Search Engine News Blog - December 2002 Archives
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Search engine news web log for December 2002. For more recent search engine news, go to our Daily Search Engine News Blog.
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26 December 2002 Google Follows the 'Yellow Brick Road' to Oz The world's love affair with Google has seen the search giant launch more regional domains this year than ever before. So far, Google's path throughout the world seems paved with gold. As they head down this "yellow brick road" to launch Google Australia, I took the opportunity of interviewing David Krane, Google's Director of Corporate Communications, about their plans for Down Under.
24 December 2002 Yahoo Puts Inktomi Under Their Christmas Tree Yep, this was big enough to warrant a special posting! Yahoo has surprised everyone today by announcing that they plan to purchase troubled search company Inktomi. The two firms have signed an agreement that will see Yahoo acquire Inktomi for a price of $1.65 per share in cash, making a total purchase price of approximately $235 million, adjusted for Inktomi's expected debt balance at the end of the calendar year. "Yahoo!'s vast reach and its unmatched breadth and depth of services, combined with Inktomi's outstanding engineering expertise and leading search technology, will help us achieve our goal of providing users with the most comprehensive, relevant and highest quality search solutions on the Web," said Terry Semel, Yahoo! chairman and CEO. No word yet on how this will impact Inktomi's relationship with MSN (who currently use Inktomi for secondary search results) or the Inktomi Paid Inclusion program, but no doubt it will be significant. Just when you think you're getting a handle on this search game, the goal posts shift again...
23 December 2002
>> Well, that's it from me for the year. I'm done blogging for 2002, but will be back with more search engine industry news and gossip from January 13, 2003 (unless something big happens in the search engine space in the meantime, in which case I will be *forced* to make a special posting :-). Thank you to all our loyal readers, especially for your encouragement, news tips, gossip and feedback - I simply couldn't keep up with this crazy industry without you. Have a safe and joyous festive season and a memorable New Year's Eve. Catcha next year! Kal
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "aquarium cabinets" - Now what type of fish would need cupboard space?
20 December 2002 >> Fellow search engine blogger Peter Da Vanzo published an insightful interview with "That man Sullivan" today. A particular Sullivanism that caught my attention was his analogy between SEO's and Public Relations consultants: "...those in newspapers, magazines and other type of media have 'editorial' results just like search engines due [sic]. PR firms and others try to influence those results, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, a good PR person can be a great asset in constructing a story, if they provide the facts you need. So, too, SEOs can and do play a role with search engines." A nice come back for those "all SEO's are spammers because they try to manipulate the results" arguments...
>> Apparently AltaVista turned seven yesterday. Big fat hairy deal.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "lord of the rings" - Not so weird, given Part 2 of the movie trilogy - The Two Towers - was launched today. For those of you unfamiliar with the beautiful scenery of my adopted country New Zealand, I strongly suggest catching the movie!
19 December 2002 After resolving a domain dispute with the owners of Google.com.au, Google has quietly launched an Australian version of their search engine. The eagerly-awaited Google Australia went live yesterday and is already showing enormous popularity amongst Aussie searchers. Google will be making the launch more official shortly and we hope to bring you an exclusive with Google about the site by the end of the month.
>> According to a URLWire article, FAST is now indexing Microsoft Word documents.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "how to make a catapult" - Perhaps the fat man is looking for an alternative mode of transport to the sleigh this year?
18 December 2002 >> <News Flash>A little birdie tells me that Google Australia is finally live! Looks like Google HQ sorted out their domain dispute with the original owners of Google.com.au so this is great news for local Googlers. More tomorrow...</News Flash>
>> America Online has been granted almost USD 7 million in damages by a U.S. court after a company apparently sent AOL users over a billion spam emails promoting adult sites. The outcome is America Online's largest reward in an anti-spam case and their second win over the email marketers CN Productions. AOL have won over 20 anti-spam cases to date but stated this ruling was the first in which statutory damages were awarded under the amended Virginia anti-spam statute.
>>
"Stumped by SERP's or Baffled by Boolean?" asks Chris Sherman
of Search Day. If so, then you need to read his piece on Search
Engine Lingo. Amazing the number of acronyms this industry has given
birth to!
