A good overview of the position of Google browsing.

There's many people who believe that Google will be coming out with a new browser soon and this article has a good overview of the players involved and how MSN will be going after Google very soon. From the article there is a great quote which is what I've been saying all along when it comes to the GBrowser:

"Even a powerful brand like Google, if they come out with a browser, it would have to have some significant value to it, or an application to it to get people to move," said Allen Weiner, a research director at Gartner Inc. "It's hard to imagine what that would be."

That's it in a nutshell. People will have to be given a really good reason to switch what they do now and can any of these companies offer anything other than a me-too product? This is what technology guys sometimes don't understand. The geewhiz aspects of their product makes them hot, but they are not the average technology user. People using the internet aren't always looking for the next greatest tech gizmo, they want consistent software that accomplishes for them what they want. Most could care less about imcremental changes in technology.

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Clusty.com - a new search engine based on clustering.

Here's yet another new search engine, Clusty.com, this time based on a clustering technology. After trying it I'm still not sure what clustersing is other than more choices related to your search. The results looked good and relevant but is it any better than anything else out there? Whenever these new search engines come out, they are portrayed by the press as Google Killers or Yahoo Stompers. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is much more to getting to be a contending search engine than results. Ask AskJeeves, they have very relevant results, but people aren't percieving them as much better than the majors right now. Therein lies the problem for all these search engines coming out in this time of flux. If they don't have technology that greatly increases a person's ability to find what they want, they will stay with what they've been using, thank you very much. What's true with laundry soap is true of search engines. There must be a significant reason to switch from what you use now.

I'm not saying that Clusty has bad results. They're good, but they're not that much different than anyone else search result. If you were doing research or looking for a broader idea of what you might be looking for, then this search engine would fit the bill, but so would a lot of others. Google has nothing to worry about at this time. Here's another article about Clusty and another from the New York Times.

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Furl.net saves websites with page copies, is this good?

Furl.net is a web page archiver and it's really an addition to any kind of web surfing you may be doing. Unlike a bookmark, Furl.net will save a copy of the web page that you visited. First you have to login to your account and install a button on your browser and that's it. It's all right, it does do what it says and will save these websites you've visited forever. Unlike a bookmark or a website you can lose track of, Furl will keep it in an archive.

Recently, they were purchased by Looksmart and I don't know, but that might be the kiss of death. Looksmart hasn't been "looking" too good these days and why this addition to what they might be doing is beyond me. Nonetheless, Furl has a place for people who have a hard time staying organized on the web. If you like this kind of thing, the better alternative would be to use AskJeeves personalized search. It saves history of websites for you and you don't need the funky button.

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Finally a facelift for Yahoo!

Good news, Yahoo is giving itself a facelift which was long overdue. This makes the whole feel of Yahoo much more organized although you're getting a lot of the same information. It's still got a lot of what people like about Yahoo, the people stuff, the weather but it's definitely an improvement. The call had gone out for some time for them to get a new look. The top also places a larger emphasis on search which it should. It says that it's in beta test right now, so I'm sure they would also welcome any feedback.

Some of the features are:
- customizable navigation buttons
- weather updates for your city
- search box is on top and easy to see.

Nice going Yahoo!

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Icerocket.com meta search interview

In case you haven't checked it out yet, IceRocket.com is an interesting new addition to the meta search engine world. Like all meat search, it aggregates search results from various search engines into it's search results page.

Their blog has a good background interview with the CEO of IceRocket. In the interview he intends to make their search different by offering services that are a departure from the ordinary meta search engine. He mentions:

"I think anyone who uses us will see that we definitely offer some features that the other engines don't have. We offer snapshots, quick view, and Find a Friend. We're currently working on some other features that will make us even more unique and will hopefully set us ever further [apart] from the pack. We're still in kind of a BETA stage; we have so many ideas and it's going to be fun to see them all come together."

But one thing he doesn't mention is probably their nicest feature which is e-mail a search. This could be good for PDA users but anyone who wants to do a search that might be used later when they have time to look at it. Overall, it's a good start and there will probably be ways to market your website with them in the future with paid advertising. I should also mention that Mark Cuban has invested in it, so he must see something in it too.

Meta search engines can he helpful to your website.

Life without the Internet.

A study was done on going without net access and here's an article about it. It details how people would react to not having internet access for two weeks. These were avid users and they even had a hard time getting people to do the study.

So many people are dependent for online information that they would have a hard time living without it now. I live without the Internet 2 weeks out of every year when I take a long vacation. I get by just fine, but it's nice to be able to access information and it's so convenient that it becomes a habit.

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Blogging for fun and profit.

I started blogging a short time ago and I enjoy the freedom to write about the things that interest me. I'm just naive enough to think that some of the things I'm interested in, other people will be too. It's becoming second nature. The more you write about a subject, the more you need to stay on top of it to be considered a valued resource. It makes sense that search engines are giving a certain amount of weight to blogs. They are usually newsworthy and represent an angle which isn't always carried by regular website.

