A break from blogging.

After taking about a week off of doing any blogging, I'm getting back to writing about search engine news again. I'm probably going to find some surprises as I just totally blew it off. But my little experiment causes me to wonder, has anything drastically changed or is search engine news like a soap opera where you don't have to watch it for a while and not much happens? I don't think that technology slows down, but does the bigger picture change slowly? I would say that it does. One of the aspects of search engines is the factor of public opinion which is difficult to understand. There is a lot of market research out there, but that doesn't tell the whole story. The bottom line on progress lies with human nature, what do people accept and what do they reject?

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Is Microsoft that concerned?

Is Microsoft that concerned about the Google search threat? According to this article, they might have to be. The concern is that Google's Desktop has changed the way people look at the total operating system environment. I don't buy it. The Windows operating system is essential for even Google to be a success. There is so much hubris right now with Google, but pride comes before a fall.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Articles on MSN being as good as Google now.

I've seen a lot of articles talking about MSN as if it was as good as Google. What a joke. MSN is just starting out and what I've seen is not impressive. yes, there are some good results but that's nothing new. I don't think any serious user of search engines would feel that some beta version of a third place search engine like MSN would tackle Google. MSN is so far behind the industry leaders Google and Yahoo that it will take probably two years to get even with them and where they will be. Remember that these competitors are not standing still while MSN launches, so the catch up is even more daunting to MSN.

But for now, let's all stop the media hype which is making MSN out to be more than it is.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Google adds link to Keyhole on their site.

Google has added a link to Keyhole.com on their site. They purchased keyhole just a short time ago and now they're anxious to add it to their offering. What I'm surprised about is that Google hasn't done a direct incorporation of the technology into Google searches somehow. I was expecting that at a later date. Perhaps it signals that Google is trying to keep press coverage high for themselves and trying to steal some of the MSN thunder.

It's a 7 day free trial and then after that you have to make a reasonable purchase of the product. Maybe that's the way Google is going to play with it.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Yahoo ups e-mail storage to 250MB.

Yahoo has upgraded e-mail accounts up to 250 megabytes of storage. This type of competition for e-mail is something all the major search engines must play. If they're offering free web e-mail, then storage megabytes will be important to people. With the size of e-mail attachments getting bigger and more spam stuffing our e-mail boxes, then this is a necessary evil. I say evil because having larger e-mail boxes only makes accomodation for spam. It's really sad when we have to figure in how to cope with e-mails we were never intended to get.

Google offers 1GB of storage, but GMail is by invitation only and they are not offering it to the public generally. If they did, I imagine there would be such a rush to get a GMail account that it would stop their system. I would imagine it will be some time before GMail is offered to the public, right now it's in beta. I've heard good things about GMail.

As it is, Yahoo has a good web mail service and 250MB should be plenty of space for anyone who wants a larger e-mail box.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Blinkx new version includes Smart Folders & P2P.

If you haven't taken a look at Blinkx as a desktop search alternative, maybe you should. They just came out with version 2.0 and it has some nice features and methodology that no one else in search has. Blinkx 2.0 has included Smart Folders which update information automatically centered around a idea or concept rather than just a keyword. This can be a great timesaver as doing search can take up hours of time just to find what you're looking for. With an automated find in a Smart Folder, you could have the information there when you want it without all the heavy lifting of searching and sifting results. Here's a paragraph of how they work from the Blinkx website:

Smart folders are created when a user right-clicks on a normal folder. This creates a desktop smart folder that then implicitly, persistently and automatically populates similar documents from your PC, news articles from the Web, TV, radio or video clips. In fact, anything from anywhere you specify can be added to a smart folder. Alternatively, users can explicitly create a smart folder by typing in a keyword, phrase or clicking on the document you are currently reading or writing. Similar information will then be added to the smart folder automatically as soon as it appears.

I think this is really cool and will simplify search for many people like me. I have to wade through a lot of information to find relevant content that might be useful to readers, so this is helpful and automates the process.

One thing I thought was odd about the new version was the inclusion of peer to peer networking. This was made famous by companies like Morpheus and are notorious for file sharing copyrighted material. Blinkx claims that the P2P tools are for copyrighted content only, but that will surely be abused. Maybe they know that if the P2P adopters like it, that will help speed the popularity of Blinkx in general. That could be a smart move for market penetration.

