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October 10, 2004 - October 16, 2004


Free Copies Of X1 Desktop Search Going Fast

Idealab's given Jason Calacanis 100 free copies to the X1 desktop search tool to give away to his readers. Want a copy? Visit his post and link to it.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 15, 2004, 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Search Is An Overall Marketing Thing

Bob Heyman, with the title of Chief Search Officer that I've never seen before, argues that search needs to be considered as part of anyone's overall marketing plan: SEM: Still an Adolescent? Too right. Fredrick Marckini also recently said the same thing in SEM Wants to Embrace the CMO.

Heck, I'll add more fuel to the fire. Our next SES show in Chicago has a session called "Integrating Search Into Other Marketing." Description?

Search engine marketing should be considered as an essential part of any overall marketing campaign. In this session, we look at successes from considering search from the very beginning, as well as failures that result if this is not done.

Hopefully, we'll have some good stories of actual integration happening, rather than hopes!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 15, 2004, 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Customer Targeting In SEM

Kevin Lee looks at how customer segmentation can be applied to search engine marketing: Connect With Customer Segments in Search from ClickZ. Can you target those high-end "Barrys," busy mom "Jills" or those tech-savvy "Buzz" people? Understand how they search and you can.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 15, 2004, 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


More On Google & Other Desktop Search Stuff

Below, some assorted reports and comments on Google's new desktop search tool and other similar tools. They cover: a workaround for getting Firefox data tracked by GDS (the acronym that I see in growing use for Google Desktop Search), one blogger's fear GDS has made his computer unstable, AOL confirming it has its own product coming, a recap of products from Google rivals and existing desktop tools, reports of more than a C drive being indexed and revisiting desktop search privacy issues.

Various Reports

  • Firefox history in Google Desktop Search from Jon Udell explains how you can add a hack that lets Google Desktop Search keep track of what you view in the Firefox browser.
     
  • A coincidence? from Dave Winer has him uninstalling the tool after finding his system becoming unstable. So far, I've been OK.
     
  • Google Launches Surprise Release of Desktop Search from Brad Hill finds that more than his C drive is getting indexed. That's great -- wish it was the case with me, as well. Officially, Google says that only a primary hard drive will be indexed.
     
  • Google Desktop from Jason Kottke has a lot of great comments where others are sharing their experiences and tips, including how the cache lets you see document such as Word that may have been password protected.
     
  • We had a roundup of coverage yesterday. If we missed something, Nathan Weinberg's probably got it in Who's Talking About Google Desktop? Everyone!
     
  • The day after Google released desktop search engine from Robert Scoble has some kind words and also ponders speculation that Google pushed its tool faster than it may have wanted to. Could all those Microsoft search champs, having seen some neat things under NDA, helped light a fire?

Other Desktop Search Products

Robert Scoble hints at what the search champs may have seen without saying it, a Microsoft desktop search tool. I've seen it during my visit up Redmond-way last July. NDA also prevents me from providing specific details about it, but MSN is talking publicly that it will be a standalone application out before the end of the year: MSN Desktop Search Still To Come This Year, Despite Longhorn Delay.

What about AOL, rumored this week to be readying its own tool? The company now confirms that it will have its own desktop search integrated as part of a new AOL browser being tested. More from News.com: AOL launches new portal, tests desktop search.

FYI, Ask Jeeves also plans to release its own later this year. A tool from Yahoo remains a rumor, but one that's not hard to believe.

Via the comments over at John Battelle's summary of some GDS coverage, I came across Michael Wexler's great introduction to desktop searching, along with a list and review of various products: Desktop Search, or just where did I leave that knowledge?

We've mentioned some of these before. Copernic Desktop Search is probably Google's most serious contender at the moment given that it is free and powerful. Gary Price did a review of it here: A New Player in Desktop Search.