Here's a news article that talks about blogging as to what to do and why it might be good for business. The author states that the blog gives a chance to discuss things that normally wouldn't make it into a column. It can work the same for a business, injecting something that wouldn't normally be discussed but has a value to someone searching online.

I've put some of my blogs on this website because I wanted to cover some of the apsects of web marketing in my own way. I didn't see anything I liked, so I started something else. Some people finding this will not like this blog and that's okay too.

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MoreGoogle, a tool that expands Google.

If you go to MoreGoogle.com, you'll find a file you can download that will enhance search results in Google. It's a small file and modifies Internet Explorer so that the Google results come with a thumbnail image of the website and a more organized description of what you're looking at. MoreGoogle is not in any way associated with Google, they just came up with a better way to display those results in IE. Currently, it's not available for anything other than IE. But that should change soon.

I haven't tried it, but it bolsters my argument that people will be making more search judgements based on image in the future, so websites need to look good even in a thumbnail.

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Google's blog - don't you believe in this?

I was looking around the Google site today and saw the GoogleBlog. With Blogger and everything I thought that the Googleblog might be something to visit. In fact, there was an banner graphic that said "What's up with Google? Check out our blog." Well, that's what I did. Now before I go into a rant about this, let me say that I think Blogger is a great tool and Google does a nice job with it. I appreciate this service, BUT why don't Google people add to their blog? The blog is so spartan and if anyone had anything to say about Google, you would think the blog would have some interesting tidbits. There were very few entries and you might think that something daily about the company would be good for general PR, and I don't mean PageRank. If you're going to promote blogging, shouldn't someone be in the thick of it at Google? This mystifies me as I am a fan of the search engine and a fan of Blogger. C'mon Google get this blogging thing in gear!

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If you use News functions of search engines...

If you use Google News or Yahoo News as a source to get news about anything, they're pretty good. The national news is covered very well and gives a good organized view of many different news sources. What doesn't make sense to me is how these news feeds of various types are used as a promotion device for companies. These news service feeds are clogged by press releases that would be a news item for a company to a customer base, but not to the general public. These are abused as a ploy to get more interest in their product or service. That's all good and fine but if you want to find something, you need to dig past the junk to get the information you want or need.

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Yahoo shopping, the blatant push

When you do a search on Yahoo's search area, search.yahoo.com, they have a tabbed category that you can have come up which is products. The problem with Yahoo is the results only come up with Yahoo stores, uggghhh, and sponsored results from Overture. I guess as a search engine, they don't need to offer relevant results on where to find products. It's always a Yahoo store, which most of them aren't so good. Is that really what a search engine should be doing? When relevancy matters on products you're trying to find, shouldn't that be broadened to the web? Well, of course you can always search the web and get an answer that is more unbiased and probably try Google before you do anything with Yahoo's pushed solution. This is the one aspect about Y I don't like. They do so many other things right.

It's such a blatant push and because they have an interest in it, they're no better than A9.com pushing Amazon shopping while you're searching. The money will always be getting in the way of really good search tools. It always have and it always will.

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Search results comparisons coming.

I think that there are many times when people searching for something question the search results they're getting. It's my goal to periodically take a look at search results from various search engines. It's good to get a perspective and see who's coming up with the most relevant search results. As a search marketer, I believe that the results tell the story on how effective your marketing campaign is, so I'll be offering this free and will try to give some insight into why the results are the way they are. I may not have all the answers, but it might be good to look at these to get a frame of reference. I'll have a web address for this and keep it updated, so it might be helpful.

I appreciate all of you who read my blog, it makes it all worth it.

Google expanding international reach.

I some places Google isn't as popular as it is here in the US. This article details what they're doing to expand the search tool more into other countries. I imagine the reach they have is pretty good and would be a success by anyone else's standards.

They mention in the article about trying to be the best search engine in the world. Like a lot of people who are constantly looking at search results, Google is probably not as good as Yahoo is right now. There was a time early in 2004 that they made a major change to their search alogorithm and really goofed up results to the point where some didn't make sense at all. I believe that they changed it back after much feedback, but nobody knows for sure.

One of the problems search engines face isn't that they can deliver relevant results, they do, especially Google and Yahoo. But do they deliver dependable, consistent relevant results? When there is algorithm tweaking going on, there is the possibility they could really screw things up. That leaves the door open to competition, so can they ever drastically change the algorithm without losing market share? I don't think so. By the nature of search, there may always be a door open for a young company to make a splash, displacing some of the major players.

Whether they get more international interest or not, it won't matter unless the search results stay highly relevant. I think Google has good results but it would be interesting to get some feedback from people who use it or something else outside the US.

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DexMedia fights back with local search help.