Blinkx has a different way of getting search results, more automated and more complete including aspects of desktop search and indexing I've not mentioned here. I'm going to try this new version, but the last time I tried Blinkx, it didn't work on my PC. Maybe there are some bug fixes that are a part of this version too. I love the concept of Blinkx and of any Google competitor out there, this one makes the most sense for a complete new search solution.

It's real for getting web marketing results, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

I'm not the only one cautious about Google Desktop search.

Here is an article in the Seattle Times that explains some of the problems when using Google Desktop search. Take a good look at what it does and ask yourself the question, should I ever install such an intrusive tool? Think about not finding the file you want and weigh that against how easy it might be for company secrets to be found, or a private conversation. Isn't our privacy online or offline worth the trouble of not finding an e-mail right away?

If you want to be able to search e-mail, use the fantastic e-mail client I use, The Bat! from Ritlabs.com. It gives you the ability to find text in an e-mail and I've been using it for years. You don't need these ultra-intrusive tools to get items found on your PC.

It's real for online web marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

The BBC does a search engine comparison, big deal.

Here's a search engine comparison done by the BBC that means almost nothing. With Microsoft finally entering the race with their own search algorithm, I guess there had to be a comparison. Big deal. This kind of comparison is near useless to the average listener or user because search isn't about statistics, it's about being able to find what you want to see.

This comparison is so thin, that it really doesn't tell us anything really useful. Another thing about the article is that search will not only be about the major search engines in the future. There are going to be many players with a search engine tailored to a certain type of searcher or group.

The only way that you can really compare any of these is to try each one for a while, a week or two and then find out over everything you've done, which one worked the best. Using one search term and testing each based on that is not reality nor how people use search. When people are searching for something, it's not about who has the most results or the most pages in the index or how fast it returned the results, it's about the results themselves. Did the person searching find what they were looking for? These benchmark tests are meaningless. In fact, most of the major search engines have very similar results, so it's like choosing Coke or Pepsi. Either way you're going to get the job done.

Have you gotten the feeling that search algorithms, no matter who develops them, will have a similar result? Does that mean that like the laws of physics, do search engines come to the same conclusions because nature demands it?

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

The general picture of MSN, yawn.

I found an article from ITBusiness.ca that talks about some of the problems that Microsoft is facing and where their search is at right now. I've been talking about mindshare when it comes to search and this guy speaks to what an average user might be thinking right now.

If your read the article, you will get the feel of a general lack of excitement when it comes to MSN search. This is exactly what shouldn't have happened. People should have been looking at it as a great new tool, not a third rate search engine, which is clearly what it is right now. This wasn't the kind of splash to make, mediocre. Remember that you only have one chance to make a first impression. It looks like they've spoiled their chance to make a big splash in the marketplace. Too bad, because Microsoft makes good product probably even better that Google or Yahoo, but who will be paying attention in the future when the official rollout happens?

Keeping track of MSN changes, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Mooter, simplifying search results.

Mooter is a search engine that was started in Australia a year ago and offers some good technology to sort though search results. Their idea is to apply an analysis algorithm to search results into clustered themes of sites. Using this the searcher will be able to identify the grouping or cluster that best fits where they're going instead of having to wade through all sorts of results. Here's what it looks like once a search has been done. Notice the clusters that are based on a theme the algorithm helped us on.



This is great for those of us who might do a search for something broadly but want more specific results without them all being mixed together. If you need more information on their technology, click here. I think that they do some crawling of the web, but most of it is results from other search engines. So once again, it's important to be listed well in the major search engine results even if something else is being done to them after the search is done. Make sure to check out their new age type mission statement, it's out there.

One thing that they do like everyone else these days is to have the front page look like Google. Will someone please try to be original in this area? Why would anyone want to look like Google anymore? It's like a schoolgirl dressing up like Madonna.



It's real web marketing from mighty, but humble Minnesota!

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

The Google killer headline, come on media!

One of the aspects of the whole search engine competition between Google and whoever, is the constant reference to war, battle, killer or cataclysmic in the media. Will all you media types stop using these words? This isn't a war or a battle, it's a competition for mindshare. A competition in which companies are trying to put forth the best service for potential consumers. This is about a serving others, not about forcing them to use a product. No one can do that in the free market.

There is a lack of imagination that writers have when a new search engine comes into the spotlight. No matter how small the search engine or how large, it's called a potential Google Killer. The headlines read, "Will XYZ search be the next Google?" or "Will XYZ search kill Google?" and so on. This is some of the most inane banter on the subject of what search engines do and where they're going. I've seen so many articles about this kind of treatment of new search engines and now it's Microsoft's turn.