Blinkx is also free. Om Malik from Business 2.0 likes it. Gary's not been too impressed with it so far. I've never gotten it to work on my computer, so I'm even less impressed. The same's been true for me of the free HotBot Desktop -- never got it too work. Maybe you'll have more luck. Learn more the tool in this SearchDay article: HotBot's New Desktop Search Toolbar

Gary's testing out dtsearch, so watch for future comments from him about it. That's a paid tool, as is x1 and 80-20. Gary says he uses x1 and likes it. Again, expect more comments from him. ISYS:desktop is apparently another long-standing paid product I was just told about.

I actually bought a copy of 80-20 specifically for email searching about two years ago. It never worked well, so I gave up on it. Instead, I turned to NEO and have absolutely loved it. I've also loved Microsoft's newly acquired Lookout tool. It's free, it works -- if you have Outlook, it's a no brainer to use.

Want more? Chris Sherman's got it on his calendar for a desktop search round-up later to run in SearchDay. But this recap may have you wondering. With so many tools already out there -- and many of them more powerful than Google -- why all the hype about Google?

Revisiting Security & Privacy

The excitement is because Google's tool is free, fast to download and so easy to use that that many people who never had desktop search will get into it now. Google's isn't the best, but it's good enough. Down the line, it will have to improve. Competitors will also improve. The state of desktop search, woefully inadequate for so many now, is going to get much, much better.

It's also why people will have to think more about the security of their desktop. Your data is about to get much easier for people to locate through any of these tools, unless you keep your computer secure. For more on that, see my article: A Closer Look At Privacy & Desktop Search.

Google Desktop Search: Security Threat? from Tom Spring over at PC World also looks at how if multiple users are on the same computer, you can see things others have done.

One thing not covered in my article is the fact that in some very specific instances, Google might be able to tell that you (an anonymous you) performed a particular search with "desktop" intent. I discuss this more in our forum thread, Google Launches a Desktop Search Tool, where privacy has come up. Google itself covers it in its desktop help information: Does Google know what keywords I'm searching for?

Overall, it's not a major issue to me. That's because it's already been an issue that people have worried that Google (and other search engines) might track what they search for on the web. We already search for lots of personal things, so the idea that in the odd instance, desktop search might reveal a bit more isn't that shocking to me.

Of course, it might be a wake-up call for those who've never thought about the fact that the terms they enter into Google or other search engines potentially could be linked to them. POTENTIALLY. My Search Privacy At Google & Other Search Engines article looks at this in more depth and how so far, it's not been a major issue.

If you totally dislike the idea that in some circumstance, Google could tell you (again, an anonymous you) did a "desktop-specific" search, then disable "Google Integration" in your Desktop Preferences settings. After that, if you do a desktop search, never then click on the Web, Images, Groups, News or other links. They take you back to Google itself, with the terms of your last desktop search sent along (in order for those terms to be used to do a different type of search).

Perhaps Google might add a further option allowing people to disable this, as well. That will limit some nice things about the tool -- but it would be great for people concerned to be able to easily do so.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 15, 2004, 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Google Desktop Search Becomes Reality

A rumored Google tool to search your computer's desktop became a reality today, a free download available from the new Google Desktop Search site.

I've written (with help from Gary) a long review of the tool for today's SearchDay article, looking at why it is so compelling for anyone who uses Google. In addition, I've done a companion piece on privacy issues people should be aware of when using the tool or rightly, other desktop search tools as well.

There will be plenty of coverage and discussion of the launch from elsewhere, as well. We'll keep a running account of key articles, forum threads and more here. Just keep checking back as the list grows:

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 14, 2004, 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Local Search With Yelp!

A new "collaborative" local search product backed by one of the co-founders of PayPal called Yelp is now online. It allows you to search local business info and share recommendations with friends. Additional details in this news release.

JudysBook is a similar type of service that's currently in beta mode.

Posted by Gary Price on October 14, 2004, 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


GuruNet: Another Search Related IPO

GuruNet, the useful "answer engine" and search utility began trading on the AMEX yesterday. Details in this story from Israel's Haaretz.com: GuruNet launches on Amex.

If you've never taken a look at this tool, it's more than worth a look. Here's a link to Chris's positive SearchDay review: GuruNet: A Handy Information Magnet.