DexMedia which is an online version of Dex Yellow Pages offline, is offering paid clicks and some services to better market their website online, but locally. This is something that the traditional yellow page companies must do or die by the search engines. In some ways it may be too late, but one of the advantages they have is a local relationship with many businesses and that does count for something. Right now it's only being tried in the Seattle area. If it succeeds there, we'll probably see a rollout to several major markets in the near future.

They know that the major search engines are looking to take some of their ad marketshare and probably with success. There are ways you can market your website locally even though you're reach is the entire US or even the world. It's probably not a good idea to ignore local business just because you sell well in other areas. Local business is more loyal in the long run and will be there even if your website has problems.

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Investment in search marketing is trending up.

This article gives a very brief description of the trend in search marketing. The investment in this area of marketing is trending upward and many companies are looking to increase their budgets. More people are discovering that online marketing gets results and that there is generally a good ROI for the effort.

One of the things that may be driving this trends is not only the success some companies are getting, but also that things like local search are becoming more popular. Local search is being offered buy many search engines finding certain companies based on the where the searcher is from. It's important in retaining local market share not to avoid this. The whole way that people find something is shifting away from the yellow pages more and more and going to an online search. When most people's computers are broadband and always on, then getting in front of people will be more important than ever.

Search marketing is an important aspect of any business, but you need good help to do it successfully.

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AOL's new shopping site.

AOL has launched a new shopping site and is powered by BizRate.com and has about 25 million products for sale online. This is available for both subscribers and non-subscribers alike. It's AOL's attempt to get in on the rise of online buying. There hase been a lot of mall-types sites for some time and I think their boring. When everything is available, then nothing is. What I mean is that there is nothing special to it. You could say that it might have lower prices or comparison shopping but big deal. You can already get this from other services in which you never had to be an AOL subscriber.

The power of a site like this is the relationship to AOL which will give it a jumpstart. There might be a need to be a part of the offering and I think they have some packages for advertising. Websites that sell online may want to look into this if they're not already listed on BizRate already. Personally, I think AOL has problems and this won't get them out of the woods. With all the good services online for less than AOL, why would anyone use the service anymore? It can be so limiting and they still have a tremendous e-mail problem.

If you're a website owner that is looking to get more sales, AOL is still a place where you want to be. A lot of AOL people are online buyers.

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Gigablast is a great small search engine.

This really isn't news, but you might want to try Gigablast.com if you're totally tired of the results and extra stuff you get from the large search engines. Gigablast was started by a programmer who left Infoseek and decied to start his own search engine. It has great, relevant results and basically just gives you search results. The index is up to over 475 million pages and growing daily.

If you're looking for more exposure, you might want to add your site to Gigablast. Here's a background article that gives some background on this great, small search engine. This kind of search engine is a coming trend and a lot of ISP's use search tools like this as a cheaper alternative to the more expensive, larger search engines.

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Teoma, the power behind AskJeeves

With all the talk about AskJeeves lately and their attempt at personalizing search, we need to remember what really makes this a great search engine. That's Teoma. Teoma was purchased by AskJeeves in 2001 and it makes all the difference. Teoma comes up with some of the best search results out of any of the competitors including Google and Yahoo. I've found the relevance to be beyond the others because of the way they handle specific searches. There is twist where they don't just count who links to a site, but the authority of those links themselves. I think it makes all the difference. I'm going to be using AskJeeves more for a lot of searches. It seems to be the natural #3 right now even though MSN gets more activity.

By the way, I'm enjoying using the AskJeeves site and finding some things I wouldn't normally find in Google or Yahoo. I like the competitive framework that should bring more search relevancy for all of us. I'm using some of the related search terms that they bring up when doing a search, very nice to have options that you haven't thought of. If you haven't tried it, do so, I think you'll like the organization of the whole site.

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Google browser and some more information on it.

This article from the BBC has some more in-depth information on the possible Google browser coming out. I think that people are making conclusions based on some of the personnel that have gone from the Microsoft IE Team over to Google. Of course all this makes sense, putting the pieces together like GMail and Blogger and using a possible flavor of Mozilla. What may be significant is that Google is probably a lot more agile company than Microsoft, so the possibility of them delivering a new browser product is good. They have all sorts of tools that could be useful for the average joe surfer, but will these tools make things better? Or will it only identify Google as a "me too" company?

For websites that are looking to get higher rankings, I don't think any of this has any importance except for creating loyalty in the future for Google. If you do well on Google, then a more solid community of users will be a positive for you. If that portal or community they're trying to build doesn't work well, then people might be looking for other avenues of search. Don't count Microsoft out. They are out of position right now, but they were with Netscape too. And we all know what happened, and who the winner was there!

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The Google browser, why it won't matter.

No, there is no Google browser....yet. But you would think that it's one of the most important pieces of software to come along in a decade if you read all the news stories. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine that Google is coming out with a browser sometime soon. It's just that all the speculation doesn't say anything about what they're doing or whether it's a good idea in the first place. I think that most people look at this as a good thing for Google and people in general. After all, Google has been dabbling with Gmail, now the GBrowser and potentially a desktop personalized search. It makes sense that as they put these components together, they might have a complete package to offer and solidify their position in the marketplace. But what makes sense may not be a good move for Google.