All you writers out there, listen up. Stop using this kind of jargon, because it's meaningless. There isn't going to be any Google Killer for the forseeable future. Google has first place in the minds of searchers right now and unless someone comes out with something that is at least twice as good as Google, you aren't going to change their mind. I wish that people who write otherwise thoughful articles would not use sensational headlines but I suppose that's how they get attention. So in a sense, this isn't really a posting on search engine news, it's an opinion about how the media covers search engines these days.

Google is the Kleenex of search right now with Yahoo in a close second but for different reasons and MSN in third. That structure will continue no matter what MSN or Yahoo comes out with. Google may not even deserve it, but it managed to do this first. So let's stop the ridiculous headlines and look at the deeper issues regarding the big three and how they can be used to our advantage.

Keeping it real for marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Google vs. Microsoft & Yahoo, all similar.

As I've been looking at search results for the three major search engines, I see that there are a lot of similarities between them. All of them have several characteristics which make them lemmings of the first order.

• All three now have a page that is kind of like Google's, a simple search box.
• The results they all provide are very similar. Honestly, there isn't a lot of difference between any of these, maybe a slight variation of the same websites at the top, but the first pages are very similar.
• They all are going to provide desktop search.
• They all are providing news, image, shopping and the same tabs for other types of search.
• The ads on all three continue to minimize the natural search results, crowding them out in on-page real estate.

So the conclusion is that they are all very much the same, now that we have an official release by MSN. This brings me to a point that I've been making for some time, that third parties will be developing better search packages utilizing the technology of the big three. Meta search engines or search engine repackagers will be the innovators for new ways to gather information. The raw algorithms will become a tool to make a better search experience by others. Look at A9.com or Dogpile, Clusty or IceRocket, they are repackaging search to better serve people.

The major search engines can't even do what they do and will probably be the search feeders of the future, while others shape it to better meet a particular need. Being that their results are all pretty similar, people will look for alternatives to get a better cross section of the web at one time.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Clusty uses Wikipedia for encyclopedia search.

If you haven't taken a look at Clusty.com, you may want to look again. Clusty has a an improved interface with a choice of tabs that you might want to have for your searching. Not only does the front end look good, but I'm impressed with the nice encyclopedia feature they have using Wikipedia.org.



They return search results with a direct link to the article your searching for in Wikipedia. I was surprised by the depth of the encyclopedia entry. I did a search for Abraham Lincoln and got a wealth of information. This is a wonderful feature for a student doing research or for a business person who is looking for more information on a subject before meeting with a client. Getting a good background of information about an industry and talking about it like you know something is powerful in the sales arena. Another aspect about Wikipedia is that is has numerous links within each article about something else referenced there. This makes it easy to get a fuller picture of what you're trying to research. There are informational relationships that this great encyclopedia uncovers for you. Wow.

I like Clusty and I'm putting it in the stable of helpful tools. Each day I do more searching with different meta-search tools and new search engines. The major ones are somewhat limiting and always will be. These smaller search engines are offering more than just good search results, they're offering more resources, and in many ways should be the search tools of choice for more people. If searchers would just try these smaller search engines, they would find like I am that there is more to the search world than Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Semantics of Google's crawled pages.

Google made an announcement today that they have an index of 8 billion documents. They do this on the same day that Microsoft has released it's search beta. All this really is for Google is a change in how they count the documents. They really haven't had anymore documents than yesterday, it's just that they're now going to include PDF, Docs and other files as a part of their total count. They're just trying to deflect some positive MSN press.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Launch of new MSN beta search engine.

Microsoft has launched it's new search alogrithm as a beta test at beta.search.msn.com and the regular MSN site will continue to use Yahoo results for now. Here's some quotes from an article in the Seattle Times. From the article:

Microsoft's delay in entering the market is not much of a setback, Wilcox said. Google may have an enormous share of the business, but Microsoft controls Windows, the world's largest software distribution platform, he said.

Google is also back with the I'm bigger aspect of this whole search battle.

Google also said yesterday it had nearly doubled the number of Web pages culled by its search engine to 8 billion from 4.2 billion, immediately dashing Microsoft's claim yesterday that its index of 5 billion Web documents was the largest of any Web index in existence.