Btw, in the past few months GuruNet has:
+ Released a desktop search beta
+ Launched a version of their client for the Mac
+ Launched a web-based version of their product. You can now access most of their content without having to download any software.

Posted by Gary Price on October 14, 2004, 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Job Recruiters & Searching Your Shadow Resume

Recruiters Use Google To Screen Job Applicants from the Wall Street Journal looks at how web searching could hurt the chances of some seeking jobs. In short, the web is turning into a "shadow resume" that potential employers can easily tap into. Some tips at the end on what to do if your shadow resume isn't up to snuff. Thanks for the link found via InsideGoogle!

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 14, 2004, 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Another Push For Candidates To Buy Search; Dean On Yahoo

Via John Battelle, Google for President from Slate is another take on the idea that political candidates should be making use of search advertising. But some other articles have been better, in that they include comments from some actual campaigns. For a roundup of those, see Candidates Missing Out On Search Ads. I've still yet to see anyone actually talk directly with the Bush and Kerry campaigns themselves, however.

Well, if the US presidential candidates won't come to the search engines, the search engines will come to them. At least Yahoo to former Democratic contender Howard Dean, that is. He's now shilling (and yelling) for Yahoo Local. Check out the radio spot via the Yahoo Search Blog: Howard Dean on Yahoo! Local.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 14, 2004, 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Roll Your Own Yahoo Specialty Search Engine

Nice from Tara Calishain: Searchroller For Yahoo. Want to make a subject-specific search engine that brings back results from only certain web sites? This workaround she's created makes it easy via Yahoo.

Now if the search engines themselves would just directly offer such features! Ask Jeeves told me this may come later this year as an expansion to the personal search features it's recently launched. Yahoo's also told me this is something it's considering as when its own new search memory features get expanded.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 14, 2004, 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Google Wants to Enhance Your Browsing Experience

Sergey Brin makes a couple of comments about Google and web browsers.

"There has been much speculation. But our work is focussed on improving the browsing experience," Google co-Founder and President (Technology) Sergey Brin told reporters here...Today's browsers are doing a pretty good job, but they can be improved. What we are looking to do is to enhance the quality of the browsing experience," he said.

Brin's comments appear on the DeepikaGlobal web site in the article: Google working on improving browser tech: Co-founder.

Posted by Gary Price on October 13, 2004, 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


A Yahoo Research Labs Workshop

Those of you interested in personalization issues might want to take a look at a couple of interesting presentations (PowerPoint slides) from a Yahoo Research Labs workshop on recommender systems that was held in August

A recommender system is an automated algorithm for providing personalized recommendations (for movies, or music, or restaurants, for example) to a user, often by looking for relationships between that user and a large base of other users. In a sense, a recommender system automates the social process of obtaining referrals or recommendations from like-minded friends.

The presentations were given by:
+ Professor John Riedl, University of Minnesota
"Recommender Systems: Evolution of Collaborative Filtering Recommender Interfaces"

Note: Dr. Riedl is a member of the Group Lens project. One of their projects, MovieLens, offers free access to a movie recommendation service.

and

+ Jon Herlocker, Oregon State University
Collaborative Filtering: Some Comments on the State of the Art

Posted by Gary Price on October 13, 2004, 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Recall Update

I mentioned on Monday that Recall, the datbase offering keyword access to a portion of The Wayback Machine, is no longer online.

Brewster Kahle, CEO of the Internet Archive, told me last night that the move is just a temporary one. The IA intends to make the database available as soon as they can make it more reliable.

"Given its instability we didn't want people to suffer," Kahle said.

The Wayback Machine is still available.

Let's hope that Recall, a very valuable research tool, returns to the web very soon. T

Posted by Gary Price on October 13, 2004, 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Recall Update

I mentioned on Monday that Recall, the datbase offering keyword access to a portion of The Wayback Machine, is no longer online.

Brewster Kahle, CEO of the Internet Archive, told me last night that the move is just a temporary one. The IA intends to make the database available as soon as they can make it more reliable.

"Given its instability we didn't want people to suffer," Kahle said.

The Wayback Machine is still available.

