Search Engine News Blog - October 2002 Archives
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Search engine news web log for October 2002. For more recent search engine news, go to our Daily Search Engine News Blog.
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31 October 2002 >> Google has publicly launched their Google Answers site today, after six months of testing. How it works: Users open an account and pay 50 cents for every question they want answered. They also reveal how much they are willing to spend for answers (from $2 to $200). The question is then sent to Google researchers, one of whom (there are 500 of them), searches for the answer and emails the information and related links to the user. The researcher receives 75 percent of the user fee while Google keeps 25 percent. According to this article, refunds are offered for those unhappy with the results.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "St. Louis Exorcism" - Well I guess we should expect spooky stuff this time of year. Happy Halloween!
30 October 2002 >> Norway based Per Koch of well known search engine resource site Pandia was kind enough to enlighten us as to the meaning of Monday's Weird Stuff People Search For. Apparently Severdigheter is Norwegian for "sights", literally translated as "see-worthy-ness".
>> Inktomi has just launched their latest search technology for business: Enterprise Search 5.0. The technology gives employees the ability to search for specific information within a corporate network and on the Internet. The new product has been the major focus of the search company since streamlining their business and reducing staff numbers earlier this year.
>> With the lack of major search engine news, someone was bored enough to write an SEO Poem recently.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "Barry Manilow 2003 Calendar" - Now that's scary. I guess we should be thankful there were no matches.
29 October 2002 >> Seems AltaVista is streamlining their International Division to intensify the company's focus on pure search. AltaVista.co.uk has apparently decided to shut down their free email service four days before Christmas.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "The Day the Goose Got Loose" - Think that's weird? Look at the result that appears!
28 October 2002 >> LookSmart is finally becoming profitable, apparently.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "severdigheter" - Um, Gesundheit?
25 October 2002 Changes to Yahoo Express Submit Yahoo has changed their Express Submit service. Having a look at it, Express Submit is now called Yahoo! Directory Listings and there is a new Online Account Management Center where you can view all your listings, upgrade listings or submit new sites, update your billing information, view previous invoices, monitor when annual fees are due and submit a change request. >> For SEO's and webmasters tracking multiple domain listings, this is great news and long overdue. For U.S. based searchers, the new layout and Listings Management Center is now accessible from the suggest a site link. But from outside the U.S. it's not accessible by default yet. In the meantime, you can view the new area here: https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/express/intro. This is another step towards user satisfaction - well done Yahoo!
>> According to CBS, Google is censoring web sites containing neo-nazi sentiment. Over 100 sites are thought to have been removed from the popular search engine, making them irretrievable when conducting a related search on Google. The move has more to do with the legal systems of the countries where Google operates, than with any moral standpoint. France and Germany have strict laws regarding censorship, unlike the U.S. where Freedom of Speech is favored.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "Chemical reaction of mouthwash". Ouch!
24 October 2002 >> Cooking With Google: something to give new meaning to the phrase "search engine spam".
>> Search engine news is a bit thin on the ground today, but I did find an interesting article by James Allison on Understanding the New Role of SEO Consultants on the Traffick web site.
>> Inspired by some of the weird and wacky searches found on Galaxy Voyeur Search, I've decided to introduce a new daily feature: Weird Stuff People Search For. To kick things off, here's today's entry: "recall of refried beans". No matches? Well duh!
23 October 2002 >> Some good news at last for Inktomi. They have just re-signed Internet retail giant Amazon for their Index Connect program. Index Connect is like Paid Inclusion on steroids. Designed for sites with over 1,000 pages, it involves the regular submission of all a site's relevant web pages, including product catalogs, dynamic pages and content archives, to the major search engines via a direct XML data feed. Such content, (commonly referred to as the "deep web"), is usually overlooked by search engines that are either unable or unwilling to index it during their regular database updates.
>> Google has become the latest search engine yet to denounce pop-up ads. Yahoo will be next, just wait and see.