Take a look at the competition, they've been doing the all-in-one portal pretty well for some time. MSN, Yahoo, both have what I consider to be a somewhat outdated model. I truly believe people don't want all this garbage, just good search results. So by becoming like everyone else, Google is making themselves vulnerable to the competition. They already do it better, they already have it in place. Google doesn't. Instead of being like everyone else in the web portal world, they should just concentrate on delivering the best results possible and be known for that. By entering into the same arena with Microsoft and Yahoo, they risk becoming another Netscape speedbump for these giants.

I believe that Google is making the classic mistake of line extension, that is doing things in which you have no great experience, but offering them anyway. Because the thought is, when you're successful in one place, you should be successful in any place. It doesn't work that way. Google has been identified with search, not e-mail, not browsers, and in people's minds, that's who they are. The public usually pushes back on this kind of strategy.

As much as I like Google, I think that this compelling need to go head-to-head with Microsoft is a loser for them. If I'm like a lot of people, and I think I am, I prefer to have just a good, excellent search which helps me find what I need without all the garbage thrown in. And what about the Google browser? No matter what geewhiz aspects of it their might be, the main thing is people want a browser to do web surfing pure and simple. It's just a browser among many browsers you can use.

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AskJeeves doesn't own MyJeeves.com

I read this in an article today that AskJeeves.com, the search engine, does not own the domain myjeeves.com! How funny is that? They've used MyJeeves as an internal directory relating to their personalized search. I guess it doesn't matter that much, but one would think with MyJeeves being a new marketing thing, that they would have made a buy on that domain. It makes sense. I'm sure there will be some people who will be typing in myjeeves.com in the address bar thinking that they're getting AskJeeves. It reminds me of people who type in whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov!

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A Google browser coming soon?

Is there a Google browser coming soon? There seems to be some suggestion that it might be and I think very soon. To head off Microsoft's venture into the Google search arena, Google may be thinking about beating them to the punch. A Google browser would probably based on Mozilla. It's funny how Mozilla may come back to bite Microsoft after they vanquished what was left of Netscape some years ago. Although this may be a good idea for Google, it might play into Microsoft's hand. Remember that Microsoft won th last browser war and know how to take out small players and in this area Google would be a small player. People are very used to IE, so I think it would be a tactical mistake to play into your competitor's strength. The operating system and the browser, no matter what the lawsuits did, became their strength.

Of course, Google will probably try to integrate all the other things into the browser like Gmail, personalized search and maybe desktop search. It's going to get interesting as another lamb takes on the Microsoft lion.

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A Google Toolbar security problem

I was wondering when this type of problem was going to be found in one of these many toolbars out there. I guess it's not so much of a concern except for the fact that Google collects information from the toolbar. I'm surprised we don't here more about this type of hack with the fact that everyone and his brother has a toolbar. There are even some spammy companies that installed a toolbar on my machine with stealth. All of a sudden, it was there!

The whole thing brings into question whether toolbars are going to be abused more in the future. I think that any complimentary software will introduce potential security leaks. So it's more important than ever to use products from reputable companies that have security as a major component of their offering.

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Ask Jeeves Spruces Up for Search-Engine Fight

Business: NewsFactor Network - E-Commerce - Ask Jeeves Spruces Up for Search-Engine Fight

This is a good overview about AskJeeves and some of the changes and a little history of where it's been. When you look at the total picture, they seem to have a good base for the next round of search engine battles. I think this explains more than what I've been saying, as I've addressed merely the tech aspect of it. It should be interesting to see what the future holds in about 6 months.

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Online ad revenues should continue to grow.

Just when we all thought that competition couldn't get any more fierce for online ad buys, we see that revenues for ad spending will continue to grow. There is still a lot of demand for well placed ads that can deliver business where old types of advertising did not. This article does a nice job at looking at some of the overall numbers that we might see in the future.

This doesn't mean that website owners must lay down for whatever they can get in the ad budget. Some forms of online advertising are better than others. We will all have to think and examine more closely the ad offerings. Early on, places like Overture made sense because they had good targeted traffic. When they became too expensive, people began to look elsewhere. So as websites spend more in the future for advertising, they should be looking for reasonable buys and niche marketing instead os a steady blast of a certain campaign that may not deliver a return on investment.

The growth of paid ads will continue. Some people would like us to believe that it won't grow much more, but I don't think that's true. With people shifting from other more traditional forms of ads to the internet, the sky's the limit. It's a whole new world once again.

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Personalized search, what people will think

Personalized search is a term that's being used a lot these days and some of the search engines I've been talking about have been putting forth a historical personalized search. A9 and AskJeeves are using this and because they have come out first with this type of organized personalized search they are defining what personalized search is.