Even though MSN is coming later to the search party, the other competition is concerned. This beta release is worth taking a look at and seeing what is different from Yahoo or Google for websites that you might be concerned about.

It's really real marketing help, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Dogpile adds some new features.

Dogpile, the meta-search engine has added some new features in keeping with what everyone else is trying to do these days also. They are offering Yellow and White page search tabs and keep a history of previous searches. These aren't like A9 or AskJeeves where you need to log in. These are a simple previous search history that will be kept with some form of cookie. They're also showing realtime of what people are searching for right now, called SearchSpy. This is like what IceRocket has done and they seem to be doing the same thing.



The realtime search terms of what people are looking for can be helpful as you get an idea for how people search. It can be enlightening and shocking at the same time. Some people are so obsessed with garbage.

Another nice thing they have are buttons which allows you to search for more than just the web pages, but also audio and video. Dogpile has consistently been one of the top meta-search engines and has a lot of traffic as a trusted source. The only critical comment I have is that they mix paid sponsored results with regular web results. They do designate whether it's sponsored or not, but you still have to wade through pages to get past some of the paid ad results. They should separate these as Info.com does. It makes more sense and people don't see paid ads to be equal in relevancy as natural results. So why would they have them lumped together? Other than that Dogpile is a good search tool, but there are others which are better organized.

There is a little bit of jockeying for position in meta-search and they too follow each other with features as Dogpile has done today. For people looking for better web marketing, a paid ad campaign that might come up high in Dogpile might be worth it as they don't separate paid from natural search. Something to think about.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

MSN launching new search on Thursday.

Thursday, November 11 will be the official launch of the new MSN search. Here's the article.

The new search will not include desktop search which will be added later this year.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Mozilla Firefox browser, is desktop search coming?

According to this article in Network World Fusion, Mozilla may not only have the browser as part of an offering, but a desktop search as well. One of the people quoted states it this way:

Regarding integration with desktop search tools, the idea would be to offer Firefox users a choice of third-party tools for searching information stored on their PCs...There are a variety of companies that are working on that technology and we may just try and identify a way for Firefox to plug into a variety of desktop search engines and enable users to pick and choose.

Mozilla recently released Firefox 1.0 and has been gaining marketshare on Microsoft. There might be an estimated 12% of the browser market now using Firefox. As an open source software project, Firefox has been quite a success. It's a true phoenix. Out of the ashes of the browser war between Netscape and Microsoft, comes Firefox and bites Microsoft in the rear end.

I would guess that the third party desktop search companies are looking hotly to court Firefox because that will help them get a springboard into a growing adoption in the browser market. Nothing could be better for them in this all out battle over desktop search.

Real web results from RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

MSN still pulling search results from Yahoo as of this writing.

I just wanted to check to see if new search results were being picked up from the new MSN search preview and they're not. The search results are still coming from Yahoo as of this writing. One thing that was odd was when I did some searches on the techpreview search, I got several "no results" pages no matter what I searched for. It was taking a long time and then would give a blank page. I would guess that it will be shut down very soon as the new search engine comes out.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

New MSN search launching tomorrow?

There is some buzz that Microsoft may be releasing it's new search technology tomorrow as they have scheduled some press events. According to the Seattle Times, Microsoft is making an announcement at 9PM tonight Novermber 10th. From the article:

It is unclear whether MSN also plans to release its desktop-search software tomorrow along with its new Internet search engine. The company said yesterday it would not comment on its plans until today.

This might be the big announcement that we've all been wondering about. It looks like a loy of fanfare coming up today and they don't do that unless the news is really big.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

MeatNews search engine, gets to the meat of it.

Check this out, a meat industry related search. As described by MeatNews.com itself:

The main purpose of MeatNews Search is to locate websites that are important to meat industry professionals. MeatNews Search eliminates the frustration that many meat industry professionals encounter as they wade through lists of non-relevant websites generated by general search engines.

This kind of directory or search really isn't a search engine per se, rather a place to get meat news websites listed all in a convenient place. It's a trend that has been around for a while. It's makes sense to group an industry together to narrow down the field of general search.

I just like the name, MeatNews. By the way, many years ago I had the pleasure of doing a bid on a slaughterhouse upgrade for a contractor. After seeing that, I didn't eat beef for 3 or 4 weeks. It's not a pretty sight, especially when the eyeballs of the cows are staring at you from the meatless skull. Somewhat frightening.