Let's hope that Recall, a very valuable research tool, returns to the web very soon. T

Posted by Gary Price on October 13, 2004, 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Jux2 Adds New Features

Jux2, the web tool that allows you to quickly identify search engine overlap, has added a couple of new features.

+ You're now able to compare results from three databases (Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves) with a single click.

+ The new "browser button" allows you to run a search with Jux2. No big deal. However, it also offers you the option to click from a serp and identify what you're not seeing in the other databases. For example, when you're on a Google results page you can the quickly see the results that aren't duplicated at Yahoo. Very cool!

+ They've also improved the quality of results (fewer dupes) via the "What am I missing?" button. It allows you to quickly identify unique results in two or three databases.

Jux2 compares ten results at a time. It would be great if they added an option to quickly determine if a result appears anywhere in the first 100.

Look from a Q&A interview with Jux2's Aaref Hilaly soon.

Ranking.thumbshots.com offers a similar service that allows you to "visualize" overlap in the first 100 results of a query. Here's a overview from SearchDay.

Posted by Gary Price on October 13, 2004, 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Clickfraud: Whose Problem, FTC, Search Engines Or Advertisers?

Adam Penenberg takes the US Federal Trade Commission to task for not doing more to prevent clickfraud in his Wired commentary, Click Fraud Threatens Web. It's not clear whether the FTC has actually had many complaints about this. The agency itself does comment in the article that it is more concerned with actions that directly impact consumers, rather than advertisers.

Clickfraud exists, no doubt about that. We've had panels discussing it at our SES shows since August 2002 and even started a dedicated session on the topic last year. Interest in that session has been growing. Here's a write-up of the most recent one held last August: Auditing Paid Listings & Click-fraud Issues.

The major search engines already do things internally to combat clickfraud. However, they could likely do more. A good start might be to actually participate in panels discussing the issue.

I've invited both Overture and Google each time we do one, and they always decline. Reason? They don't feel they can discuss the issue without giving away stuff that might help fraudsters. In reality, there's a lot they can and should say on the subject to better help advertisers protect themselves.

Heck, Overture provides some of this information on its site already: Advertiser Security. So does Google: AdWords click quality. Interestingly, neither make use of the word "fraud" in relation to clickfraud activity, preferring the more euphemistic "invalid click," as far as I can tell.

Penenberg's article makes mention of a recent report suggesting that 50 percent of paid clicks might be fraudulent. MediaPost has a write-up from last month about this: Pay-Per-Trick: Half Of All Ad Clicks Deemed Fraud.

It's a scary stat, but that's also for certain industry categories, which remain unnamed by the source of the data, Clicklab. That firm also specializes in clickfraud detection, so it's obviously in its interest for the stats to sound as scary as possible. But despite those qualifiers, as said above, there's no doubt clickfraud happens.

This issue is one that will only grow, as more money is spent on search and contextual advertising. If the FTC doesn't step in, if the search engines are unable to police better, rest assured the advertisers themselves will take action. Indeed, a rumor that I and others have heard over the past few months is that one or more advertisers may be considering filing a lawsuit against the search companies for failure to do more to stop clickfraud.

Another good article on this topic came out from News.com in July: Exposing click fraud. Also in July, SearchDay ran Advertising & Click Fraud by Jessie Stricchiola, who's spoken on the topic at our SES shows since 2002. Jessie also provides further tips on her own site: Click Fraud - An Overview.

Finally, complete your reading list with India's secret army of online ad 'clickers'. This article that came out in May is probably most responsible for raising new awareness of this preexisting problem.

Want to discuss this post or topic? Visit our forum thread: Click-Fraud said to be 50% of clicks

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 13, 2004, 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Baidu Set to Double Revenue in 2004

According to this Reuters article, Chinese search company Baidu will see their revenues double in 2004. Google holds a minority stake in the company.

The country's search market will be worth an estimated $50 million this year and its expected to grow to $200m by 2006, according to iResearch. A recent iResearch survey found that Baidu is nearly twice as popular among Chinese Internet users as Google, with a market share of about 49 percent. But competition has been rising after Yahoo beefed up its presence by buying 3721 for $120m late last year.