22 October 2002 >> The 2002 Search Engine Pub Conference in London was a huge success. Apparently. You see I couldn't make it. A turbulent twenty hour flight to a freezing climate just for a beer and a chinwag with other SEO's? I can get that in the forums for free! (Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)
Freeserve, the U.K.'s most popular ISP and portal site, has done a deal with Norwegian search firm FAST for the provision of search services to their users. The new service, (which replaces Inktomi), includes advanced linguistics support, classification and categorization ability and provides many more times the content and a freshness rate four times better than the prior service. >> The deal comes just a few weeks after FAST made several technical improvements to the AlltheWeb search engine in a bid to compete with industry darling Google. The deal is likely to hammer yet another nail in the coffin of Inktomi.
>> Many thanks to Blog readers who have been emailing with feedback lately. Keep it coming! I might even feature your site if you ask nicely. Oh and in the tradition set by my friend Jill Whalen, all chocolate bribes will be accepted :-)
21 October 2002 >> Ask Jeeves has become the latest search company to cease using pop-up advertising on their sites. Last week, the search firm ceased using pop-ups and reduced the amount of banner ads on their search sites Ask.com and Teoma.com in response to visitor feedback, said Vice President of Product Management Jim Lanzone. Other popular portal sites including America Online, iVillage, Earthlink and Webcrawler's Infospace ceased using pop-up advertising in the past few weeks. Could this trend impact Yahoo and MSN too? Jim Nail, an analyst with Forrester Research thinks so. "Web sites now think they can't afford to anger consumers," he said. "This will pretty much be the death of pop-ups". I say good riddance!
>> In his Sea Change in Search Engine Marketing article, Paul Bruemmer scoffs at the suggestion that Pay Per Click search engine advertising has replaced SEO: "While the uninitiated ask if PPC has replaced traditional search engine optimization (SEO), editorial listings via SEO remain to this day a longer-lasting and cost-effective approach to SEM in the long term". Paul also reminds us how imperative tracking ROI has now become for any search engine marketing campaign.
19 October 2002 Bob Massa, president of SearchKing Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds "the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially". >> Personally, I think this is just a huge publicity stunt, designed to attract media interest, elaborately planned and executed by a guy who is looking for someone to blame (in this case, Google) for the spectacular downfall of his PR Ad Network business. But hey, that's just my personal opinion and it is now up to the U.S. Federal Court to decide. To avoid giving Mr Massa any more publicity than necessary, I have linked to the latest ihelpyou services forum discussion about this issue, rather than the site in question.
18 October 2002 >> Thanks to an inspired article by Eric Ward, I am now informed whenever another web site adds a new link to MY web site. Eric has taken a basic Page Update notification service and turned it into a valuable search engine marketing tool. The idea is you sign up for a free account at Track Engine (or a similar notification service), and specify it to look for changes to the link search page on your favorite search engine. So for example, if you were interested in how many new links you receive in Google on a daily basis, you would conduct a link search on Google (link:http://www.yoururl.com) and enter the resulting URL into Track Engine to be monitored. Track Engine will email you when any changes occur on the page, (like a new link being added) and you can set it to alert you daily, every few days or weekly. You can set it up to check multiple engines if you're keen. Great idea!
Ask Jeeves Heads Towards Profitability According to CNET, search firm Ask Jeeves Inc. reported a lower loss and higher revenues in this year's 3rd Quarter results, pushing the company closer towards profitability than ever before. >> Most of the revenues came from Ask Jeeves' Web properties business, where revenues rose nearly 83 percent and the company's corporate search product, Jeeves Solutions, where revenues rose 17 percent. Ask Jeeves and their search site Teoma have also increased their database to 350 million pages indexed.
>> Well, it seems my newsletter has been "arrested" by SpamCop. As many of you know, I use Constant Contact for my newsletter template creation and distribution. The problem is that many email marketing companies also use their software in order to spam people. Consequently, correspondence from Constant Contact is often blacklisted by anti-spam software such as MailWasher, SpamCop, Spamnix and the like. I had some subscribers tell me that this month's Search Light newsletter was automatically isolated as spam, filed in their Deleted Items folder and bounced back to Constant Contact servers. I would appreciate it if any subscribers reading this who use anti-spam software would check their junk mail list and uncheck the box next to The Search Light if they find it in there. This should prevent future issues being treated as spam. Oh and thanks a lot spammers - you've just made the jobs of legitimate marketers that much more difficult.
