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Why don't we ever hear of better search capabilities, instead of nearly-meaningless hardware shifts.

November 11, 2004 http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php /3434261

This is a step in the right direction conceptually, but giving a smaller number of "seed sites" more rank influence increases the potential fallout from any rank cheats that may be found in the future (see Google Bomb and Google 302 exploit.

Google may be better off as they are currently leaving all sites initally equal in influence before the Pagerank calculation.

Then again, Google has a great track record for testing their ideas before committing them to general service...

Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Showdown

They have both been dispensing reliable information for years, and they appear to be the best in this category of websites.

For some time now, Search Engine Watch has provided a good editorial and comparison on various search engines. They focus on marketing topics, but also tend to talk a lot about the underlying technology, etc.

A recent roundup of engines is at http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/215 6221.

For some time now, Search Engine Watch has provided a good editorial and comparison on various search engines. They focus on marketing topics, but also tend to talk a lot about the underlying technology, etc.

A recent roundup of engines is at http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/215 6221.

These types of issues are discussed ad infinitum at SEW.. particularly in the forums.

That might be the point just there. AFP tried to contact Google before they sued them, but heard nothing (maybe Google thought it would be all forgotten..who know's) .. Now they DID sue, and got LOT'S of media attention for it...

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Don't get me wrong, I DO like google & their news service !!
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BUT, what if they'd won? I mean, Google news is only interesting because OTHERS create content for it. If a few (and AFP seems to be a big fish) refuse to apear there for whatever reason... and they succeed .. . other's might join them .. If AP/Reuters start a lawsuit for the exact same reason .. Google news would be, to say the least, 'less interesting'. Google's nice, but I've seen people here shout that being removed from Google will give AFP just a few months before they vanish .. If that'd be the case, why is everyone still M$ bashing instead of GoogleBashing? You can not seriously believe they have that much power, and if you do, why would that be considered a good thing? The 'do no evil' clause? Don't they have shareholders like M$ does?

Google is the main search provider on the web .. but still has less then 50% of searchvolume... The rest of the pie is almost MSN/Yahoo's and a few other's ...
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2 156431
(link from another /. article a few days ago, most probably a "Y! BAD! Google GOOD!" kinda topic..

It's not just about AskJeeves, it's about the entire stable of sites/brands/technologies that it owns: Teoma (search technology), Excite, iWon, MyWay and Bloglines. In that collection, there's actually more usage outside the Ask brand that inside it. Here's a recent snapshot.

The qSearch figures are search-specific but not necessarily web-search specific. For example, a search performed at Yahoo Sports would count toward Yahoo's overall total. That's important to understand.

For example, "channel" driven searches were reported by comScore as making up 58 percent of Yahoo's total searches in January 2003. The same could be true of other non-pure search sites, such as MSN and AOL.

Yahoo: Shows searches at any Yahoo-owned web site including those of AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Overture.

A site such as, say, searchenginewatch.com, would never have mentioned it.

FYI: here and here, actually... :)

A site such as, say, searchenginewatch.com, would never have mentioned it.

FYI: here and here, actually... :)

If i remember right yahoo used inktomi, google as their search engine. Until recently yahoo and google results were the same and if you look carefully at the bottom of the page you would see "powered by google".
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/ 2165081

Yahoo hasn't used any Google technology for over a year. Specifically, Yahoo replaced Google search with its own last February. Since then, Yahoo's share of the search market has actually increased. The latest figures from comScore show Google handling 35% of search queries and Yahoo handling 32%.

Hitwise for one doesn't agree with you, listing Yahoo! Search as second, before MSN for search visits. Add in Portal visits, and Yahoo is a clear first, with My Yahoo! even entering the list as number 3 (after Yahoo! and MSN). Combine the two categories, and Yahoo makes up about 45% of all visits to search and portal sites, with MSN second at around 18%, and Google third.

Looking at Europe, according to Nielsen, neither Google nor Yahoo Searchwere first for search in any of the major markets in 2003. That might have changed over the last year and a half, though.

Worldwide, according to Nielsen results from December 2004, Google had about 45% of the search market, and Yahoo about 38% when you include the Overture and Altavista subsidiaries (32% without them), with MSN trailing at 25%.

Hitwise for one doesn't agree with you, listing Yahoo! Search as second, before MSN for search visits. Add in Portal visits, and Yahoo is a clear first, with My Yahoo! even entering the list as number 3 (after Yahoo! and MSN). Combine the two categories, and Yahoo makes up about 45% of all visits to search and portal sites, with MSN second at around 18%, and Google third.

