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The poor people that can't figure out that the BMW web site is www.bmw.com. To be honest if they can't figure that one out, then they can't be bright enough to afford a new BMW (can you guess the ones for Holden and Ford).

Top Queries: Navigational terms rule on the search engines, with top queries often those for sites such as eBay or Mapquest. Top term on Yahoo and MSN? The name of their chief rival -- Google! Ask is notable for not having its top list be dominated by navigational queries.

There is a website dedicated to search engines

Google now censors it's search results for things that the Chinese government doesn't want it's people to read, just as it has been doing the same thing to comply with laws in France and Germany.

Here is some more information:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-01-15-n50 .html
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050117-0906 38
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-cen sorship.php

So the question is, why are people so offended when Google censors for China, but think the same behavior is fine for Europe?

Check out one of the latest marketshare reports:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060124-1526 41

Looks like everyone is in neutral to me.

As of July, 2005:

Google: 36.5%
Yahoo: 30.5%
MSN: 15.5%
AOL: 9.9%
Ask: 6.1%
InfoSpace: 0.9%
Others: 0.6%

Soure: http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156431

Probably more recent numbers around, but I doubt anything's changed dramatically in the past 6 months.

See search engine watch for extensive
details, but the upshot is that the administration only asked search engines
for a week's worth of search terms data and the request didn't include
asking for anyone's personal data, just a list of terms and related search
frequency statistics. Almost all the other major search engines have
released the requested data and publicly stated that the data didn't include
anything personal or threatening to individual privacy. Google's refusal
probably has more to do with competitive reasons more than any privacy
issues.

Don't believe all the hype you might read in the Mercury News.

50% and less of searches is a pretty strange definition of monopoly. The numbers vary pretty widely, but I've yet to seen anyone claim over 60% for google.

http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156431

A hit counter is extremely simple and doesn't require a lot of resources in terms of minds or hardware. What they've done requires both.

When added to any link, it will serve as a flag that the link has not been explicitly approved by the site owner.

Once added, the search engines supporting the attribute will understand that the link has not been vetted in some way by the site owner. Think of it as a way to flag to them, "I didn't post this link -- someone else did."

the links in the article are being checked for relevance and content, but for some reason the link by the submitter is being given a free pass, so it should be rel=nofollow. do it to every single submission and no one can claim bias.

imo, the most relevant solution to this problem was glossed over in one paragraph in order to hash over solutions that no one will agree on.

... that had plans to acquire Opera?!

What the hell, now I can't post html links?

The Search Engine Watch article URL is http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/215 6221.

Don't know about that. Looks more like a Paris Hilton nipple than a crash site to me.

After all, aren't we more interested in searching for Paris, than life on Mars?

I'd also note it's not related to the ads, but the first search result.

Because http://searchenginewatch.com/ can get /.d

Otherwise, SEW is (a) free and (b) makes its daily bread by continually providing up-to-date relevant information. That's great motivation!

* optimizer - noun one who makes (something) as perfect, effective, or functional as possible * search engine - noun computer software used to search data for specified information A Search Engine Optimizer is one who makes (a computer program used to (thoroughly look into (something) in an effort to find (something else))) as perfect, effective, or functional as possible.

A search engine optimizer employed by the search engine company might seek to improve the engine for its owners. He would seek to make it more usable, more successful, and of course, more profitable. A search engine optimizer employed by a third party seeks to make that same search engine more usable (in finding the products of the company he works for), more successful (in driving custom to the company he works for) and more profitable (to the company he works for). Optimal is not an absolute. Optimal is a balance. The balance point where the results you wish to achieve are maximised overall. The cattle-breeder wants more meat from each animal. He may call himself a cattle optimizer if he wishes. His optimal aim might seem to be to make bigger better cattle, but 'better for whom? The cattle? No, he is balancing his aims of more profitable cattle against the harm done to the cattle in terms of health, creating a species that needs support to survive, the lifespan of the cattle, ability to breed, etc. Search engineers themselves learn a lot from SEOs. That rather proves that the term SEO is rather more apt than ever.

It was originally here:
http://99zeros.blogspot.com/
but now that just redirects to here:
http://blog.plaxoed.com/
Read more about the posts he made here:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050126-0839 16

The problem was that he revealed details about his compensation. Details that he then retracted(to me, indicating potential legal trouble if he didn't retract them).

For what it's worth, I had some contact with him IRL(in college) and found him to be a bit of a jackass. Egotistical, arrogant, self-centered, all that stuff.

Back in the day, there was the concept of Internet keywords which is basically the same as this. RealNames tried it and repeatedly tried to sell me RealNames registration for $100 per year. Eventually they gave it to me for free. I don't remember it driving much business.

Meanwhile AOL was getting $300,000 per year for certain Keywords(sm). Then as now it was a horrible idea. Realnames
folded after losing Microsoft which had hooked Realnames into IE.

Anyone remember them?

This seems like RealNames, all over again.