Many people once they see this will believe that this is what everyone means when they speak of personalized search, when that may not always be the case. The big boys like Yahoo, MSN and Google want a personalized search which will encompass your desktop as well. They intend to have something that will know what you want to search for before you search for it. By indexing your documents and desktop, they plan to deliver results by knowing more about you. Now this doesn't mean that the current crop of players that use a more manual historical approach won't be able to modify this in some way down the road, it's just means that for today, personalized search means what A9 & AskJeeves have put forth.

It's said in marketing, it's best to be first in a category of products or services. Getting into the mind first has more impact than almost anything else. These two companies have done that at a time when it's crucial to stake your claim for future searching. Look for leadership from these two for some time while others try to get something together that will compete. Both these companies are offering an interesting alternative, check it out.

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Ask Jeeves unveils a personalized search

Here is the new AskJeeves personalized search. It looks interesting and I haven't had much time to look at it yet, but I do want to give it a thorough test. What's nice about this isn't that they're indexing your computer and extracting trends you have in search, instead they are letting you save search history which would also include notes and this is all a part of MyJeeves. I like this much better than the other of personalized search, because although they do know about you search habits, it doesn't index your hard drive to extract data or trends. It simply is a way to organize you search history.

These are the two directions of personalized search, one which focuses on search history and the more intrusive indexing of everything you have. Which will win, I think something like the AskJeeves is the one that has the most chance. This is also similar to A9, but I like this better because they're not trying to sell me something necessarily.

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A new kind of personalized search from A9 & AskJeeves

There is a new kind of search tool which is a form of personalized search. Both of the search engines use a historical approach to search results. I guess I would call this category of search, historical personalized search. There really isn't anything new in the search results themselves but they both have organized the search process for people over time. Both will keep track of historical searches which may be helpful if you ever have to find anything else again. That's a point where a lot of people have a problem with search, it's finding what you want all over again!

As I've been trying AskJeeves, well MyJeeves on their site, the searches you've conducted are kept automatically as a historical search. You can also clear search history. You could say it's like a bookmark, but it's more than that. You're not bookmarking a site, but results. I imagine the search results will still change over time but you can see what you were searching for in the past. When signing up you get free storage for your history. Another nice feature is the ability to take these searches and save them to a folder. You can create any number of folders which could be for your personal searches, business searches and you can access them from any web browser. I think that AskJeeves has a very good interface, simple and to the point. It's more concerned about search and not getting information like A9 so Amazon can sell you something.

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A discount for using A9.com

I don't think it's any big deal, but A9.com is giving an incentive on Amazon of 1.5% discount. Everyone is reporting this and it's really no big deal. In essence they're giving away nothing. That discount is nothing. Before you go and do this, think about how much less privacy you have with A9, it really is much more intrusive than the other search engines.

I think so many search news sites are so anxious to report on this is because there isn't much search news and the way that it's gathered doesn't give you any insight beyond a press release.

The only thing that makes this mildy interesting is that they are enticing to use them with something other then good search results. In the future, will we see more search engines offering incentives to lure you away from your favorite search? If the market get competitive enough, we should see this kind of thing more often. And if the market for attracting searchers gets even more hot, then you might actually see some of the cost of ads go down too. I would hope this trend continues, because it wil be better for all of us.

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Search engine competition

I'm always interested to see how some writers call everything a war. Win the search engine war. Fight the war for your website and so on. There is no war, there is only the chance you have to apply yourself diligently to making your website as best as you can for people who might find you. If you look at this whole search engine thing as a war, then it means that someone must win and someone must lose. There is nothing that could be further from the truth. There are so many facets to making a website relevant that many people can suceed the way search engines are structured today.

Even the search engines themselves are really not engaged in life or death battle. It's good that there is competition in the search world. It's good for Yahoo and Google that they compete against each other. Left to themselves, or to be a monopoly makes for a poorer search engine for all of us. It's not a war, in some way everyone can win if they apply themselves.

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Personlized search, what does it mean for a website?

I've been researching the search personalization trend and one question that keeps coming up is what will happen to website promotion? In the past there have been some predictable ways that someone could get results on the search engine results page. That may no longer be the case as two people who search for "copper pipe" might get totally different answers based on their personal algorithm. This makes it difficult to design a website for just one type of search as has been done in the past. It will change the landscape of search, making it more important than ever to create relevant content and focused less and less on keywords.

For example, we may get to the point where a web designer makes a page highly relevant for a canoe enthusiast that wants information on TV's. What I'm saying is that the promotion effort will probably be focused around a type of individual rather than a type of search engine. By the way, you should never promote a website to be found by a search engine. Yes, you want it to find your site, but it must be because you have very relevant content, which is good for everyone.

Personalized search is going to change how we do web promotion and the way we search. The question is, will the searching public accept this new paradigm of search? Are they ready to relinquish even more privacy than in the past?

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Why doesn't Yahoo declutter their front end.

