The Coming Search Engine War, part 1 and 2 (ClickZ)

“Google is the king of search. There, I said it. It's good to be king, but,
as Netscape learned, it's often hard to stay king. Microsoft is making
rumblings it intends to launch its own search engine and join this battle.
Google and Yahoo! should be concerned.

Yes, Microsoft already operates a search site at MSN.com, but it's
powered largely by partners -- LookSmart, Inktomi and Overture.
Microsoft believes it can build its own algorithmic and PPC search
interface and take on Google head-to-head. The outcome of this battle
will impact Web marketing profoundly, to say the least.”

PLEASE DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE WEB!

“The metasearch area is dominated by Seattle-based InfoSpace,
which operate sites such as DogPile.com, WebCrawler.com,
MetaCrawler.com, Excite.com and Go2Net.com.”
Building a better metasearch engine - DogPile.com
(Kansas City Computer User)

DOMINATED???? Pleez!

For accurate info about the MSEs please read
The Meta Search Engines: A Web Searcher's Best Friends
(Web Design in New York)

Search Engine Ultimate Interface
“…the ultimate interface provides advanced-interface type input
for several different search engines, including Google (of course),
Gigablast, AltaVista, and Openfind. Nor is the interface just a retread
of the search engine's advanced interface. Google's interface, for example,
has more file type options and more extensive date search options.” (Research Buzz)

Google stuff- part 1

Google: Here, There, And Everywhere (Information Week)
Google searches like a superstar (ZD Net)
Google - the only archive we'll ever need? (The Register)
Challenge to Google can only do good (The Scotsman)
Google under attack (Search Engine Position)
Google rival in the picture (The Age, Australia)
Yahoo no match for Google (Market Watch)
Google Drives 70% Of All Web Traffic! Wake Up MSN, YAHOO! (Promote Newz)
Google News Creator Watches Portal Quiet Critics With 'Best News' Webby (2003 Online Journalism Review)
How Krishna Bharat made news with Google ((The New Sunday Express)
Google News in French and Italian.
Speedy Returns Are Google's Goal (E-Commerce Times)
Google Inconsistencies (Search Engine Showdown)
Google Ultimate Interface (Fagan Finder)

Google stuff- part 2

Google Adds Supplemental Results (Web Search)
Google Understates the Size of Its Database (Microdoc- News)
How to Interpret your Search Results (Google)
Who's better: Google or CU librarians? Search me (The Ithaca Journal)
Librarians Do Slightly Better Than Google (Kansas City)
What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers (D-Lib Magazine)
Google Tweaks Froogle (Research Buzz)
Google tweaks toolbar to block pop-ups (CNET News)
New Google Toolbar Includes Auto Updater (SpywareInfo)
Google as Big Brother…Google's toolbar is spyware (Google Watch)
Does Google Really care about spam (I help you forum)
Is Google's cache cutting a cash flow? (ZD Net)
Google in the Crosshairs (Fool.com)

Google - Search by Location (Google Labs)
“Restrict your search to a particular geographic area”
Google tests local search (News.com)
Google test drives location search tool (Info World)

Yahoo Launches New Product Search Engine
“Internet media company Yahoo Inc. broadening its efforts
in the red-hot search services market, on Tuesday rolled out
a new search platform that lets users find products, compare
prices and buy from different merchants.”

Shopping Search Engines (Search Engine Watch)
“The shopping search engines below are designed to check prices
at various online stores or locate e-commerce outlets by category.”

Companies seek a new type of Internet consultant (The Seattle Times Company)
“As more companies seek Internet exposure, they're increasingly turning
to professionals who can do more than create an attractive Web site.

They want consultants who can help their sites appear
higher on lists generated by Google and other search engines.
And for this task, Web-site creators need many other technical skills.”

"You have everything from a basement guy who is brilliant but who
may not have the education to back him up to a handful of degreed
professionals who have gone through the ranks and who have the
experience and the results to prove their knowledge," she said.”

Microsoft bets big on new searching technology (USA Today)
“Beefing up search is a smart move for Microsoft, Lancaster said,
and should strike some fear in the hearts of Google, Yahoo!
and other companies that offer search engines.

It won't be easy to shove those two aside, however, said Danny Sullivan,
editor of Search Engine Watch online newsletter, noting their loyal followings.”

Microsoft Throwing Its Weight Behind Web Search (Reuters)
“Search engines are doing a good job but not a perfect job," said Koenigsbauer,
adding most search results today "don't deliver the results people are looking for."

“Search results tailored to individual users based on a history of their interests
and searches is one area that Microsoft is looking at, Koenigsbauer said.”

“The company is "very, very serious about search," he added.”

Notes from the Front - Search Engine War Heats Up
(Internet Search Engine Database)
"Yahoo, MSN and Google have all began setting aside huge
sums of money to either attack each other or ward off attacks."

SEO Corner - Keyword-rich URLs And Search Engine Visibility (Dev Web Pro)
Part 1 and 2.
“Question: Can an search engine's bot distinguish between words in a
domain name? For example, if a domain name is www.biggreenboat.com,
will search engines "separate" these words (Big Green Boat) and then
give prominence towards keywords or as if treated as keywords?”