17 October 2002 >> After reading my blog entry yesterday about the Wharton School of Business, particularly the article author's claim of this being the "first case of a company using a search engine query to advertise itself offline", fellow blogger Gary from NZBase dropped me a line. He says: "Ever seen the "AOL keyword - [moviettitle]" at the bottom of most movie previews at the cinema? Does this count even though Warner own AOL?". Absolutely Gary! I stand corrected.
>> My friend and co-moderator in the ihelpyou services forums, savvy, made us laugh yesterday by showing us the funniest META tag she'd ever seen: <meta name="rank" position="#1"> As savvy said, ya gotta give the author 10 out of 10 for ingenuity!
>> Alexandre Dos Santos of meta search engine Kartoo emailed me today to advise that their search engine has been elected search engine of the year by Computer Shopper magazine. I haven't checked out Kartoo for quite a few months and was surprised and intrigued with what I found when I popped my head in there today. When you conduct a search, Kartoo presents their top 10 or so search results in a graphical format which you can mouseover to get more information on. Quite unique!
>> Michael Wong tells us, based on his own experience, How to Justify a Search Engine Optimization Budget.
16 October 2002 >> According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Search engine advertising (paid listings) has grown from 1 percent of total online advertising in 2000 to 4 percent in 2002, comprising about $288 million of $7.2 billion in online ad revenue.
>> I read an interesting article from Andrew Gerhart at Search Engine Guide today. In the article, Andrew goes into detail about the Google update cycle, explaining how Google actually does two crawls per month, one at the beginning and one immediately following their database update (commonly referred to in the SEO industry as the "Google Dance"). Andrew claims that most new web sites require two visits from Googlebot before they are included in the index: "if your website is crawled in the beginning of the month, the chances are that your website will not be included in that months update. If your website is crawled during the second crawl of the month, which is directly following the update, it is possible that your website will be revisited in the next crawl and then included in the next update. Other times Google will visit a new site and grab only the robots.txt and the homepage. This is a good indication that Googlebot will be back during the next major crawl and your website will be included in the update following that second crawl. So, looking back, it seems that for your new site to be included in the Google database it will take two visits from Googlebot".
>> The Wharton School of Business is so confident of their Google search rank, they are promoting their web site via radio advertisements encouraging people to find them by typing "Wharton West" into Google. In an interview with CNET, Neal Neveras, director of executive programs at the school said that "Google's quality of search and the simplicity of results" played into his decision to use the search term in radio advertising. He said that "because radio airtime is limited, it makes more sense to advertise a keyword search on Google than to broadcast a long university Web address that will be hard to remember". This is apparently the first case of a company using a search engine query to advertise itself offline. The school uses traditional optimization techniques to rank well for the search query "Wharton West", rather than purchasing positions via Google's paid advertising program AdWords. Staff are confident their ranking for the query will remain at the top of the results for "a long time".
15 October 2002 >> The latest edition of our search engine newsletter The Search Light was released today. It features an article I wrote earlier this month called The Search Engine Soap Opera comparing developments in the search engine industry with the plot twists of the TV soaps.
>> Pandia Reports today that Google's global market share has increased nearly 2 percent over the past two months to reach just over 55 percent, topping Yahoo!'s share of 20.6 percent. Related statistics come from OneStat.com.
>> An article on TheDeal.com reveals the history behind Inktomi's unusual name: it is derived from "a Lakota Indian legend about a spider known to defeat larger adversaries through wit and cunning". Given the company's pressing financial woes, let's hope it starts to take after it's namesake soon. Personally, I'm guessing that a price hike for Paid Inclusion costs will be forthcoming.