>> Web Rank staff attended yet another Christmas party on Friday evening. When I'm in a group situation, I've been making a habit of asking each person what search engine they use, just out of geek-curiosity. Anyway, of the 10 New Zealanders I asked Friday evening, 8 prefer Google and the remaining 2 prefer XtraMSN. What was even more interesting was the fact that all but one of the Googlers use the U.S. version instead of the regional Google.co.nz. To quote Alice Through the Looking Glass, "curiouser and curiouser"...
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "hydro electric balls" - I honestly have no idea.
17 December 2002 If you can't beat em, join em. That's the position Terra Lycos appear to have taken today with the unveiling of their new version of the HotBot search engine, which provides users with an interface from which to search FAST, Google, Inktomi and Teoma. After losing ground in the search market, HotBot owners Terra Lycos decided the best use of the search portal, (which hasn't been updated in many months), would be to provide a new tool for the increasingly search-savvy public. "HotBot has long been a favorite of advanced searchers, and the power of HotBot is sure to appeal to the needs of the tech savvy segment of the market," said Tom Wilde, global manager of Search Services for Terra Lycos. "The new HotBot places control of the search experience in the hands of the user and delivers the remarkable choice of four of the top search engines together in one place." HotBot now allows users to type in a search term once and then choose a search engine. After reviewing the results, users can then retrieve the search results of any of the other four search engines with one click. Gone is the category-cluttered HotBot home page and in it's place is a sleeker, simplified look, with a single search box and customization instructions. New features enable the HotBot user to customize their search experience based upon individual preferences. These features include the ability to build a tailored home page with preferred advanced search filters, the ability to custom-format search results and the option of using new HotBot "skins" to change the look of the site.
>> We're pretty excited about next year's SES Conference in Sydney, especially as we hadn't expected there to be another one quite so soon. According to Conference organizers, there is a lot more interest this time around, so hopefully there will be more speakers and even more attendees. Hope to see some of you there!
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "Jesus.com" - Not what you think. According to the site, Jesus needs a date. Judging by that haircut, it's no wonder.
16 December 2002 >> <News Flash>Now that the dates are firm, we can finally reveal that a second Search Engine Strategies Conference is heading Down Under! Yep, Sydney will again play host to the popular search engine conference hosted by renowned search engine expert Danny Sullivan. The two day Conference will be held at Cockle Bay Wharf, Sydney Harbour from March 26-27, 2003 and is expected to be bigger and better than this year's event held in June</News Flash>
>> The New York Times offers an interesting article on a new phenomenon: The Google Economy. More and more webmasters worldwide are becoming increasingly dependent on Google for their site traffic and online sales.
>> The latest edition of our search engine newsletter The Search Light was released yesterday. It features the article below that I co-authored with Dan Thies about how to set up a news-feed for your web site. If you have any questions or comments about the article, please email me.
How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated
Following our successful experiment of setting up a news feed for my site,
search engine marketer Dan Thies and I have joined forces to write this
article to show other webmasters how they can do the same for their own sites. But before we get ahead of
ourselves, let me set the scene... Being the web-mistress of
a resource site about search engine marketing, I'm always on the lookout for
new ways to promote my site. Like many other web site owners, I don't have an
enormous marketing budget and must rely on my own resources to spread the word
about my content. As you would expect, one
effective method of promotion that I utilize is search engine optimization.
This ensures the search engines regularly visit my site and update my pages in
their indexes. Another is the circulation of a regular newsletter. But the
real secret to attracting more traffic is to add bucket loads of fresh
content. Providing you promote this new content effectively, it can act like a
magnet on your site, pulling in new visitors every single day and giving you
the opportunity to turn those visitors into loyal followers or, (if you sell
products and services), paying customers.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "Spiderman toys" - Isn't he a little old for toys?
13 December 2002 Google Launches Shopping Search Just in time for Christmas, Google has launched a BETA version of their latest invention, Froogle™, a shopping search engine. Taking its name from a clever combination of "frugle" and "Google", Froogle acts like an online product catalog, responding to user searches for particular products by listing web sites that sell the item, a product description, approximate prices and a thumbnail picture of the item in question. According to Jonathan Rosenberg, Google Vice President of Product Management, "Results are determined by an algorithm that's similar to Google's PageRank method used for determining ordinary web search results. There's no paid inclusion or any other way for merchants to influence the way their products are presented in results". In the same interview with SearchDay about the launch, Rosenberg commented that Froogle data comes from two sources: merchant feeds and Google's own database of crawled web pages. Google claims that Froogle works best for "esoteric queries". I tested this theory with a search for "chocolate covered pandas", but the two matches returned were not particularly relevant. I guess I shouldn't be too disappointed. It is still in BETA after all.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "how to be tactful" - Hopefully this was a search by certain search engine forum members.