Looking at Europe, according to Nielsen, neither Google nor Yahoo Searchwere first for search in any of the major markets in 2003. That might have changed over the last year and a half, though.

Worldwide, according to Nielsen results from December 2004, Google had about 45% of the search market, and Yahoo about 38% when you include the Overture and Altavista subsidiaries (32% without them), with MSN trailing at 25%.

Hitwise for one doesn't agree with you, listing Yahoo! Search as second, before MSN for search visits. Add in Portal visits, and Yahoo is a clear first, with My Yahoo! even entering the list as number 3 (after Yahoo! and MSN). Combine the two categories, and Yahoo makes up about 45% of all visits to search and portal sites, with MSN second at around 18%, and Google third.

Looking at Europe, according to Nielsen, neither Google nor Yahoo Searchwere first for search in any of the major markets in 2003. That might have changed over the last year and a half, though.

Worldwide, according to Nielsen results from December 2004, Google had about 45% of the search market, and Yahoo about 38% when you include the Overture and Altavista subsidiaries (32% without them), with MSN trailing at 25%.

Google was caught filtering out neo-Nazi sites back in 2002 so MSN is just following common practice.

Microsoft is not a monopoly because anyone on Slashdot says so, but because it has been proven to be a monopoly in federal court.

So Google is not a monopoly, but Microsoft is a monopoly. That seems logical to me, given the facts.

As for your assertion that all companies do this (pay for ancilary products with the main product), that's not the case. Many public companies run divisions as separate profit centers, which must sink or swim on their own.

I've tried to put logic into my argument, and hope that it meets with your approval.

In most trades, when someone comments on SEO, it's almost always a quote from one of the founders of SearchEngineWatch, a subscription only forum and web site focused on "Search Engine Marketing." Reasearching the site, it really is amazing how many people and companies are involved in "optimization." This field is getting huge, and as the article says, just about every major business is doing it. FYI, most of the strategies involved aren't fraud (like farm linking) but rather how certain keywords and meta tags result in different search engine rankings.

Here's the original thread from June 2004: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php ?t=48

Here are the writings from Dr. Garcias own web site: http://www.miislita.com/semantics/c-index-1.html - see especially parts three and four.

No mention from Google on this yet.

I found an article that highlighted some of the hits and misses in Picasa.
Click

I agree mostly with the lacking of a hierarchical labeling system being a miss.
Also, I've used iPhoto a fair amount and I find Picasa a bit easier to use.
However, I'm hoping that the updated iPhoto will do better.

Besides, when are those numbers from? The June 2004 numbers from Nielsen shows 41.6% for Google, 31.5% for Yahoo, 27.4% for MSN (powered by Yahoo), 13.6% for AOL (powered by Google) and 7% for Ask Jeeves. In other words, in June Yahoo alone served more than half the search results. The Yahoo number also doesn't include Altavista, Alltheweb and other sites owned by Yahoo.

That's almost a flamebait in the original post, because it's so utterly unprincipled, ineffective and inefficient.

• Ineffective: Most importantly, it doesn't actually search a term index, but you can only search for file names (so you have to know already what you're searching for). There is no good desktop search tool for UNIX that I'm aware of (although I've used SWISH-E to index plain text document collections, but that's still different from a tool intended to index whole directory trees for full-text search.
• Inefficient: The find/locate commands don't use an index. People below have proposed updatedb, but I doubt that uses incremental index updating, which can become essential if you run it once per night on a large machine. Full-text indexing is much more resource intensive than just indexing file names, so you want to be even more sure that when tomorrows cron job starts, today's will have finished.
• Unprincipled: You could actually find a pipeline of UNIX system commands that implement full-text indexing and search, but that's not a good way to do it. I am aware of the power and versatility of the pipe paradigm, but search is such a fundamental (pervasive, important) problem that it licenses a dedicated development.

Ideally, there'd be a search engine which is part of the operating system, and Microsoft has recognised this and has been working on it for quite some time now. It will be a major selling point of Longhorn, and I predict it will dramatically enhance Windows usability compared to Linux.

Unfortunately, the open source community has not recognised the problem as a whole, but I'm aware the people on the ReiserFS file system have ambitious future plans to include features in that direction (but that might come too late), and I wouldn't count on the likes of Yahoo/Google to deliver the ultimate UNIX/Linux search solution.