Real as web marketing gets, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Search engines and full disclosure on paid ads or inclusion.

Here's a press release from Consumer Reports WebWatch that talks about the lack of disclosure that search engines have regarding paid advertising or paid inclusion. It says that consumers could be misled not know what was a natural search or what was a paid search result. I was disappointed to see that meta-search engines were not clear on this either. I think it would be good for a better disclosure, because paid ads don't always give the consumer what they want and should be clearly marked.

From the press release:

"Consumers need to understand and remember that many search engines more closely resemble the Yellow Pages or classified ads than a library, where information is categorized according to subject, relevance and other objective criteria," said Beau Brendler, WebWatch's director. "Search engines are making tons of money selling advertising, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the majority could do a much better job making clear what is advertising, and what is not." The report also notes that some search engine marketers and many advertisers actually count on consumers confusing paid advertising in the form of search results, with real results.

Real marketing results for the web, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Does anybody really understand Snap.com?

Snap is a different kind of search engine that is trying to deliver results in a new way. Here's how they are getting results explained from their website as a new feature:

The second new feature is USER FEEDBACK. We take into account what happens AFTER people click on search listings at our site AND others, to use as feedback on the relevance, and get you better results up at the top. This helps you avoid dead end searches, and saves you time. We also can figure out, based on millions of users, what people are really looking for so we can put custom formats on search pages where previous users signaled their “intent” by their follow-on searches.



So the idea must be a democratization of search results. So the behavior of what you do after you find a website will help determine rank. They're saying that the more searches that are done on their site, the more accurate the search results will be. This search engine has some really marginal results right now. Try a few of your favorite terms and see what you get. I'm seeing a lot of blog material that is unrelated to a subject and some general information sites that were not relevant at all.

So instead of an algorithm determining search rank, Snap will do it through how users click through. This may be good in the future, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be good for someone looking for a bit of information. If all you get are the most popular sites, then you're going to have to dig to find something other than the beauty contest winner. I think that it sounds good to let people decide, but it has it's flaw of popular sites dominating without good variety. It's similar to what I found on a shopping meta-search engine last week. The companies involved in the local shopping experience were only national chains!

So far, the amount of searchers they've gotten to use it are relatively few. One of the things that they brag about is their open statistics, but who cares? Searchers are into relevant results finding what they want to find. They don't care about a company's revenues, transparency of operation or anything like that. They want a good search result and so far Snap doesn't have enough user feedback to deliver it, yet. Search algorithms are still the best way to get good search results and will continue to be so in the future.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Alternate search engines, some statistics.

With all the press releases over alternate search engines, I wondered what effect they have on the searching public. Are people trying these new alternatives to the majors like Google or Yahoo? For the most part, they aren't. It's too bad because there are some excellent search engines, especially some meta-search engines. These are the type that return the results of several search engines at once.

According to this article, there are very small numbers for alternate search choices. The major search engines are getting most search traffic and will probably continue to be for some time to come. It's even going to be difficult for Microsoft to break the hold that Google and Yahoo have right now.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Some statistics on local search to take note of.

Here are some local search statistics in an article from eMarketer. The local angle of the internet is a largely untapped market for anyone who is promoting a product or service. Many people search online hoping to find a local company to do business with. People don't mind buying from a distance, but many prefer to buy locally and the search engines are trying to capitalize on this much to the chagrin or the yellow pages.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Better & more desktop search choices.

In this article from Network Computing, the author takes a quick look at the Google desktop and gives us his preference for what he likes. The more advanced desktop search tools were preferred over Google's. There are more choices in this area than just Google and more will be coming online soon, not the least of which is MSN. No one owns a monopoly on any kind of desktop search and after what Google released, I'm glad that's there's going to be a healthy dose of competition.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Topix.net, the best news site online.

For a while I've been using Google News or Yahoo and then started to use Info.com as a good meta-search offering. What I saw on the page there was that the news was being supplied by Topix.net. Naturally I went over there to take a look at the offering. I know it's probably been a hot site for a while, but it's new to me.



I enjoy how they have it laid out with some of the best navigation for looking up news. When something is this good, why would anyone want a newspaper? Of course, there would be editorials missing, but for just getting raw news without all the extras, it's a newsjunkie's dream. The other news sites are great but the amount of news sources are greater with Topix.net. There was another thing I liked about it, the local news was as simple as putting in your zip code, and you get all the local news for even a small town.