12 December 2002 >> Webmasters worldwide are now exposed to defamation suits brought against them in Australia after a landmark Australian High Court ruling yesterday. The High Court ruled that mining entrepreneur Joe Gutnick was able to sue media heavy-weight Dow Jones in Australia, over alleged defamatory content published on its U.S. web site. A key extract from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald states: "The judgment means material published on the Web is deemed to have been published in the place it is downloaded, not the country of origin". Media companies and web sites publishing online articles will be hardest hit by the ruling, which has already sent shockwaves around the online publishing industry.
>> <soapbox rant>I know I shouldn't let it get to me, but I still get really worked up when I discover SEO companies flaunting their spammy techniques to their customers as being "crucial" to the success of a search engine promotion campaign. I came across a charming example here in New Zealand yesterday: "We recommend a site has at least 20+ pages. 100+ is better. Each page should be optimised for a different keyword. Having 100+ pages may sound a little impractical, but there are ways to streamline the process... most of these pages will simply be 'Entry Pages' for search engines". Can you say "doorway spam"? Never mind the fact that this technique might get a client site penalized or banned in Google. No mention of that, no siree. And this comes from a company that I previously respected and had thought held a fairly good reputation in the local industry. If I was mislead about their tactics, it's possible their clients were too. It's one thing to use their own (multiple) domains to spam and quite another to play Russian Roulette with sites belonging to their clients</soapbox rant>.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "laminating sleeves" - I tried that once, but it kept melting my buttons.
11 December 2002 LookSmart Australia Launches Affiliate Program LookSmart Australia has partnered with CyberAffiliates to provide an affiliate program for resellers of their new Smart Listings™ revamped directory inclusion product. SmartListings replace the old LookListings™ for Small Business product and cost AUD440 per year for guaranteed inclusion in the LookSmart.com.au directory. Interesting to note is that they "guarantee" inclusion but still require the submissions to meet their editorial guidelines. SmartListings are the general directory search results that appear below LookListings results. The LookSmart Pay Per Click model is still available, now confusingly named LookListings. These are the sponsored results, based on a variable cost-per-click model, that appear at the top of the search page. LookListings also appear as "sponsored sites" on NineMSN and "sponsor matches" on Yahoo Australia & New. Annoyingly, you have to download the LookListings PDF brochure to find out anything about the product and, in what seems a ridiculous oversight, you have to sign up and have a LookSmart representative contact you to receive ANY idea of the costs involved. Their new affiliate program
apparently covers SmartListings resellers only. LookSmart
will pay affiliates $20 per successful referral, as well as monthly bonuses
for bulk referrals. To launch the scheme, LookSmart has increased the
commission paid per referral to $50, until February 2003. This
was in an email from them: Excuse me but $20,000? Am I missing something? That's a hell of a bonus. I can only imagine what their marketing budget must be. To be honest, I'm not entirely comfortable with this program. For some reason, a search engine getting into the affiliate game doesn't sit well with me. I can just see all the spammy affiliate pages this scheme is going to give birth to in the search engines. Maybe I'll change my mind if I sign up and reach that $20K bonus.
>>
<blatant self-congratulations>Our Top 100 report made the Moreover
Australian national news-feed AND the search engine news-feed
yesterday!</blatant self-congratulations>
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "mafia history" - There's a book on this. It's called Swimmin wid da fishes.
10 December 2002 >> Wow, the response to our Top 100 report has been nothing short of extraordinary! We've been kept on our toes all morning by calls from journalists wanting more info. I must say, a well written Press Release is a thing of beauty.