Posted by Gary Price on October 13, 2004, 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


The Search Industry's Growing Pains

If you've ever seen one of Danny Sullivan's keynote addresses at a Search Engine Strategies conference, you know he is enlightening, provocative and always raises new issues that keep attendees abuzz throughout the show. In today's SearchDay article, Search Marketing 2004: What's Right, What's Wrong, Andrew Goodman offers his take on Danny's remarks at the recent SES show in San Jose. Andrew's coverage is interwoven with insightful and often acerbic comments about the goings-on among industry players, pretenders and wannabes observed at ground-level during the conference.

Posted by Chris Sherman on October 13, 2004, 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Robin Good's Search Champs Experience

Last week, I had a roundup of various reports from Microsoft's Search Champs. Robin Good has just weighed in with a long account of his own experiences: MSN Search Champs: Robin Good Reports. As usual, NDA keeps any real details from getting out, but he paints around the edges as best as possible -- plus provides plenty of color.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 13, 2004, 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Is AOL Ready to Launch a Desktop Search App?

The desktop search war continues to heat up.

Michael Worthington at Beta News reports that a desktop search app might be added to new AOL Browser by the end of this week.

AOL Desktop Search is an integrated feature that will allow users to search for a plethora of files including: documents in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as PDF, HTML, WordPerfect, rich text and plain text files. In addition, users can scour through Web pages they have previously seen in Internet Explorer, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) chat logs, locally stored newsgroups and Web logs, as well as digital media and pictures.

More in: AOL Develops Desktop Search.

Posted by Gary Price on October 12, 2004, 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Google Will Expand Operations in India

During a vist to India by Sergey Brin and Larry Page the company has announced plans to expand their operations in the country.


"We are committed to substantial growth in terms of both manpower and infrastructure at both these offices," Sergey Brin, co-founder of the search engine, told reporters at a press conference here.


He said the expansions are scheduled to take place by the end of the year but refused to give details on numbers or figures.

Google's Bangalore office will focus on research and development while the Hyderabad centre will look after online sales and operations and human resource functions, Brin added.

More in the article: Google plans big expansion in India

Posted by Gary Price on October 12, 2004, 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


An Introduction to Exalead

Eric B. lets us know about a new web engine called Exalead.

This Paris-based company has been around since 1999 and continues enterprise search
technology.

Their "public" search product is a showcase, what they call a demonstrator, of their technology.

You can read more about the company in this Red Herring article. It mentions that AOL France uses the Exalead database and technology. The article also contain a few comments from our own Chris Sherman.

The company plans to enter the desktop search market "soon".

Exalead offers many advanced search features (several unavailable from other major engines) and is worth of a look.

Let's take a look.

What does Exalead offer? Here's an overview of some key features.

* A unique web index containing more than one billion pages. At least this is what their news release says. The total on the home page is much smaller. Hmmm. A page submission form is available.

UPDATE: Francois Bourdoncle from Exalead let us know that the index is currently at 300,000,000 (as noted on the home page) but should reach 400,000,000 by next week. They expect to hit the one billion mark in th next month or so.

* "Basic search" uses a default "and". It also provides automatic stemming if you search with more than one term. Auto stemming is disabled when you place the + sign in front of a term.

* Unlike all other major web engines, Exalead offers a proximity operator (AltaVista used to have one). The NEAR operator finds documents where the query terms are within 16 words of each other.
* Several options to "widen your query" including stemming/truncation (using the * symbol), optional terms, and pattern searching (very cool!)

Syntax
* Limit to a domain with site:
* Limit to words in title with title:
* Limit to documents in a specific language with lang:

The advanced interface offers four "search methods"
* Phonetic search
* Auto Word stemming
* Exact Search
* Approximate Spelling

Exalead indexes PDF, RTF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat files.

Search Result pages offer many features including:
* Related terms (other terms you might want to search)
* Related categories (drops you into the ODP)
* Limit results by format or location
* Limit results to multimedia content (pages that include links to audio and video content)
* Spelling suggestions
* Thumbnail images for all results can be turned on/off. You can also choose to not have a snippet visible.
* You're able to open a result link directly inside a frame on the serp. You can also bookmark pages. Bookmarks can be transported to your IE favorites file.