Search Engines from a Webmaster Perspective (Site Pro news)
“Is it possible to be listed in the top 10 - 30 search results of a
major search engine? Yes, possible, just not very likely for the
average web site…Get your site in the top 10 search results and
the payoffs are big - you just need to knock out a few million competitors.”

IBM unveils new advanced search engine (Channel NewsAsia)
“IBM has launched an advanced new search mechanism capable of
extracting minute data from among billions of Web pages.”

“The system, run by a supercomputer that absorbs 25 million
Web pages a day from the Internet, learns to recognise and put
into context particular phrases and groups of words on command.”

Google Programming Contest
“Google is providing a selection of about 900,000 web pages
in pre-parsed and raw format, together with a "ripper" program
that provides a framework for processing the pre-parsed data.
Your mission is to write a program (most likely by adding code
to the ripper) that does something interesting with the data,
in such a way that it would scale to a web-sized collection of
documents. Part of your job is to convince us of why your
program is interesting and why it will scale; other than that,
you're free to implement whatever strikes your fancy.”

Five common search engine mistakes (Computer World)
“Here's a consolidated list of things you most definitely
don't want to be doing if you want a high ranking on
search engines. There are five main things that literally
hundreds of thousands of webmasters err on regularly.
However, with a few small changes, they could make a
big difference in their sites' rankings.”

Has Google Ruined the Web? (PC Magazine)
“Google is too powerful. The search engine no longer
reflects the popularity of a site; it defines the popularity of a site.

That's the claim of Daniel Brandt, president of Public
Information Research, activist, and public-interest watchdog.”


Is Google God? (Thomas L. Friedman - The New York Times)
"If I can operate Google, I can find anything. And with wireless,
It means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime.
Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God.
God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything.
Throughout history, people connected to God without wires.
Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and
increasingly, you can do it without wires, too."

Overture unveils local search tool (netimperative)
“The tool lets people type in a keyword, along with a city, state,
street address or ZIP code, to receive both sponsored and general
search results for businesses located in their neighbourhood.”

“Google already allows users to type in a search with street address
or ZIP code to get local results, but has not incorporated local advertising.”

“Introducing some kind of geographical or local search advertising
capabilities would be the next logical step for the number one search
engine, which celebrated its fifth birthday last weekend”.

A gaggle of specialty search engines (The International Herald Tribune)
Niche players can charge premium to find what Google can't
“Smaller companies like Eliyon, which is based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, are quietly building businesses selling more
narrowly focused search programs. These young firms are
helping people sift through vast amounts of information in
ways that Google and other broad-based Web technologies cannot.”

“That is where Eliyon fits in. Its software crawls 1.5 million corporate
Web sites every three months, news publications and the Securities
and Exchange Commission database every day, and news Web sites
every hour, plucking out executives' names, titles, and histories to
create biographies of candidates.”

Complete overview of major search engine toolbars (Axandra)
“Many search engines now offer web browser toolbars so that you can
instantly use their search engines whenever you have your browser window open.

The search engine toolbars search the World Wide Web but they also offer
additional useful features, for example there are pop-up window blockers,
dictionary and stock quote lookup tools, translation features and much more.”

Behind the Scenes at the Daypop Search Engine (Search Engine Watch)
(Dan Chan, owner of Daypop interviewed by Gary Price- ResourceShelf)
Part 1, 2 and 3.

We'll never forget!
9/11, 2001

Internet Archive Adds Search Engine (Information Today)
“Since 1996, the Internet Archive has collected “snapshots” of the
whole Web every month or 6 weeks using the Alexa Internet crawlers.”

You Thought A Three Billion Page Search Engine Was Big? Phooey.
(ResearchBuzz)
“The Internet Archive now has the ability to do keyword searches.
The new feature, currently in beta, offers the ability to search a
portion of the "Wayback" archive database (about eleven billion pages.) ”

Internet Archive: Wayback Machine

recall - Search the Archive

Inquiry Marketing Fulfills SEM's Promise (ClickZ)
“When you think about it as a behavioral marketing approach,
"SEM" is a wholly inadequate title to embody the depth and
scope of the strategy involved in targeting an audience that searches.

As a practice name, it describes only the media on which a marketing
tactic is executed, not the robust strategy required to intercept
the seeking behavior of a searcher.”

“For this reason, I propose a new category name: inquiry marketing.
Inquiry marketing emphatically suggests the buying behavior
the marketer is attempting to influence, not the medium on which it is applied.”

Happy Birthday, Google! (Search Engine Watch)
“As a founder of Sun Microsystems, Andy Bechtolsheim
was used to taking the long view. When he saw a demo
of Google he knew it had potential. A lot of potential.

While he had interest, he didn't have a lot of time.
According to Sergey, 'We met him very early one morning
on the porch of a Stanford faculty member's home in Palo Alto.

We gave him a quick demo. He had to run off somewhere,
so he said, instead of us discussing all the details,
why don't I just write you a check?
It was made out to Google Inc. and was for $100,000.”