Almost everyone who uses Yahoo for searching almost always goes to the front page of Yahoo with all the portal junk. That's irritating for most people who want to plainly search their index which has very, very good search results. I think that the results you get from Yahoo are more relevant and make more sense by far than what Google offers even though I like to use Google. The only thing that makes Yahoo poor is the start page. Now I know when you do a search, you will go to the search interface which is clean, tabbed and very nice. So why don't they find a way to put that on the front page with a cleaner look for the whole portal. Obviously, Yahoo makes too much on the portal junk to just let it go, but if they want to be considered more seriously for search then they should change the look.

Clean, unobstructed views are in on the web with a clear focus on what you do. I believe that most people using sites for search desire less advertising, a cleaner interface, intuitive navigation and good results. There really is no replacement for these basic concepts. If they will do this, they will find more users and more website owners preferring Yahoo for more marketing in the future.

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News releases regarding A9, how silly they are!

I've been going through some of the news items regarding the A9.com search engine put out by Amazon. On most of them they have a title like "Amazon going after Google" or "Will A9 be a Google killer?" and so on. These are some of the most ridiculous headlines becuase if you read even one of these articles, you'll find that A9.com is powered by Google search on the back end! For that reason alone, it will never be a Google killer, quite the opposite, it's a Google enhancer. The only thing that they've done is added some window dressing to personalize your experience. They really aren't a personalized search engine per se because the algorithm for the search is not being adjusted for you.

Now, I'm not saying I don't like some of the features there, I do. Some make a lot of sense and they offer a little more that the standard search engine. But keep in mind, it's being offered to create more interest in what they're selling on Amazon which is a legitimate venture. I'm surprised more companies with the big bucks haven't come up with this same concept for their e-commerce offerings. But to say that it's the next big thing against Google is totally wrong.

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Dogpile changed it's name in Europe.

Dogpile changes it's name.

I get a kick out of this article that talks about how Dogpile, the meta search engine is changing it's name in Europe to Webfetch.com. It's funny, evidently the Europeans cannot disassociate the word Dogpile with poop. The name has a less vulgar connotation here in the US. It's sometimes associated correctly or incorrectly as people piling on. But when I started to think about this, a Dogpile is what it is, a poop pile of which I'm so familiar with like the kind I have in my backyard. I know I'm probably not right about any of this.

I think Dogpile fits. They should not have changed the name. The Dogpile is indeed an pile of steamy stinkiness just like the search engines who try to act like everyone's good time buddy, but only want to greedily extract money from you and your business. And the Dogpile search engine is the virtual yard where all these pieces of poop (search results) dot the landscape. Then we as searchers are the dog who anxiously sniffs around the area to find just the right place to go (selects a result). There are some areas more desirable than others and we generally like to go where all the other dogs have gone.

Yes, Dogpile is the right word. I hope it stays in the US market!

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Useless search news, why I don't post it.

There is a lot of search engine news out there and I don't post every little update from some company that has a PR need. I don't do that because it's not relevant to the person who might be just wanting some higher view of what's going on in the industry. I base an entry into my blog as how it might relate to someone who wanted to know more information about how search engines will affect their online business. That's the key for me. So this is really an edited search engine news site. I like to give an opinion and news that will hopefully help the average Joe out there keep the trends in mind and adjust what he does online accordingly.

Many people obsess about every detail in the world no matter what the subject is, but that isn't a good way to be effective. It takes an ability to trim things down to the base of what it is. There's that 60's term that does pop up once in a while, what it is man, what it is. I'm sure they were talking about their ure, but I'm tallking about simplifying all this so we can make better search marketing decisions.

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Amazon unveils Internet search engine | CNET News.com

Amazon unveils Internet search engine CNET News.com

This "new" search engine from Amazon has been known for some time as a beta test. It's made an official release. I've tried A9 in the past and found it to be useful on a couple of levels. The one thing to understand is that it is powered by Google technology on the backend which makes the natural search results no big mystery. It's basically like the old Yahoo relationship and to some extent this exposure must please Google. The article states that A9 is another competitor to Google but that's not really the case. All they've done is add some personalized factors to the search. In fact to get some of the history of what you've searched you will need to login and maintain an account. Now for some people who can't maintain bookmarks or where they've been on the web, this history might be nice to know in a pinch.

When you just use the standard search, it gives web results, then a column for image results. If you want some of the other features like Diary or History, then you will need to log in as stated before. One of the things I noticed during the beta phase was that they let you know there really isn't any privacy when you use A9. They get all sorts of information about you, maybe only when you use the A9 toolbar, BUT they do gather information about you to a greater extent than other search properties. Remember that this is run by Amazon and they are into collecting information about their customer base so they can better serve them or sell more products, that's fine. Just keep it in mind. If you're a person that wants more privacy, then this search engine may not be for you.