--
Try Nuggets , the first SMS search engine -- text your questions, get your answers from the Web.

This is called revenge.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/041111-1544 33

The Return Of More Evil Than Satan

Way back in 1999, one of the first famous Google blips came up. A search for more evil than satan found Microsoft's home page as number one in Google. My past article, More Evil Than Dr. Evil, looks at the situation more.

That's no longer the case on Google -- but something similar has happened on the new MSN Search site. In fair turnabout, a search for more evil than satan there find Google as number one. Thanks for the tip via Kevin Fox.

For the record, more evil at satan at Yahoo doesn't bring up either Microsoft or Google. Articles listed do declare that Microsoft has purchased evil from Satan, however -- and that PowerPoint Is Evil.

pritty funny :)

but it seems like google started it several years ago.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9911/15/search.e ngine.ms.idg/
and
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/ 2167621
btw, it doesen't seem to work on google anymore...

Yahoo is back to using Google. See this story.

If you look at the search results from Yahoo and Google they have more than just a passing resemblance.

I haven't seen the data, just the WIRED article, but we should have a few questions about the research and the conclusions. How do percentages compare to total numbers? How were the results "randomly selected"? Were location, demographics or time of day taken into account? Maybe more people are surfing from their work, where porn is blocked by firewalls or would be deemed socially unacceptable. Maybe more children are online. Maybe more low-income people are online. Are AltaVista users really representative of the entire Internet population, or was it just the handiest data source? According to this, this and this, AltaVista has barely any search engine market share left. Could AltaVista users simply be more intent on more information-savvy results rather than porn, simply because they're only trying AltaVista after being not fully satisfied with results elsewhere? (...and porn users can get their fill elsewhere?)

And, without studying other search engines, you cannot say that all people are taking less than five minutes, and only looking at the first two pages of results. Maybe that's because AltaVista's results and interface suck, compared to Google and others.

The best these researchers can really say is, "This suggests further research."

I haven't seen the data, just the WIRED article, but we should have a few questions about the research and the conclusions. How do percentages compare to total numbers? How were the results "randomly selected"? Were location, demographics or time of day taken into account? Maybe more people are surfing from their work, where porn is blocked by firewalls or would be deemed socially unacceptable. Maybe more children are online. Maybe more low-income people are online. Are AltaVista users really representative of the entire Internet population, or was it just the handiest data source? According to this, this and this, AltaVista has barely any search engine market share left. Could AltaVista users simply be more intent on more information-savvy results rather than porn, simply because they're only trying AltaVista after being not fully satisfied with results elsewhere? (...and porn users can get their fill elsewhere?)

And, without studying other search engines, you cannot say that all people are taking less than five minutes, and only looking at the first two pages of results. Maybe that's because AltaVista's results and interface suck, compared to Google and others.

The best these researchers can really say is, "This suggests further research."

I haven't seen the data, just the WIRED article, but we should have a few questions about the research and the conclusions. How do percentages compare to total numbers? How were the results "randomly selected"? Were location, demographics or time of day taken into account? Maybe more people are surfing from their work, where porn is blocked by firewalls or would be deemed socially unacceptable. Maybe more children are online. Maybe more low-income people are online. Are AltaVista users really representative of the entire Internet population, or was it just the handiest data source? According to this, this and this, AltaVista has barely any search engine market share left. Could AltaVista users simply be more intent on more information-savvy results rather than porn, simply because they're only trying AltaVista after being not fully satisfied with results elsewhere? (...and porn users can get their fill elsewhere?)

And, without studying other search engines, you cannot say that all people are taking less than five minutes, and only looking at the first two pages of results. Maybe that's because AltaVista's results and interface suck, compared to Google and others.

The best these researchers can really say is, "This suggests further research."

Ok. I blame the american school systems for people who think businesses are there to give them everything for free.

The author didn't say he expected everything to be free. He asked if GMail will starting charging for some features, a reasonable enough question. You're just looking to be offended.

Do you really see Google sustaining itself on banner ads and advertising partners alone?

Given that 96% of Google's revenue if from advertising, I do fully expect advertising to remain their primary focus and income source. Google will obviously seek other ways to make money (they already do by selling / licensing their search tech), but I expect their core services (including GMail) to remain free. Free cool stuff gives them mindshare and hits. Mindshare and hits translate into advertising revenue. Google would never have succeeded with a short-term mind set that was willing to irritate customers for a quick buck. If they start, the next Google will see the weakness and pop up.