SEO and Ethics

Google Information for Webmasters
Google Offers SEO Selection Guidelines (Search Engine Watch)
Google - Danny Sullivan comments on Google's guidelines (Cre8asiteForum)
Google gives SEO guidelines (Search Engine Optimization Support Forums)
Google Defines "Ethical" SEO (High Search Engine Ranking)
Unethical SEO and Guarantees (Search Engine Optimism)
The Danger of Defining "Ethical" SEO in Terms of Search Engine Compliance (Search Ethos)
Standards: Foundations of Ethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO Today)
Search Engine Optimization Code of Ethics (Bruce Clay)
"best practices" Standard Draft 1 (SEO Pros)
World Association of Internet Marketing (WAIM) Code of Ethics
SEO code of ethics (Search Engine Optimization Ethics)

Are You Sabotaging Your Site's Visibility in Search Engines?
(Search Engine Guide)
"- 78 percent of the Top 100 New Zealand Companies do not use
target search terms within their home page text.”
”- 25 percent of the Top 100 New Zealand Companies could not
be found for their chosen search terms in either U.S. or
New Zealand search engines."

Australia’s Top 100 Company Sites Incompatible With Search Engines
(High Search Engine Ranking)
“A new report released today has revealed that 99 percent
of Australia’s Top 100 Public Companies have web sites that
sabotage their ability to be found by search engine users.”
“65 percent of the Top 100 do not use target keywords on their home pages.”
“38 percent of the Top 100 cannot be found for their chosen search terms.”
“50 percent of the web sites are inaccessible to the visually impaired.”
“By sabotaging the search engine compatibility of their web sites,
Australia’s Top 100 companies are preventing potential customers
from finding them and at the same time, sacrificing an enormous
opportunity to attract more traffic.”

Consumers Rate Online Search, Portals, and News (Media Post)
“Google and Yahoo! have scores that place them among
the best performers of any of the roughly 200 top companies
the ACSI measures on an annual basis.”

Contextual Advertising Shows Poorer Results than Expected
(Internet Search Engine Database)
“Contextual ads use the key word technology from search to dish up
ads on content sites. Despite the fact that fewer Internet users are
clicking on such ads, advertisers often pay the same for key words
used in both search and contextual ad campaigns."
"A study from NewGate compared the performance of Google search
and contextual campaigns for two clients. Results showed that
click-through rates were 14 times to 150 times higher on the
search ads than the contextual ads. The cost per lead, or order,
was two to eight times higher for contextual campaigns.”

Web Search Content Ads Seen Falling Short (Reuters)
“Web search companies have hyped their new contextual services as
the next big thing in Internet advertising, but early results by online
marketers show those new ads may be underperforming expectations.”

Internet Search Engine Update (by Greg R. Notess)
“Yahoo! now has become an even more important player in
the search engine industry, as it is acquiring Overture,
which in its own turn had already acquired AltaVista and
the FAST Web Search division, including AlltheWeb, earlier this year.
Combine that with last year’s acquisition of Inktomi, and Yahoo!
has gathered three major search engines into its stable: Inktomi,
AltaVista, and AlltheWeb. While the deal may not be finalized until
the end of this year, it still leaves Yahoo! in the unusual situation of
having three major search engines while using one it does not own,
Google, to provide most of its search results.
Expectations are high that sooner or later this year,
Google will be out at Yahoo! to be replaced by one of its own.”

Google's still good, but Teoma offers it a real challenge (Chronicle-Tribune)
“I had been having a tough time finding a tutorial for building my own
computer through Google. With little effort, I found a great one on Teoma.”

Teoma Tantrums: Teoma Does Not Come Close to Google (Microdoc News)
“Teoma rivalling Goolge - in your dreams! Not even a close rival, as yet.”
“Using the new Google Calculator, a feature not found on Teoma,
we find that Teoma has a database only 19% of the size of Google.
Really, how does Teoma consider it even comes close to Google?”

Google roped into RIAA and KaZaA battle (PC Pro)
“If you perform the KaZaA Lite search, 376,000 results are obtained
but a number of URLs are missing."
'In response to a complaint we received under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act we have removed
8 result(s) from this page.”
"Removed sites include
www.kazaagold.com, www.kazaalite.tk, and www.kaaza.com."

Kazaa Owner Complains of Copyright Infringement (Chilling Effects)
“Utilizing the search query, "kazaa," at www.google.com, the following
search results (the "Infringing Material") contain unauthorized copies of
the KMD or unauthorized derivative works of the KMD which infringe
the KMD and the exclusive rights of the Owner:
… http://mp3download.com, http://www.kazaa-file-sharing-downloads.com,
http://www.kazaa-download.de, http://www.kazaa-lite.info…
Please immediately remove or disable all access to the Infringing Material.”

Google Now Offering News Alerts (BETA)
"Google News Alerts are sent by email when news
articles appear online that match the topics you specify."

How Google News compares to competition (Cyber Journalist)
“Google News gets about 3.4 million users monthly,
according to Nielsen//NetRatings -- which puts it roughly at the bottom of
Nielsen//NetRatings's Top 20 Current Events and Global News sites?"