Bottom Line?
I've tried several searches and while Exalead is not perfect (this is a beta release) the results I've seen aren't bad at all (I've seen much worse). I'm also very impressed with the amount of functionality Exalead offers the searcher. I'll continue to test I'll report back.
Btw, according to this page, you can register to access more advanced search features. I'll let you know what they are.

Posted by Gary Price on October 12, 2004, 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Profits Triple at Yahoo!

Yahoo's profits for the third-quarter tripled versus the same period last year.

>From a the Bloomberg story, "Net income rose to $253.3 million, or 17 cents a share, from $65.3 million, or 5 cents, a year earlier...Excluding the gain from selling shares in Google's initial public offering, Yahoo said it would have earned $124 million, or 9 cents a share. That matched the average estimate of 9 cents a share from 26 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial."

You can listen to the conference call and read the complete news release here.

Posted by Gary Price on October 12, 2004, 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


FeedForAll For Feed Creation

When I wrote my Making An RSS Feed article last year, I had a few people puzzled about why it was even necessary. After all, feed generation is built into many authoring tools, right? For blog tools, sure. But ordinary web servers? Not necessarily.

That article explains how to make a feed by hand. But reading one of our forum threads today, I came across Nick W's mention of FeedForAll. If you have to roll your own feed, this makes it easy to do using a software interface. It can also help you modify and manage existing feeds.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 12, 2004, 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


SEMPO Gets Forum For Members, Wants More Survey Data

Barry Schwartz reports that SEMPO has opened its own forum area for members, a positive move that should help those within the organization better talk about its direction, growth and activities among themselves. Want to discuss? Visit our own forum thread: SEMPO Launches Members Only Forum.

Meanwhile, SEMPO's still looking for more SEM firms to take part in its search marketing survey. More about that here in my past post: SEMPO Search Marketing Survey Opened. To participate in measuring the size of the search marketing space, drop by here: SEMPO Research Survey.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 12, 2004, 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Fathom Keyword Price Index Provides Bid Benchmark

Search marketing firm Fathom Online has assembled a Keyword Price Index to show average bid prices for various industries.

The index looks at the prices for the top five spots for the 500 most queried terms for an industry, as determined by Fathom. Prices include those on major and lesser-known search engines.

For September 2004, automotive had the highest average weighted price of $1.54 per click. Wireless telecommunications came lowest at $1.09. More details here: New Tracking Data Reveals Marked Disparities In Paid Search Costs, Yield.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 12, 2004, 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Problems With Searching By Date

InsideGoogle points us to the FirstMonday article: Internet time and the reliability of search engines.

>From the article, "A large part of the problem comes from the fact that a page might have many dates. Some search engines (AltaVista and Google) can be used to search for information from certain periods of time. However, these "date stamps" are not determined by the first occurrence of these pages in the Web, but by the last date at which a page was updated. The "same" Web page may therefore belong to the year 1995 in a data set collected in 2003, while in a data set collected in 2004 it belongs to the year 2003. If used to search with historical dates, search engines represent the results of interacting frequencies of the updating of Web pages and search engine crawlers, and not necessarily the dates of publication of the documents under study."

The article concludes, "This has major consequences for the use of search engines in social science research. In short, search engines are unreliable tools for data collection for research that aims to reconstruct the historical record or for research that aims to analyze the structure of information at a particular moment in history."

Issues surrounding date searching with general purpose web engines are not new. Back in 2002 I co-authored: It's Tough to Get a Good Date with a Search Engine with Genie Tyburski where we touch on several of them.

Just what is the "date" when it comes to a web page is a major issue. Which date would be of greatest interest to the searcher? Is it the date the page was first crawled? The date the page was first written? First posted? Last updated or changed? What about pages that "disappear" from the index and then get "recrawled" at a "later" date? If a standard was agreed upon would it applied properly?

>From the searcher perspective limiting by date with a general purpose web database is something that should be done only with great care and an understanding of the problems that the article points out.