This has already been tried http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/ 2164841 by Realnames

http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/ 2165081 Possibly something to do with this ;)

Who's raving? Seems you're the one doing it. And even Search Enigne Watch, which both of the search links you provided says that while Teoma isn't a Google killer it does have advantages over Google. Now as for what I did say, I said that sometymes Google doesn't provide me with any links on a search query whereas both Teoma and Mooter will. You might but I don't consider stating a fact as raving. I also said I start with Google then use Teoma and/or Mooter when Google doesn't return anything for me. Hell, I even use About.com occasionally. For instance I sometymes do a search related to archeology, such as for Monte Verde, Chile which is the oldest known human settlement in the Americas. Using Google returns 4 results. About returns 19. On top of that About.com has a pretty good section on archeology with part of it about Monte Verde, Chile. In the end I'll use whatever SE returns the results I'm looking for, sometymes it's Google and other tymes it's another SE.

Who's raving? Seems you're the one doing it. And even Search Enigne Watch, which both of the search links you provided says that while Teoma isn't a Google killer it does have advantages over Google. Now as for what I did say, I said that sometymes Google doesn't provide me with any links on a search query whereas both Teoma and Mooter will. You might but I don't consider stating a fact as raving. I also said I start with Google then use Teoma and/or Mooter when Google doesn't return anything for me. Hell, I even use About.com occasionally. For instance I sometymes do a search related to archeology, such as for Monte Verde, Chile which is the oldest known human settlement in the Americas. Using Google returns 4 results. About returns 19. On top of that About.com has a pretty good section on archeology with part of it about Monte Verde, Chile. In the end I'll use whatever SE returns the results I'm looking for, sometymes it's Google and other tymes it's another SE.

Depends what you mean by "own". They are way in front, but they don't even have 50% of the total market. A big lead, yes, but heardly insurmountable.

Google's market cap is just barely under $100 billion. Cash is not a problem, and as long as they stay ahead of the game, it won't be.

Market cap is not the same as cash. But yeah, Google has plenty of cash right now.

Google's services are more compatible with more browsers and more OS's than Microsoft's are.

What services are you talking about? MSN Search is compatible with any browser and any OS, isn't it?

Oh look! Another asshat attempting to googlebomb someone via their sig. /. adds 'rel="nofollow"' to links in .sigs, making your feeble attempt completely pointless.

<RedForman>DUMBASS!</RedForman>

--
Anonymous Coward - Educating dumbass Slashdotters since 2005.

Our approach is to extract queries from the ongoing stream of closed captions, issue the queries in real time to a news search engine on the web, and postprocess the top results to determine the news articles that we show to the user.

As is common in the IR literature [18] the inverse document frequency idf of a term is a function of the frequency f of the term in the collection and the number N of documents in the collection. Specifically, we use the function log(N/(f+1)). Since we do not have a large amount of closed caption data available, we used Google's web collection to compute the idf of the terms. This means N was over 2 billion, and f was the frequency of a term in this collection. Unfortunately, there is a difference in word use in written web pages and spoken TV broadcasts. As a result we built a small set of words that are common in captions but rare in the web data. Examples of such words are reporter and analyst. All of the algorithms below ignore the terms on this stopword list.

There is an informative Times Q&A piece at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075- 1776999,00.html which says that the trademark GMail (or similar) has not been awarded in either the EC or the US, although both parties in this dispute have applications in.

If you really really want to know a lot more, Search Engine Watch has some information and links to heavyweight PDFs at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050912-1406 54

http://www.icerocket.com/media/

http://www.alltheweb.com/?cat=mp3&cs=iso88591&q=&r ys=0&itag=crv

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/215 6251

From what I can tell your slandering Baidu search capabilities and calling thems pirates when all they offer is music serch capacity. Google is not the only search engines.

>It's not the attitude of Microsoft that makes them evil, it's the business practices.

Look at the recent story with Google and CNet.
Look at the details of their stock offering and exactly who still controls the company.
And as the article mentioned look at the guy who got fired for joking on his personnel blog ( http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050209-0903 45 )

Google 36.5%
Yahoo 30.5%
MNS 15.5%
AOL 9.9%
Ask/Exite 6.1%

If you go to their Business Solutions, you will see that while Adsense is listed first, after that they have their Google Search Appliances, and Google Web Search engine.

While they were a private company, they kept very secretive about their revenue stream, but now they are a publically traded company, you can google for more info.

Here ya go. Basically, it seems that Google puts an extraordinarily high weight on link texts used to link to a document, so that a few hundred people linking to the Bush bio with the words "miserable failure" cause Google to think it's a top search result for those words - completely independent of the actual content of the document itself. The small number of pages involved is IMO the main argument against the theory that the google result accurately represents the "actual state of the web".

Many of the points made in the comments so far and what it would take to get accurate numbers for comparative purposes are mentioned in the Search Engine Watch Blog post from last Thursday.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050811-2314 48

I don't know a SINGLE person - not one solitary soul, who uses Yahoo! search, but I know scores who use google every day, for everything from engineering research to doing background checks on a date. Is ANYONE out there using Yahoo search for anything?

