entirely new distribution area for these ads through Gmail, and in a place where it needn't share revenue. But Gmail placement is simply an extension of Google turning the entire web into billboards for its non-search advertising that began in 2003.
In some related tangents, nice comments on John's blog about how one SEM firm finds AdSense contextual placement not performing as well as AdWords but is positive on contextual offerings from other players: Fathoming Context: Much More to Come.
And, a nice catch by Andy Beal, a CNN article with the first Google comment I've seen about the entire browser issue (No plans to "reinvent the wheel," which certainly doesn't rule the idea out).
The article suggests that when some firms begin coverage of Google today, that -- along with the need to report third quarter earnings next month -- will make Google more open about plans and activities. Article here: Google's veil of secrecy.
Perhaps. Even if so, will Google break out search revenues from contextual or continue to play the game of mixing the two together, which confuses everyone. Nor are they alone in this, as this recent blog entry from me explains: Search Spending Continues To Rise -- But Is Contextual Lumped In?.
Want to discuss? Join our forum thread: Will emails ads be bigger than search ads?
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2004, 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Minority Of Searchers Make Up Majority Of Searches
John Battelle's got an interesting slide up from comScore showing that heavy search users, while making up only 20 percent of those searching, are responsible for 68 percent of all searches that happen. See it here: Search Volume by Type of User.
Conclusions? Depends on your angle, I guess. If more of us become heavy users, then there will be more searches happening, making advertisers who want more traffic happy. But solving the supposed search inventory problem isn't necessarily a solution for search engines. Lack of inventory may actually help them earn more per click.
Want to discuss that more? Visit our thread on the topic: A Drop in Search Engine Ad Supply.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2004, 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Top SEO Design Problems To Avoid
Shari Thurow lists her Top Five SEO Design Mistakes over at ClickZ: failure to design first, SEO second; using splash pages, lack of focused content, balancing text and graphics and lack of customer focus.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 28, 2004, 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
My Yahoo Beta Launches, Cosmetic Changes to Yahoo Home Page
Reuters and the AP with on some cosmetic changes coming to the Yahoo and My Yahoo home page.
According to Reuters the changes will be available as beta releases late Monday or Tuesday and "will generally be available" in the next few weeks.
The AP article has info on what you'll see:
+ "The most visible changes include the addition of a 'music' button across the top of the home page and the removal of a button that directed traffic to the company's help wanted site, HotJobs."
+ "Yahoo's redesign also includes a new search tab for the site's Web directory and a regularly updated feature that will report on which topics are generating the most search requests."
My Yahoo
I just noticed that a beta version of "All New My Yahoo" is online. All of the new features are listed here. Lot's of attention to RSS/ATOM capabilities (now out of beta) along with a new searchable directory containing more than 150,000 content sources (including RSS feeds) to add you your My Yahoo page.
Want to discuss? Please visit our forum thread: NEW: MyYahoo! Beta Upgrade.
Posted by Gary Price on September 27, 2004, 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Moo! A Bovine That Monitors Amazon.com
A new service (it's free!) called Watchcow.net monitors the Amazon.com database looking for changes in the price of ANY product (new and/or used) or an entire wish list. Changes are delivered into your aggregator as an ATOM feed. Creating a feed is very easy. Simply use the Watchcow.net bookmarklet on any Amazon.com page and click again to add your aggregator. Neat!
Posted by Gary Price on September 27, 2004, 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Got To Censor Search Listings? Why Not Disclose?
Earlier coverage of Google omitting some China news sources included Google's explanation that this was done to improve the quality of the service. At first, that sounds like a euphemism, such as calling a computer bug a "feature." But the point is that Google doesn't want to run links to content that those in China cannot actually reach.
John Battelle fleshes this point out more in his Google News And China post. He also suggest something I was thinking of myself. Why not at least show that something was omitted, in the way that Google already disclosures of data omitted in response to US laws.
People might not like that Google (and other search engines) may have to omit material in response to national laws. However, if you operate in a country, you have to follow its laws. But the excellent DMCA notifications implemented by Google show that when censorship is imposed, it's still at least possible to raise awareness of this and play within the rules (for more on how DMCA takedown disclosure works, see my Spam Rules Require Effective Spam Police article).
I'd love to see Google do this in the China situation and indeed in ANY situation where they've removed material. Don't forget. Google (and other search engines) have also removed material because of French and German laws, in addition to US laws and no doubt the laws of other countries as well.
Extending what Google does in the case of DMCA complaints to all situations where content is removed would be a great leap forward (and in fairness, Google is already ahead of competitors when it comes to DMCA complaints).