>> An addendum to the latest Yahoo/Google deal comes from Danny Sullivan's subscriber only Search Engine Update newsletter today: Yahoo is apparently paying Google on a per query basis as part of the deal. Yahoo also says that Google is guaranteed a certain level of search volume. Interesting to see how much the deal has been sweetened for Google compared to the original agreement between the two companies in 2000. I think this demonstrates just how reliant on Google technology Yahoo! has become over the past two years.
14 October 2002 New Zealand Govt. Wins Biz Domain The New Zealand Government has successfully fought for and won the domain www.newzealand.biz by utilizing the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) disputes process after missing out in the initial ballot. Buoyed by their success, the NZ Government is planning to go after www.newzealand.com and possibly the .net and .org versions as well. If successful, this case could have serious ramifications and set a legal precedent for global domain disputes. >> The outcome of these disputes is bound to be controversial, whatever the result. The current U.S. based owner of newzealand.com has successfully marketed the domain for over seven years. They have built up solid content, links and search engine presence, resulting in a Google PageRank of 7. To allow another party (government or not) to just step in and take over at this point is ludicrous, in my opinion. According to this article in the NZ Herald, the New Zealand Government plans to use the .biz domain as part of New Zealand ebusiness promotions overseas. <added>Turns
out the NZ Government applied for a trademark on the words "New
Zealand" in 2001, six years after the newzealand.com domain was
originally registered. While this means they could have a legitimate claim to
the domain, it seems only fair to me that the original owners be duly
compensated should they be forced to hand it over.
>> Well this one takes the cake. An SEO company emailed us over the weekend, requesting we add a link to their site from our resources page. The company, based in India, uses the word "ethics" in their company name, domain and scattered throughout their site in a vague attempt to create an attitude of trust in their visitors. On closer inspection, the site is nowhere to be found in Google and has been given the dreaded PR0, meaning they must be doing something suspicious. Provide a link to this "ethical" company? I don't think so.
11 October 2002 Google Wins Yahoo! Deal and Makes History The fat lady has finally sung. Ending many months of uncertainty and rumor, yesterday Yahoo! announced the renewal of their contract with Google for the provision of third party crawler-based listings as part of their search results. >> The deal sees Google go down in history as the first search engine to win the coveted Yahoo! deal two years running. Other potential candidates for the contract included Inktomi and FAST, the latter considered a hot favorite. But Google has successfully defended the title of Yahoo Partner, which (according to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch) earned them over $7 million last year. It seems the quality and relevance of Google's search results was the deciding factor for Yahoo! who have taken the partnership one step further this year by combining Google results with their own directory listings instead of serving them up separately. Now Yahoo! users will see a more intuitive search interface and a more integrated, relevant set of search results.
>> Today Dotster sent me unsolicited mail to tell me how to rid myself of unsolicited mail. Nice one.
Yahoo! Increases Revenues by 50 Percent Yahoo! is having a busy week in the media - what with renewing their relationship with Google, giving their search results a makeover and announcing their third quarter financial results. It's good news all round though. According to their latest results, Yahoo! revenues jumped by 50 percent in the past 12 months, up from $166.1 million to $248.8 million. This is impressive, given the demise of tech stocks and the lack lustre market in general. It's clear that user satisfaction and the excellent example set down by Google have had a dramatic impact on Yahoo!'s development strategy: >> "Despite a challenging external environment, it is clear Yahoo! is benefiting from the strategy and plan we laid down nearly a year ago and that our efforts to position the company for sustainable, profitable growth are paying off," said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. Rather than choose an option that may have provided more financial gain (Inktomi and FAST may have provided Yahoo! additional income from their paid inclusion fees), Yahoo! chose to listen to their market and make relevancy a higher priority, choosing Google instead, despite the fact that their deal with Overture prevents them from integrating and earning additional income from Google AdWords paid listings. However according to this article in The Guardian, the non-exclusive deal with Google may see Yahoo! add more third party search providers in the near future. In my opinion, LookSmart.com could've salvaged much of their market and continued to be a major player in the search industry if they had taken a leaf out of Google's book and focused on content rather than profit. Obviously Yahoo! has been paying more attention to their users and is now reaping the rewards. 10 October 2002 Yahoo! Combines Search Results for Relevancy This thread at the ihelpyou services forums reveals that Yahoo! has made some dramatic changes to the way they serve search results. By their own admission, Yahoo! are now combining third party Web Page Matches with their own Directory results, in an attempt at improving relevancy. This will please the many Yahoo! search critics, tired of seeing spammy Directory listings win the ranking wars. However this move also underlines the increasing industry domination by Google. Because Web Site Matches are largely provided by the Google index, the importance of having good Google rankings has just been upped another notch. Certainly many webmasters who normally rank well in Yahoo! but have trouble ranking well in Google will be losing traffic as a result of this move. But if the result is a more relevant index for searchers, it's a good thing.