Hey, I don't know anyone who uses linux either! Or heroine!

You do know that Yahoo search is used for millions of searches every day, right? Here

I disagree with you on two points.
People who pay for Adwords primarily do so to get customers to come to their sites and buy products, they shouldn't care where the ads are displayed. Google have claimed that Asense advertisements have a higher click through rate compared with ads displayed next to the SERPS and many webmasters have said that the conversion rate from adsense ads is higher. If this is true then Adsense style advertising should be the prefered option.

As to Yahoos "way inferior" popularity, plenty of people disagree: http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156431 Google: 35%
Yahoo: 32%
Note, these are US market figures.

My real hope here is that increased competition leads to a higher pecentage of the click fee going to the publisher instead of Google or Yahoo.

This one claims liberal bias, http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archiv es/2005/05/04/google-accused-of-liberal-bias/

The truth is that Google news simply shows results that are more left and right instead of just stuff in the middle. I like to see this approach more than a homogenized result. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050520-1325 05

As far as staple feeds showing bias, well you can do an RSS search (called "Create a Section" on the bottom left) an add anything you like to your news feeds such as Fox News or whatever you care for such as a specific conservative blog. It's actually quite easy and simple to use. It avoids having to use a seperate RSS reader and removes some of the technical intimidation that RSS offers an average user. Just for grins I tried Shacknews.com and instapundit.com, both feeds worked like a charm.

"Steal someone's idea, and do a halfassed job..."

I have read that M$' implementation is better than Google's in some ways:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050523-1252 08

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05042/455971.stm

IIRC M$ has been in the map business for a long time.

here's another that says gooogle has 48% http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156451 nice graph, with results for many other search engines as well

In an ironic twist? Yahoo also released their Maps API today as well.

Anyways, if this is what they're about, the consistency behind all their new forays, then maybe Microsoft's already lost the battle to Google, but they're stuck on what no longer matters as much, which is people's relationship to the computer.

Yes, Google is gaining a lot of momentum, and simply because of their good reputation, simple marketing tactics from a certain large company doesn't seem to work alone to beat them; the redesigned MSN Search seem to have hardly even put a dent in the natural association people have come to make between web searching and Google, and in hindsight must've been a more or less total failure and waste of time for Microsoft.

Then Microsoft made another attempt but it remains to be seen if this service, still in vapor form, will be able to compete with Google Maps. Yes, it seems to look good, but what about its speed and feature set? World coverage in high resolution? Can't tell from the screenshots. If it's about the same as Google's, I think Microsoft will fail horribly once again. "Googling for maps" is quickly becoming as natural as "googling the web".

no, but i think it has a lot to do with this:
Official: Monier Is Going To Google

for more crunchy detail, here's a great Q&A interview i found with Shiva Shivakumar, engineering director and the technical lead for Google Sitemaps:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050602-1952 24

They don't even have an effective monopoly. According to http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156431 they only receive 48% of all searches.

The only part of that search that won't work is the wildcard. But you can use -site:florida.com to exclude a particular site. You can also do stuff like comment (ebay OR slashdot) site:com -site:florida.com

They are how the plurality of people get around, not the majority

Everyone's mixing everything with Google Maps from crime stats to apartment rentals (hey, put both of those together!). Google said they want to make that easier, so people don't have to hack it. Ah, but what about those who license the maps to Google. Are they cool about that? There wasn't a clear answer -- Google just hopes it won't be an issue.

If Microsoft thinks Google's a one- hit wonder, why in heaven's name do they keep following them??

It's also interesting to compare that data to the Nielsen NetRatings data. That data, from March 2005 shows Google (not including AOL and Excite) as having 47% of the searchs, and Yahoo having only 21% (not including Altavista et al). Again Google is far from a monoploy, but it is about twice the size of it's nearest competitor, and stable for the year. That's a significantly different result compared to the comScore data. The point is to be wary with the data from surveys.

It's also interesting to compare that data to the Nielsen NetRatings data. That data, from March 2005 shows Google (not including AOL and Excite) as having 47% of the searchs, and Yahoo having only 21% (not including Altavista et al). Again Google is far from a monoploy, but it is about twice the size of it's nearest competitor, and stable for the year. That's a significantly different result compared to the comScore data. The point is to be wary with the data from surveys.

"For instance, if I go to MicroWarehouse.com's home page, then click on the Z, it tells me information about the Palm V, one of the products listed on the page. I'm shown places to buy it and related products, as submitted by other zBubbles users."

http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/ 2167641/
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=z-bubbles &btnG=Search/

More information about GWA is posted here: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050504-1453 07 Also, browsers other than Firefox and Mozilla can take advantage of GWA if you set them to proxy requests over Localhost:9100 while GWA is running in the system tray. It should also be pointed out that this is apparently geared towards broadband users.