There are going to be so many choices in the future when it comes to search, so don't think you have to rely on the majors only. Topix is one of those sites that shows that even smaller companies can deliver great search results. The changes coming to search are probably going to change the way online business is done. There is going to be more local emphasis and search tools like Topix really make it possible.

It's really real web marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Yahoo search shortcuts, a reference.

Yahoo has some great ways to get information faster by using search shortcuts. Here is a page at Yahoo that gives all the various search shortcuts which can make your life easier. It's quite extensive and when you know how to use it for things you do often in search, it's great.



Google has these types of functions too but I don't think they have the amount that Yahoo does. For instance, if you want to know the time in Oklahoma City, them just type in "time in Oklahoma City", it's that easy for a number of these shortcuts. Gee this would have been nice to have in college 20 plus years ago. To have some quick facts and reference available so simply would have saved a ton of research time. Well, the internet would have been nice for a lot of research in general back then. There were only a very, very few people who may have had an Apple II or something like it. We still typed term papers, researched at the library exclusively, and tried to think things through so we could avoid editing errors. These days, with this kind of power at the desktop, it's almost like cheating!

Keeping it real...for marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Excite.com, an AskJeeves company, why it's a good idea.

If there are any people that use Excite.com as an internet portal, some may not realize that it's a part of the AskJeeves.com search company. I frankly didn't know this because there have been companies that sell a paid inclusion package into Excite, and I'm going to look into that whether that is a waste of money. What is smart is that AskJeeves keeps the portal separate from the search technology or raw search page at AskJeeves. Whoever intended to keep them apart made a good move, because portals while still in use, are becoming bothersome. The Excite web portal is still highly customizable and for those of you like portals, Excite works just fine.



With a search engine like AskJeeves that is an excellent source of search results, why don't they dump the portal? They could throw more money into R&D for a better search engine. Not that they don't, but focusing on what you do best is always a good corporate strategy. That's why so many of these search engines, even Google, are spreading themselves too thin, too wide. You can't be all things to all people and no matter how many companies make that mistake for all to see, others will still do it. Focus, focus, focus. What they do best and how they can make it better is what search engines need to do.

I suppose it will never stop because human being believe that just because they succeed in one area, that they can apply the same principles in another, even one they know little about. Sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn't. What happens more often than not is that companies get some revenue stream from something like an Excite, so they can't dump it and the revenue. So it keeps on going long after anyone is "excited" about it.

Real opinions on web marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

ixquick.com, another meta-search engine

Although I believe it's been around for quite some time, ixquick.com is a good meta-search engine that delivers results from many of the most popular search engines. What makes it a little different is that it returns results in a ranking based on how many search engines have a high listing for that result. They show a number of stars next to the result which matches the number of search engines that list it. I'm not sure that's what it does, but it seems to make sense from what I see. The results have good relevance and the sources are excellent and it's fast!

One of the things that I don't like about it what I see from every search engine these days, a crowding of paid or sponsored ads at the top. Take a look at this screen shot. These are results for the search term "laptop computers". Everything in the visible top fold of the page is paid ads. You have to scroll down to get natural search results. At the top, there is a sponsor from ixquick, then below that sponsored results, probably Google and to the right also.



When doing a search for something that isn't so competitive, like the term "Candles", you get a result like this.



It still has the overcrowded look of a typical search engine these days, but you can start to see the natural search results with the star rating next to them. Though the results are great and I like using meta-search like this, the paid ads are just a killer. It would be refreshing if a search engine would put these at the bottom of the page instead of the top. But they get paid when someone click through and that isn't going to change. There has to be a better way to handle paid ads.

Overall I like ixquick.com for all the sources and good search results it provides. I'll use it and continue to ignore the paid sponsorship. The only time I ever click on paid ads is when I'm desperate and that doesn't happen too often.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Yahoo is doing desktop search soon.

Yahoo is working on a desktop search tool like Google's. The competition in areas like this are always good but will anyone get the point of the privacy issues? I hope that Yahoo takes a closer look at the privacy concerns before they develop another "me too" product.

In this article from Reuters UK, this is what is said about Yahoo desktop search.

"Yahoo is working on it. In short course, we'll have a desktop solution as well," Semel said at an investment conference in Scottsdale, Arizona which was broadcast over the Internet. He did not say specifically when Yahoo's desktop search program would be released.