Finally, limiting to a specific date or range of dates is not an issue with news and discussion databases since this material has a
unique and agreed upon date stamp associated every item in the database For example, the Yahoo News article was published and posted on October 1, 2004 or the Google Group posting become available on September 23, 2004 at 1:04 PM.

Another issue is also in play when it comes to news searching. Most of the major news engines only allow you to limit your search to the last month. In other words, if it the article is older than a month it might no be available. It may be in the main web database depending if the publisher has kept the link live. In some cases the link is still available but there is a charge to read the full text.

As I've pointed out in the past, numerous databases are available that contain deep archives of this type of content. Many times they're available for free from from your local library and also offer subject-based access to the content. Even better is that they're online via the web, no need to visit the library.

Posted by Gary Price on October 12, 2004, 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Data Mining for Customer Intelligence

While focus groups and market research play an important role in optimizing web sites, SearchDay guest writer Heather Lloyd-Martin calls our attention to an under-utilized source of competitive intelligence that's available to everyone with a web site. Connecting with Customers through Search Market Research reports on a Search Engine Strategies panel that focused on improving customer experience, pinpointing buyers' exact interests and reaching prospects at every phase of the buying cycle by data mining search logs for this crucial market research data.

A longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members goes into more detail about the process of search market research, presenting the findings of case studies and providing specific, actionable tips and tools for effective data mining and other forms of customer research.

Posted by Chris Sherman on October 12, 2004, 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search Blogvangelist

Jeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo employee who once worked on the search side and now returns to it, as he explains more here: New Job (Again).

Search is also one of the things Jeremy has touched on in his personal blog, with some of the best reading dings at Google and even his own employer, at times.

That blog, he notes in explaining his new position, has had much to do with his move into the new role of improving search products, communication about search, gathering feedback and recruiting people.

What I find most significant is that the move positions him as the first notable blogvangelist employed by a major search company.

Sure, Google has its own blog, launched in May. Yahoo has one as well, launched in August. It's more active than Google's, completely focused on search and frankly often times more interesting. But both remain corporate blogs. They don't reflect the unfiltered views of an individual.

Microsoft has had this type of blogger personality in the form of Robert Scoble. He's someone who works from Microsoft, is vocal about things there but doesn't necessarily follow the party line. He was also instrumental in pulling together Microsoft's recent Search Champs initiative.

As a long reader of Jeremy's blog, he's always been that way as well -- a personality who speaks his mind, regardless of what his employer may think. With his new role in search, we ought to hear more interesting firsthand accounts of someone on the frontline of the search wars.

Meanwhile, will Google and others feel compelled to find their own search personalities to speak to the blogosphere? Google actually has the longest standing unofficial spokesperson around, in the form of GoogleGuy. However, GoogleGuy has to date only participated in the forumsphere.

Search forums have been a key public relations front for all the search engines, given how search marketers will dissect any move and report on the latest findings through them. Now blogs seem to be opening up as a new PR front to compete in.

A recent Google Blog entry did see GoogleGuy edge into the blog world for the first time. However, he remains anonymous. Lifting the lid on his identity (an open secret among many involved in search marketing) might give Google a search personality of its own.

Postscript: Jeremy provides more thoughts and reactions into his new role: Honesty and Blogvangelism

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 12, 2004, 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Online Advertising Will Stay a National Medium

Kevin Newcomb writes, "JupiterResearch reports that despite heavy investments in online classifieds and local search, online advertising will remain a national ad medium for the foreseeable future...."In the next 18 to 24 months, we see national advertisers targeting locally rather than local pizza shops advertising online. Companies like Google and Yahoo! are launching new options to attract them, but the shorter-term growth will be driven by national advertisers targeting locally," he [Niki Scevak of Jupiter Research] said...Classifieds dominate local online advertising, followed by local search and display advertising. While local search has been getting attention from search giants like Google, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, JupiterResearch predicts that it will fail to keep pace with overall online ad spending. Locally-targeted display ads, which currently have a negligible impact on local ad spending, will grow in importance, according to the report.