This is one of those search engines that really isn't a search engine. Well, it is, it has a search function but the technology is rented. I think a new name for this kind of search would be a private label search engine. I've been at companies where they slap their name on products which someone else manufactured. It's called private labeling. This doesn't mean the search won't be relevant, with Google backing it up, it will. They just want to draw a sort of community.
One thing they did add was a search function for book text which makes sense for them. That should help people decide on book choices. Overall, it's an improvement over the standard search and should be something that will be a trend in the future. There will probably be other large companies that will private label a search engine and make it look like their own too.

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Google personalized search, well not exactly.

If you've checked out Google Labs, you'll find a beta version of personalized search. All it really consists of at this time is place to check off some selected preferences on interest, occupation which will slightly change the results of what you're searching for based on those preferences. This isn't what the search industry is talking about when they talk about real personalized search. It will be something more on the order of what Blinkx is doing where there is an indexing what's on your computer.

Maybe this type of personalization may be the actual way this should go to begin with. It's simpler, easier to understand and doesn't have all the personal information ramifications that some of the new types of search indexing that everyone is proposing.

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Lycos, what are you these days?

I remember when there was a time when Lycos was a valued search engine. Have you looked at it lately? It looks and presents itself as a kind of people portal with almost nothing to offer. There was a time when Lycos was one of the major search engines that delivered relevant information. Not any more, in fact the search results come up with about 11 sponsored links before you ever see a natural search listing. Why not close this dinosaur down? It's irrelevant.

If they were portraying themselves as a people portal, then maybe that would be okay, but they're not, they want you to think of them as a search engine. I can't wait for the internet to be rid of garbage like this. These are the types of tactics that created all the problems in the late 90's. Everyone thought that these portals were going to be all the rage. They never were nor will they ever be. I'm convinced people want search results not a pageful of sponsored links, how bad is that. It's as if Lycos is saying, "Our results stink so you'll only see them on the bottom of the page." Disgusting. That's why so many searchers turned away from Lycos, although they still must get a significant amount of traffic to be able to play these games and get away with it.

Maybe they should try changing their name to UselessPeopleInformation.com, at least that would be honest. It all goes along with the people who promise all sorts of Internet traffic for your website, but it isn't relevant traffic. That's what Lycos reminds me of these days. I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings at Lycos as I'm sure they have some good people, but what kind of a show do you guys run there? What are you?

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Meta search, more to choose from.

Meta search engines are simply a one stop place to get search results
from many different search engines at once. Some of the most popular
ones are Dogpile, Icerocket and so on. I've found that I'm using them
more and more as the search engine landscape is changing. They provide
a way to see results across a wide spectrum of search engines.

I just saw that Dogpile is even offering a toolbar like every other
search entity. This one might be a little more interesting as there is
more to see when searching. When using a meta search engine, be
prepared for finding only the top sites. You can go deeper but most
people are looking for something right away and figure that if they
get differing results, they'll get what they want to find faster.

This type of search behavior is different from the type of searcher
that might use Google or Yahoo or MSN almost exclusively. If you're a
marketer then the meta search can give revealing details on how you're
doing in several areas of the Internet.

Perpetuating e-mail mediocrity

The Seattle Times: Personal Technology: - options quickly getting bigger, better in the wake of Gmail

I often wonder at the back and forth regarding every service that each search engine offers. This comparison and doing what everyone else does is becoming laughable. Now, with e-mail everyone is saying our storage is bigger that yours just as they said that about how many pages each search engine has indexed. Stop the madness! In my experience, people really aren't interested in these things as long as it takes care of the basic need. The sheer volume of megabytes for e-mail only matters when a person runs out of space, which in this case I don't think they ever will. It's like Mark Twain said "A satisfied need no longer motivates." It's as simple as that. People don't care about this storage issue as long as they have a service that they think does the job for them whatever that may be. And who has been using services more than anyone? Spammers. They love this. I have some customers that use these e-mail boxes so their regular e-mail won't be clogged with spam. What that means is this storage issue is really to store more spam in folders where a person can delete it. That's the real issue, giving people enough space because these services are deluged with spam which can choke out legitmate messages.

Is it good or bad to offer mass amounts of space on these e-mail accounts? Does it only perpetuate spamming or lead to a tolerance of it? Wouldn't it be better not to offer these kind of services at all? It's like the government coming up with programs that are a band-aid for programs that don't work. Why not just eliminate the program that's causing the problem? Anyway, the article gives a good overview of what each service offers.

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Blinkx beta had some problems.

Here's what I found as I tried the Blinkx beta personalized search. It
didn't work right. The local content indexing never finished, really
the program just hung there and wouldn't finish the task. At this
point I uninstalled it and then it gave me a message to ask if I
wanted to delete the indexing which I never saw any evidence of. I ran
it all night long and didn't get to the final result. I know this is
beta software and so I don't expect everything to work right. But if
the software takes a long time to index, wouldn't this throw some
people off who just want simple search? I think that's where a lot of
personalized search arguments miss the point. People want accurate
search results without all the hassles. If this kind of search is a
hassle like I had, then people will not be using it, maybe on the
obsessive-compulsives, which narrows the market for search greatly.