I'm starting to think that no one really had much in place at Yahoo regarding desktop search. Maybe they don't think it's that important. I don't know about you, but I won't install any desktop search. Have you heard of anyone installing it? No one in my circle of friends or business associates has done this. Is this a viable product offering or is this something that search engines are going to do just because everyone else is? Instead of wasting money developing something people are skeptical about, why not make search engine relevance even better? There is always room for improvement in the search engine indexes. There is so much search spam, why not work on cleaning out the trash in Yahoo or Google. That would be more valuable to the average searcher rather than trying to find that lost recipe on their computer.

The reality of web marketing for people, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

What do Russians use as a search engine?

I stumbled across this fact about which search engines the Russian people use. Well, there are two ahead of Google and if I could read Russian, I would look to see why Google is number three. It may be that their search engines are picking up things that might be lost in the translation. This link to the statistic tells about Yandex and Rambler which have huge traffic share. Google comes in a distant third. What I do find amusing is that these search engines have the basic Google-like interface. It seems as that is the way everyone is going!

If there are any Russian people or anyone who speaks Russian, I would like to know why these search engines are readily used and are their search results more relevant than Google or Yahoo. Russia has many great software writers for sure and I would be interested to know more about these search engines.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Yahoo Buzz and cultural woes.

I'm not a big fan of web portal stuff, but I do like to see what other people might find interesting. Yahoo Buzz is an area of Yahoo that talks about what other people are looking for. There are also places in this area where you can view what the most popular search terms are for a subject tab. It also tells you which ones are on the way up and which ones are on the way down. It even shows the most popular searches for countries too.



It might be helpful to see that the most popular searches are for some of the most banal stuff that you could imagine. None of it really matters. I'm still surprised how much Britney Spears still comes up in all this! What's wrong with our culture?

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

A talking search engine, Speegle.

I see that there is a talking search engine being launched soon and the market it seems to be reaching blind, visually impaired and the too lazy to read search results people. I'm not sure that this has a great value as you can skim through search results much faster than having them read to you. I believe that it's great for people who have eyesight problems but most of those people who have computers have probably overcome that already with their own personal solution.

I'm not sure that this has much value unless search results are spoken by just using a title. Of course the article mentions that the search engine will have paid advertising. What a surprise! Every new search engine has an ad component. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and knows it can be lucrative. It's as if people are coming up with marginal search engines just to launch an advertising program. Another problem I found with Speegle is that it too looks like a Google page. Will all you Google wannabe search engines quit looking like Google. Be original and come up with something creative yourselves. Remember that's what Google did in the first place and who wants to look like them anyway? See for yourself.



Once again, there is no big deal in a talking search engine except for a very small percentage of people. Now the blind can be just as irritated with paid ads as the sighted world is! Lucky them.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

AskJeeves introduces an local search tab.

AskJeeves has created a local search page which gives searcher the options for finding something in your area. It's a nice interface and gets some good results for local business. What I like about AskJeeves is they have a clean look that doesn't look like Google. It's easy to navigate as always. AskJeeves understands search and isn't trying to create a portal and that's refreshing.

I haven't been using AskJeeves as much as the other search engines, but I really should. They do a lot of things right and get relevant results.

They've gone down the local search road like everyone else these days. They must or become irrelevant.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

A one day break of search news.

For those of you who read this news line, I'm sorry, but after the election I had to take a break. There was a late night the other night as I care about what happened in the election. I'll make a couple of comments about it here that really don't have much to do with search engines, but here they are anyway.

What really is tiresome is the talking heads in TV trying to analyze everything. The best thing to do was to watch the results with the sound off and make your own conclusions. My gut feeling about the election was right, but it was like to watch people try to analyze it. What you realize is that just because a person can read a teleprompter, that doesn't mean that they have good analytical skills or wisdom.

Wisdom is something that cannot be gained through just reading a book or knowing a lot of facts. That's the mistake that many media types make. They think because they know a lot of peripheral information, they can synthesize it into a meaningful explanation of what's going on. The word "reporter" comes to mind, and that is what they are. Think about that word for a moment. A reporter is someone who gives a report, but doesn't create anything. So why should we expect people who report to do anything greater than state facts?

With the advent of good search technology, we have a reporter, the internet, that can give us the facts and then we can make informed decisions like never before. The intelligence is takes to make something coherent out of just facts is what people do. With search engine tools like we have today, it's now easier to do.