More in the article: Study: Mostly National Advertisers Will Buy Local Ads.

Posted by Gary Price on October 11, 2004, 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


A Look at Infospace

Pete Barlas at Investors Business Daily, takes a look at Infospace in the article: Search, Mobile Markets Help Internet Firm Bounce Back.

The company has agreements with more than 75 clients. It splits revenue from ads with each site owner. Its search partnerships accounted for 60% of its search revenue in the second quarter vs. 5% the prior year, analysts say...InfoSpace has cashed in on the fact that most Web sites don't have their own search engine, says Chief Executive Jim Voelker. "Search has become more of an important activity, second only to e-mail," he said. "There are many high traffic Web sites out there where search is not their core competency, so it's been a strong growth area for us over the course of the last year."

Posted by Gary Price on October 11, 2004, 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Overcoming The Flash Challenge With Search Engines

Shari Thurow provides some strategies on dealing with Flash and search engine friendliness in ClickZ: Get Flash Sites Ranked in Search Engines.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 11, 2004, 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


Client Parameter Makes Google Report Fewer Matches

Using the Firefox Browser? Search for "the" using the built in search box that taps into Google, and you'll get about half the results than if you searched Google from its home page. The order of the top results will be the same, but the overall count is dramatically different.

It's not just "the" that's impacted. Try cars (on Firefox) versus cars (from the Google home page), and you'll see the same thing.

What's Google have against Firefox? Nothing. Instead, I think it's just that for whatever reason, the counts will be decreased if there's ANY client parameter within the search string that shows up when you do a search.

In other words, say you go to the Google home page and search for cars. The URL in your browser's address bar will look like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cars&btnG=Google+Search

Now let's say you search using Firefox. The URL will look like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cars&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

See the part in bold? The shows you used the Firefox browser client, the client parameter part of the query. Now switch it to anything you like, such as this (I've also removed other parameters that aren't necessary for the search):

http://www.google.com/search?q=cars&client=abc

Now the "ABC" browser client is being recorded as sending this query -- and the count remains less than that for a Google search without a client parameter.

Note that the issue seems restricted only to when a client parameter appears, not to when a sourceid parameter is included. For example, those using the Google Toolbar within Internet Explorer would see a string similar to this:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=cars

That sourceid part shows I've used the Google Toolbar to perform the query. Switch the id to something else, and the count still stays the same.

Want to discuss more or share your own findings? Visit the Why Does The Google Client Parameter Give Less Results? thread in our forums, where inlogicalbearer spotted this unusual situation.

Postscript: Gary tells me that the client parameter brings up the same lower counts that you'll find if you use Google-powered a9 or Amazon results. That supports one theory in this thread over at WebmasterWorld that Barry Schwartz blogged about.

In it, there's a link to an old Google Search Results Protocol page that leaked out, information given to Google partners. It explains that the client parameter is supposed to be used to show which Google partner is calling for the results.

In other words, which client partner of Google -- not which browser client -- is making a request? Firefox developers may have mistakenly made use of the client tag thinking it referred to browser client.

Why would Google's clients/partners hit less than the entire Google database? In the past, search providers have done this to save burden on their servers. Rather than query the entire database, only a portion might be hit -- and that portion might be deemed good enough.

This was the case for much of the Google-Yahoo partnership. A search on Yahoo commonly would come up with half to two-thirds the matches on Google itself. Inktomi used to also operate a Best Of The Web smaller index fed to partners like this, as well.

Posted by Danny Sullivan on October 11, 2004, 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)


No More Recall

I just learned that Recall, the search tool that provided full text search access to about 1/3 of The Wayback Machine database (about 11 million pages), is no longer available.

I'm trying to find out if this is just a temporary move and a new version of Recall is on the way or if the project has been scrapped.

The Recall database went live as a beta about 13 months ago. It was designed and developed by Anna Patterson, an IA volunteer. I believe Anna is now working at Google. In April, ACM Queue, published an article by Patterson titled, "Why Writing Your Own Search Engine is Hard."

Posted by Gary Price on October 11, 2004, 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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