>> I am so fed up with all this obsession search engine marketers have with Google PageRank™. Don't link here, don't link there, think twice before linking to low PR sites, even for editorial reasons, watch out - your PageRank is leaking, I mean Geez Louise! Note to self: if I ever become so obsessed with Google PageRank™ to the extent where it starts to impact my editorial reasoning and makes me second guess my decision to link to certain sites, it's time to quit SEO and try something else.
Inktomi Slashes Workforce by 20 Percent Financial woes continue to plague Inktomi, with the announcement this week they intend to slash their workforce by 20 percent by the end of the year. >> President and Chief Executive David Peterschmidt made a statement, claiming: "Current economic conditions in enterprise software mandate that Inktomi further adjust its cost structure to move towards cash flow breakeven performance." The cuts will see Inktomi reduce their workforce by 85 down to 300 staff. Last year, Inktomi laid off 18 percent of staff, citing similar financial reasons.
>> Today I received more spam, but with a difference. No it wasn't French, but it was so, well, polite. It was from a New Zealand based company, so maybe that explains it. The author apologized profusely for disturbing me and being too "forward", explained why they chose email as their contact medium, detailed how I could easily be removed from their mailing list and finally got to the point of their email, which was to sell me something I had absolutely no interest in. Funny thing was, they were selling yet another type of web positioning software that apparently auto-generates spammy cookie-cutter pages. The promotional language on the site boasts: "Generate as many optimized pages as you want - directly from your database. Make the entire contents of your dynamic website visible in search engines!" Yeehaa - another way to ensure search engine indexes are as irrelevant as possible! Be still my beating heart. What intrigues me is why on earth they think that SEO's that use traditional optimization methods would be interested in this stuff? 9 October 2002 >> Remember those clever little cookie trails the Microsoft programmers used to leave in the software programs - like hidden games within an Excel spreadsheet, a Bill Clinton jibe or an unusual reference when doing a spell check on "Bill Gates" within Word and such things? Well apparently, the programmers at Google have a similar sense of humor. Either that, or a remarkable coincidence occurred! According to an article from Computerworld, last week a search for "go to hell" on Google, (quotes included), would've brought up Microsoft's home page in first place, followed by AOL.com and then Hell.com. Two days later, Hell.com is in first place, with references to Microsoft and AOL nowhere to be found. Another coincidence? I don't think so (-;
Google Launches Algorithm-Based News Service One of the more interesting developments that occurred during our blog hiatus was the BETA launching of the Google News Service. Compiled from over 4,000 sources worldwide, Google News appears to offer the most relevant, up-to-date news available online. >> Something that Google are very proud of is the fact the service is generated entirely by computers, with no (or little) human involvement. The following is taken from their FAQ Page: "Google News is highly unusual in that it offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention. Google employs no editors, managing editors, or executive editors. While the sources of the news vary in perspective and editorial approach, their selection for inclusion is done without regard to political viewpoint or ideology".
>> So much has happened in the search engine space over the past few weeks (what's new right?), but the most interesting development causing flame wars all over the search engine forums is the apparent PageRank penalty applied by Google to SearchKing portals. Remember back on 25 August, we reported that SearchKing had begun to use high PageRank as a selling tool for advertising space? Well apparently Google have determined this was breaking their rules and punished SearchKing in the last index update by cutting their prior PR in half, applying the dreaded PR0 penalty to their portal sites and penalizing customer sites of their PR Ad Network. Check out the goss on this recent development in the ihelpyou services forums and the search engine forums.