It's real marketing for the web, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

The internal pop-up on some web pages.

No matter what you do to deter certain types of advertising, there will be ways to work around the pop-up blocker on your browser. I've noticed that some sites, especially tech sites seem to be using what I would call internal pop-ups. There is an ad as you open up a page and it grows in size then it goes away after a period of time. So many people think that this kind of blocking is effective, but not always. So what good will it be in the future to even have the toolbar if it can't get rid of the internal pops? These types of ads have been around for some time and there's nothing really new about it, it's just irritating.

When will companies understand that some of this has a backlash factor? I won't use the sites that do this. It's imposing upon that website experience. When ads are strangling a website, it actually will have an effect of people going away. Too much is too much. Be careful on your website about having too many ads, it offends.

A different way of looking at search marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Google vs. Microsoft, the battle explained.

Here's a good overview of what these two companies are concerned about. It's written by John C. Dvorak and I like how he frames what's going on and what that may mean for PC users.

It's seen as a battle, but why does it always have to be seen that way. There is so much more to what's going on than a fight. I'm concerned about one aspect of a Google future being more like Netscape hoped to be in the past. They wanted to eliminate the Microsoft OS and have all applications be netcentric therefor needing no OS yourself. I don't know about many of you, but I'm not willing to give up that kind of control to companies that may or may not have our best interest in mind. Make your technology choices based on what is good for you and what is good to maintain control over your computer. You bought the thing, you have an absolute right to control what's on it. I like that all these companies couldn't wait to get away from a node network and now people like Google want it to be more like the late 70's all over again.

Anytime I'm given the choice as an American, I go for personal liberty. Technology has the potential as mentioned in this article briefly that we may have a choice down the line.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

A complaint about Google Desktop.

This article by Scot Peterson at eWeek talks about how Google Desktop could be a problem in the personal lives of people. Not so much for what it indexes, but that is part of it, but that it starts to take over the computer and slows everything down. From the article:

After the initial indexing, which takes several hours, the application will continue to index all new files that contain information that could be searched. It's supposed to do that while the machine is idle, but in my experience, the overhead created by Google Search turned my daily work into a daily grind. Once a killer app, search is about to become a time killer, crossing the line from helpful utility to intrusive application tied into everything.

Do you remember how well computers ran before virus scans and firewalls? They were quick and you had less problems. I know we must have these programs now, but if people were good it wouldn't be needed, like a lot of other wasted motion in life.

That's the problem with desktop search and I don't think that this will become a pervasive computer accessory once people hear a few horror stories. It's funny how tech people that invent stuff like this have no moral compass. It's as if they say because we can do it we should. There are a whole host of technology that comes under this banner of wreckless development. It's as if we don't think about the consequences to our society before we build tools that could cause problems. Where is the ethics, the morality of the technology industry? Shouldn't someone, a CEO perhaps ask if this is something a company should even get into regardless of the economic effect? I'm all for companies making money, that's fine, but your moral convictions should enter in the discussion instead of being left at church on sunday morning.

Nothing but marketing for real results, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Are local newspapers concerned about local search? You bet.

I found this article in Newspapers & Technology which describes some of the new scenarios regarding traditonal newspaper ads and a new mix of local distribution and online ads. I've often said that this local search will be changing many companies in the fuuture and you can bet that newspapers are worried. They make a lot of money from advertising and they know that the low entry level for online ads is much lower than theirs. Declining readership also plays a part in this too.

Are traditional advertising providers scared of these developments? The answer is yes.

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.

Google desktop getting a closer look now.

The Google desktop search is finally getting a closer look from people in the media. People are starting to ask the question, is this a little too good. The idea of your computer having a photographic memory sounds nice on it's face, but people are beginning to see there are some shortcomings to that. The idea that no e-mail will ever be truly deleted, that bank transactions with information will show up on historical cached pages. These are the kinds things that could be very bad.

I'm now curious of what the adoption rate for Google Desktop has been. Clearly Google needs to refine the desktop search to do some things and not others. I think they say that you can turn off certain features, but will the average user actually do that? Are there legal ramifications for Google if personal information slips or is retrieved by someone other than the owner of that material?

In my humble opinion, I think Google should come out with a lite version that doesn't scour everything by default. Maybe there should be a web version that only handles web history or an email version and so on. The way it is now is becoming more intrusive than most people probably wanted it to be.

It's real for web marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.