I did use their standard search for finding things on the web. It
worked fine and got results similar to Google or Yahoo, so that's not
really an improvement.

Once again, it's simplicity with relevant results that matters to
searchers. As far as knowing what you might search before you search,
the need for that might just be a bit overblown.

Blinkx, trying it out the newest personalized search

blinkx

I'm trying out the Blinkx search engine to see how it works and what kind of results it gets. From the way it's described it is the first of the personalized search engines that every search property is trying to come out with.

You have to install it. It's an executable program and then after it starts, it begins to index what you have on your computer as far as local documents. With all the information I have, I imagine that it will take quite some time to index. The software mentions something about taking 5 minutes, but it's certainly gone beyond that by now. It won't allow you to do any searching until the indexing is done. The whole point of this new search engine is to anticipate what you might be searching for based on what you have locally, what you have in e-mail and what you've searched for in the past. From some of the press releases, they don't have many pages indexed right now. In fact, upon installation, they concede that they haven't spidered many sites on the web and they give you a choice of a prime search engine like Google or Yahoo to be the web search of choice.

Once my indexing is done, I'll be checking this out in depth and reporting on what Blinkx is all about. It looks like I may have to reboot to get things from hanging which the Blinkx application has done at the moment.

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A test of this new service

I'm testing the e-mail to publishing of my blog.

Google Wireless Services

Google Wireless Services

Someone once said, Google want to do everything. That's true. This wireless search which really isn't ready for prime time is an example of that. No one really has a good wireless search so who more naturally than Google should have it. You can also submit a wireless friendly site to this index. Of course, they claim you'll be able to search the entire Google database, but we'll see how well that works. If you thought people wouldn't go past the first page on a regular site, imagine people looking through results on a PDA! I'm not sure about the service as I don't have a good wireless connection, PDA-wise.

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Another personalized search coming for AskJeeves.com

In another yet boring development, AskJeeves.com is going to be offering personalized search. I can't wait to actually see some of the first types of these as I will be using them to see what is happening with search results.

I think that the whole personalized search is becoming a worn out term already. It means nothing to anyone before it's even been seen by anyone. It's one of the strangest marketing ploys used by search engines. Usually when there is this much hype over something, it goes over like a lead baloon. Why? Because they are raising the expectations of the public too high so they are certainly set for disappointment. This is really a stupid way to bring what is supposed to be the next big thing to market. It reminds me of Java hype, XML hype and the rest. These never met up to expectations either and were not widely adopted.

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An article on how a search engine works.

I came across this good article wiith an overview of how search engines work. It's from the WLKY website, a TV website. It's one of the best articles I've seen that's written in plain english. I love finding explanations that make some hard concepts easy to understand. It has some good information and I'm going to keep it as a good talk when people I know want to know more about search technology.

There is so much to know regarding how search engines work, behave and spit out results, especially for those of us who live and die on the results that are found. This kind of an article is really a starting point for a good search campaign. What I mean is, before I start a conversation with a potential client, this mutual basic understanding goes a long way to being productive. I believe one of the problems with doing search marketing is that the client doesn't know enough about the whole search thing to start with. It's hard to make an informed decision when you don't have the most basic understanding of how search engines work.

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Almost everyone has news, making it no news.

I'm tired of the press release being a news item. I've mentioned this before but in the age of many avenues for news, the press release is clogging up the real pipeline for news. News is something an editor chooses, whether it's TV, radio, internet, blog or whatever. Most lazy editors are using surveys, polls, press releases and other forms of junk to accent their offering or should I say fill up their pages, no matter where they are. I'm floored by local newscasts that always run out of news and need to fill the last few minutes with something! It makes no sense, there is so much real news but the key word is lazy. People are too lazy to go out and find or report on real news.

The frustration I feel is the same on the internet. There is so much junk and a lot of times it's from the spammers always looking for some avenue for exposure. Once again as the marketing pros have told us, make your offering good and people will come to it eventually. The more trick you pull, the worse you look.

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Google updates and fear...

Whenever Google does an update to their index or changes the algorithm, search results change, sometimes dramatically. This shouldn't be any surprise to anyone, they need to update things from time to time to get the most relevant results as they see it. Of course, this strikes fear in the heart of a lot of website owners who depend on Google as a source of leads and income. This should never be the case!

Google is just one of many search properties, although it is the biggest one. Anyone who bases their entire online success on Google should have their head examined. If that's what the strategy is then you will worry over any little change that occurs.

With all the changes coming with the search engines, personalization being one, website owners should stop looking at how something does on Google but rather how the end user likes it. Is it relevant to searchers? Does it fill a need? When focused on these things, then no matter what breaking news comes down the pike, website owners should be able to weather the storm.

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