>> Pandia provides an interesting perspective on the search engine optimization industry from newbie SEO Michelle Stoltz. I particularly disagree with her statement: "At any given time the requirements for a top ten rank can change and everything that the optimization was based on could be blown out of the water, and it's back to square one!" Some of us have been using the same SEO techniques for years, with very few adjustments necessary to achieve and maintain top rankings for our clients. Still, it is intriguing to read a newcomer's take on this crazy industry.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "how to fold money into a heart" - Origami for wealthy romantics?
9 December 2002 >> Well I can't quite believe it, but we finally finished our major research report: Search Engine Compatibility and the Top 100 Australian Public Company Web Sites. Months of painstaking research went into the study and we are pretty proud of it. Copies of the Report are available via the link above. See the headline below to learn more.
Australia’s
Top 100 Company Sites Incompatible With Search Engines A new report released today has revealed that 99 percent of A ustralia’s Top 100 Public Companies have web sites that sabotage their ability to be found by search engine users.Search Engine Compatibility and the Top 100 Australian Public Company Web Sites, published by New Zealand-based search engine optimization firm Web Rank, details how nearly every one of the web sites belonging to Australia’s Top 100 Public Companies contain design elements that in some way negatively impact their search engine compatibility. As a result, many of Australia’s leading companies are not easily found in the search results of the most popular U.S. and Australian search engines. Continued...
>> More responses to my AltaVista woes below: "Next time they may actually answer the questions instead of getting a wooly response from some PR guy!" ----------- "That
is truly pathetic. AV should be ashamed of themselves. This is just another
example of why they are no longer the top search engine. -----------
>> Ton Zijlstra was kind enough to answer the riddle of Friday's Weird Stuff People Search For. Ton wrote: "You asked what a autofreisprecheinrichtung is. Yes as you guessed it's German. It's a handsfree car-kit for your mobile phone". Thanks a ton Ton!
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "the history of saint nick" - Apparently, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Here at the office, we're postponing the festive season. Just until we can catch up on our workload (should only take about 6 months). Bah, Humbug!
6 December 2002 >> I know, I know! The Blog is late today. With good reason though - we have been putting the finishing touches on our "Top Secret" report due out next week, working 16 hour days for the past 4 weeks without a day off. Finally my body decided enough was enough and refused to allow me to function today, forcing me to take a day off. A blinding headache had me out of action all day and I'm only now able to sit down at the computer at 8pm New Zealand time.But the break did allow the world's longest download to complete without a hitch. Yep, 17 hours, 36 minutes and 24 seconds - that's how long it took me to download my shiny new version of Adobe Acrobat via a crappy 56kb dial-up connection, just so we can celebrate the joys of PDF.
>> Fellow search engine blogger Peter Da Vanzo has published a raucous and irreverent interview with Mike Grehan, publisher of the comprehensive e-book Search Engine Marketing. Thoroughly enjoyable, even with a headache.
>> I just discovered why Alta Vista's Jan Pedersen didn't have time to answer my interview questions (see below). Obviously he was too busy whining to Danny Sullivan about Alta Vista's failing grade in the Search Engine "Perfect Page" Test. Meanwhile, Danny has weighed in with his opinion on the Google SEO Guidelines.
>> Stay tuned early next week for the launch of our special report. Can't say much more than that yet, except it will be of particular interest to our Australian readers and it's an eye opener!
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "autofreisprecheinrichtung" - Ok, we figure it's German and possibly related to cars, but what the heck is it? Anyone like to put us out of our misery?
5 December 2002 >> Remember that article I was planning to write with Dan Thies about how to set up your very own RSS News Feed? Well it's finally complete so I'll be posting it here soon. In the meantime, Dan has written a great piece about Yahoo Express Submission in light of their recent merge of directory results with Google search results. To pay or not to pay, that is the question. To learn the answer, read Dan's article: Is a Yahoo Listing Still Worth The Cost?
>> Some responses to my AltaVista woes below: "In my experience, that is a pretty typical response from AltaVista" ----------- "The
questions were really good, I only wish that they would have answered them... ----------- "What a pain to go to that trouble, only to be given the run around. Still, that probably says a lot about AV." ----------- "Looks to me like they purposely dodged every question you asked them. Too bad they were not honest about the one question they answered". ----------- "What I'd like to know is, do they plan to index the site more regularly to fall in line with Google / Fast/ Alltheweb?" --------- "Wow...did
she even read your questions?" My thoughts exactly.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "how does a mouse work?" - Presumably, a person has entered this search with the help of a mouse. Is this a trick question?