Google and other search engines also remove material all the time due to spam concerns. That ought be be disclosed, as well. My Spam Rules Require Effective Spam Police has one example where the official WebPosition web site has long been banished from Google's results. That situation still remains true today, as far as I can tell -- and it's disclosed to no one.
Meanwhile, spotted via Andy's blog, the viewpoint of one of the news sources that's omitted: Keep Searching: The Epoch Times Not Welcome on Google.
Postscript: Google's now posted a further explanation: Google Responds to China News Censorship Story
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2004, 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Fixing Firefox & Movable Type Entries With No File Extensions
A few of you using the Firefox browser let us know right away that our permalinks weren't working right after the Search Engine Watch Blog launched. We fixed that within hours. However, I've been meaning to post exactly what happened, in case others encounter a similar problem.
Each of our posts uses the file format of two-digit year, two-digit month, two-digit day, a dash, then the entry number. Why? It makes it easy for me to know when exactly a post was created. Each post also lacks a file extension. They don't end in .html, .htm, .asp and so on. Why? There's no reason to have a file extension.
One glitch did come up with that, however. Not having an extension meant that our server sent the file to browsers as a "text/plain" MIME type. Internet Explorer, seeing that this supposed "text" file contained HTML, decided to assume the file was in HTML despite what the server was saying. That means IE users had no problems. But Firefox, actually doing exactly what the server instructed, showed the plain text of the file -- causing Firefox users to see the HTML source code.
The solution was easy. The default MIME type for content in our blog area was set to be "text/HTML," solving the Firefox problem.
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2004, 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Berners-Lee on The Semantic Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is interviewed in the new issue of Technology Review.
The interview focuses on the latest developments with the Semantic Web.
Here's a small portion of the interview.
B-L: You can take a database or a calendar or an address book or a bank statement or a weather reading--basically anything with hard data in it--and make the machine write it in the basic Semantic Web language, instead of some proprietary or application-specific format. This solves the "syntactic" problem.
It still doesn't solve the "semantic" one, though. For that, the Semantic Web first gives names to the basic concepts involved in the data, date and time, an event, a check, a transaction, temperature and pressure, and location. These are all defined just to mean whatever they mean in the system which produces the data—for example, "Transaction date as I get on a bank statement," and so on. This set of concepts is called an ontology. Then, where there are connections between ontologies, such as when the date and time on a photograph is the same concept as the time on a weather report, we write rules to take advantage of these connections. This allows one to query the Semantic Web agent for photos taken on sunny days, for example. Bit by bit, link by link, the data becomes connected, interwoven. The exciting thing is serendipitous reuse of data: one person puts data up there for one thing, and another person uses it another way.
Posted by Gary Price on September 27, 2004, 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Postscript On Google News & Bias
Last week, JD Lasica wrote about a possible bias with Google News, as Gary recapped here: Does Google News Have A Conservative Bias? I sent JD some of my thoughts after the article came out.
I explained that Yahoo News is less human-powered when it comes to keyword-based news search than you might think and that Yahoo's ranking algorithm, by favoring content actually hosted by Yahoo, may make searches at Yahoo News more mainstream in nature. Those comments are part of a postscript he's now put up: More on Google News and Yahoo News.
Among additional thoughts from others: Bush's nicknames like "Dubya" or "Shrub" may mean critical articles about him show up more for those, rather than his actual name and an allegation that Google is responding to behind-the-scenes manipulation by right-wing groups (odd, given that if the company has any leaning, it's definitely toward the left).
Chris Sherman also takes a look at the issue in today's SearchDay: Is Google News Biased?
Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread: Does Google News have a Conservative Bias?
Posted by Danny Sullivan on September 27, 2004, 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Small General-Purpose Web Engines
The developers of small general-purpose web engines continue to impress with their innovative spirit.
It's a good idea to keep an eye on what these types of companies are up to. Why? We're all aware of the fact that some of today's most popular general-purpose web engines started very small in garages and dorm rooms.
Here are just a few examples:
+ Gigablast (Matt Wells, developer)
Every result includes a direct link to The Wayback Machine. A real time saver!
+ FyberSearch (Nathan Enns, developer)
FyberSearch offers numerous easy to use search options and limits. I just noticed that every url on a serp contains a hyperlink to Michael Fagan's URLinfo that Chris recently wrote about. FyberSearch also offers several "subject focused" databases that provide business, government, science, and other types of material.
+ ObjectsSearch
ObjectsSearch powered with Nutch technology is now offering clustered results and offering several "specialty" databases including image search. They're also making a Web APIs service (beta) available.
Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2004, 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Yahoo's Advanced Syntax
Greg Notess reports that several of the "old" Inktomi advanced search prefixes(originurlextension:, stem:, domain:, and others) work at Yahoo.
Posted by Gary Price on September 26, 2004, 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