>> Well today someone called Pierre sent me a romantic sounding email entirely in French. I couldn't understand very much of it, but apparently it was imploring me to visit a site called Jedit. I didn't bother, but I must admit I was tempted - even spam sounds enticing in French! 8 October 2002 >> Something for U.S. based viewers: On November 18, my forum buddy and well known SEO Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com is holding a seminar at the Boston Marriott Burlington, to share her SEO secrets. For those of you who aren't familiar with Jill, she has been optimizing web sites since 1995 and is one of the pre-eminent SEO experts in the industry. For those of you who are already familiar with her and are based in the U.S. - I recommend you go along to the seminar and pick her brain!
>> Michael Wong has put together a list of Seven Illegal Search Engine Optimization Techniques. While not all of them are strictly illegal, those that are had a sobering effect. I still think number 6 is just ridiculous - the entire Internet is based on deep linking!
>> I've come to the conclusion that it is very difficult for regional web sites to use Overture cost-effectively. At least, that's what my recent experience tells me. It all started when I set up a campaign for a client offering specific services from a particular U.S. city. Instead of allowing our highly searched, generic (but relevant) chosen keywords, those constipated Overture editors insisted we use geographical qualifiers in the keywords we were bidding on and made us retype our entire keyword listing again, adding in the regional qualifiers (i.e. "New York City") after every keyword. This was despite the fact that both our bid titles and descriptions included the qualifiers already. Not surprisingly, the traffic and clicks dropped dramatically. Now Overture tells me that we did not meet the monthly $20 click quota so they will be deducting the remaining $19.70 to meet the quota. Nice one Overture! Thank heavens the editors at Google aren't as contradictory - our AdWords campaign is humming along nicely. 7 October 2002 >> DAMNIT! Yet another misleading article has appeared condemning SEO's and accusing them of trying to undermine or trick the search engines. The article, which is actually a story about the apparent demise of Google PageRank, appeared on Wired over the weekend. The writer claims: "...search engine discussion boards tend to be populated by webmasters and consultants trying to outfox PageRank in hopes of getting to the top of Google results. The practice, known as search engine optimization or SEO..." Oh Pleeeeaaase! This type of blanket assumption really makes me mad and continues to propagate the undeserved "Black Arts of SEO" myth. When I was a journalist, we had to research a story thoroughly before publishing, avoiding gross assumptions at all costs. Perhaps they don't bother these days?
Google May Monetize Search Services The big news today is that Google is investigating ways to monetize some of their search services. This little nugget of information came from Omid Kordestani, senior vice president, during a visit to Europe promoting Google's advertising products. The Google News section (launched this month) is one service they are considering charging consumers for. According to Mr Kordestani, monetization is only an option they are investigating. "So far we have found it better to keep the service free and charge for targetted advertising", he said. Mr Kordestani also indicated that Google had no plans to float the company in the near future. 6 October 2002 >> Yesterday, Tany Soussana was kind enough to email me articles written by Search123 executives James Beriker and Scott Estes about the "Federal Trade Commission's recent landmark recommendation to the search engine industry to improve disclosure of paid listings". Recent? This is ancient history in the search engine industry. I know what you're thinking: Who are Search123? My thoughts exactly. Apparently they are yet another PPC search engine that have sprung up in the wake of Overture's dust cloud as they zoom towards profitability. At first glance, the articles seem to be using the FTC ruling as an excuse for extolling the virtues of PPC advertising, but if they offer any insight, I'll let you know. 5 October 2002 >> I'm Baaaaccck! Didya miss me? I sure missed you guys! It's taken us a while, but we are finally settled into our new office on the beautiful Banks Peninsula near Christchurch, New Zealand. It will take me a few days to catch up on all the search engine goss, but I am now officially back in full blog swing... Blog Archives October 2002 Click
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