4 December 2002 AOL shares fell by 14 percent and had a significant impact on other tech stocks today in response to disappointing 2003 revenue forecasting announced by AOL Time Warner executives at an analysts meeting in New York. While it is expected America Online's 2002 revenues will exceed USD 8.8 billion and advertising and commerce revenues to be between USD 1.5 billion and 1.6 billion, the 2003 outlook is bleaker. The Company said that solid growth in worldwide subscription revenue will be offset by declines in advertising and commerce revenues of 40 to 50 percent in 2003, with overall revenues for the division essentially flat in 2003 compared with 2002. During the meeting, AOL Online Chief Executive Jonathan Miller also hinted at possible price increases for AOL subscribers in 2003. With the dial-up ISP market becoming saturated in the U.S. and main rivals MSN and Yahoo competing for AOL's current market share, AOL is starting to experiencing declining subscriber growth.
>>
As promised, below is the email I received from Judith Schwartz, AltaVista's Director
of Strategic Communications, in response to our interview
questions delivered (at their suggestion) over three weeks ago:
-------- Dear Kalena, I'm sorry that you
weren't able to take us up on our offer for an interview It does appear from the
questions that your readers may have misunderstood AltaVista Shortcuts are
not sponsored ads but rather pointers to databases As the press release you
received indicates, the new features do not include We would hope that many
end users will appreciate AltaVista's assisted Regards, Judith Schwartz --------- I thought I would've cooled down to the point where I could comment without sarcasm today. I was wrong. So I'm going to let my readers comment and I'll publish the best responses. What do YOU think of AltaVista's response to our questions? Email me your thoughts.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "nun pics" - I'm not sure I want to know the reason for this one.
3 December 2002 >> A few days ago I read the New York Times article "Postcards from the Planet Google". In the article, Greg Rae, one of three members of Google's logs team, boldly stated that he could track future cultural trends worldwide via search spikes for various topics. He claimed he could predict future pop culture trends in the U.S. by studying search patterns developing from country to country.Mr Rae gave the example of singing trio Las Ketchup, whose pop song "The Ketchup Song (Hey Hah)" has become a hit in Spain and across Europe recently. Mr Rae was able to track the popularity of the song as Google searches for it spread across Europe. Based on the search trends spreading to the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere, he predicted that anyone who hadn't heard of Las Ketchup soon would. I found this intriguing, if a bit presumptuous. But, sure enough, what catchy song should I see on this morning's music video TV show? Yep, The Ketchup Song.
>> Finally, I get a response from AltaVista regarding my so called "interview" with Jan Pedersen. I tell you, these guys could win Olympic Gold for "passing the buck". My questions were passed from their P.R. rep to Chief Scientist Jan Pedersen, who apparently found them too difficult and passed them on to Chief Marketing Officer Fred Bullock, who was also stumped and passed them back to the P.R. staff with instructions to forward them to the General Manager for the Asia-Pacific region Mel Bohse, who was apparently too busy to respond and passed them back to the P.R. staff. The questions finally fell into the hands of Judith Schwartz, AltaVista's Director of Strategic Communications who has *generously* attempted to answer them ("It does appear from the questions that your readers may have misunderstood some of the new features so I'll try to clarify the issues for you") and failed abysmally. Keep in mind the interview was AltaVista's suggestion in the first place and the questions were collected and emailed almost 3 weeks ago! I'll post Judith's full response tomorrow when I've cooled down to the point where I can comment without sarcasm.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "power shoulder pads" - Could the 80's soap Dallas be making a comeback?
2 December 2002 >> Today Pandia asks the question "Is Yahoo Serious?" in relation to continuing to demand USD299 for Express Submission when Yahoo ranking results are now largely reliant on a site's placement in Google. We're reserving judgment for now.
>> Missed this story earlier this year - better late than never! Following in the footsteps of the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is apparently scrutinizing the advertisement placement policies of Web directories and search engines serving the Australian market.
>> Having trouble getting your site listed in the Open Directory? Check out 11 Tips From a Senior DMOZ Editor.
>> Weird Stuff People Search For : "tombstone with skulls" - Looks like someone's planning a macabre Christmas...
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