If Google indexed banned sites, then they would still be available via Google's cache.

Nope. China already blocks Google's cache, as well as most proxies they can find.

Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?

Not from their point of view. It's a too obvious a form of censorship. They want to maintain the illusion of freedom as much as possible. That's why they don't want Google listing these banned pages to begin with; it makes the censorship more obvious.

Back when Real Names was a business, I was working for a Movie Studio. The Real Names folks almost sounded threatening when they told us that we'd better snatch up our names before someone else did! Thankfully we just ignored them.

There are a few places where you can check on live searches, and there are a lot of advertisers who are very interested in the results.

http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/215 6041
is a site which aggregates a lot of the searches.

On occasion, I find it quite relaxing watching the queries scroll up the screen like some wierdly twisted ascii lava lamp, and the content of some of those queries makes me feel reasuringly normal by comparison.

Sure, they are undeniably the best search engine around.

In people's minds, perhaps. In objective relevance tests (where people don't know which results came from which engine) the big search engines are pretty similar.

The problem with google is that they absolutely dominate their market, searching with ad revenue.

I guess, assuming you think 40% "absolutely dominates" 60% (see search market shares)

The reason there's this much interest in Google stock is simple: love. Even you, who claims not to understand why people are interested, believes they are the best search engine and that they dominate the market. Very few corporations have as much good-will towards them from pretty much everybody.

GOOG may go up if the love continues, or it may go down if people realize that technology- and business-wise it's really not that unique.

• What kind of growth rate will Google see from the Adsense and Adwords advertising networks?
• How many millions of people will use Gmail once it finally goes live?
• What effect will the built-in search in Microsoft's Longhorn have on Google's traffic?
• How much will Google make reselling search to 3rd parties such as Google Alert?

Future successes in any of these businesses could make Google's current price seriously undervalued. And if some key ones fall through, it will have been far too high.

What is Google really worth? And will it be worth what it is worth today 5 years from now.

Considering Google made $256 million on $1.6 billion in revenue last year, I say they were worth a pretty penny. I don't know about the $20-30 billion numbers that are floating around, but I could see paying $12 billion for Google.

For 2004 about 96% of Google's revenue has come from ads.
Here is some more detailed info.
Because of thier desire for the IPO alot of financial info is now available.

• they could force all existing Yahoo! Mail users to use IE
  Since they have no such requirement for Hotmail, it seems very unlikely that they would do that.

• they would gain a significant market share in the search engine market (against Google),
  Maybe. MSN and Yahoo are about equal right now (link), and given that there is overlap between those groups, I'd be willing to bet that the group of users that use both yahoo and MSN is rather larger than those who use yahoo and google.

• they'd get Oddpost as a bonus (not that Oddpost is terribly exciting).
  I wouldn't argue with that -- either the first or the last part.

I don't think it's true that "Google won the mindshare a long time ago." As of Jan 2004, Google has less than 40% of the search market, nearly tied with MSN and Yahoo.

Unfortunately, all Microsoft has to do is to catch Google. If the quality is essentially indistinguishable from Google, most people will use MSN Search, since MSN Search will be the default in IE (and probably MS OFfice and WinXP soon).

As long as Google keeps innovating and stays ahead, they'll do fine. But, if they trip, Microsoft will catch up and trample over them, just like they did to Netscape.

They claimed that they would be MORE IMPORTANT than DNS, and that getting the right "RealName" was key to having a successful website. They kept coming around to my employer at the time (a Big Media company) trying to convince them to pay top $$$ for RealName keywords before "someone else" did.

Thankfully, they went out of business, and DNS is still here!

"The difficulty with [pay for inclusion] hasn't changed, as you can see using current material from Yahoo:

'Yahoo...today announced that it has created a more comprehensive and relevant search experience for users through the deployment of its own algorithmic search technology' --Yahoo Press Release, Feb. 18, 2004

Sounds like good news for searchers. But wait! What are advertisers being told about Yahoo-owned Overture Site Match, which feeds paid inclusion content into Yahoo's search results?

'Eliminate guesswork: Ensure that your pages are reviewed and included in the search index quickly and refreshed frequently. No waiting for search engines to find your site or guessing which content will be included.' --Overture Site Match product page, May 18, 2004

On the one hand, searchers are told that Yahoo has a comprehensive and relevant search engine, which you'd also assume means it's fresh. On the other hand, site owners are told that Yahoo's search engine apparently just guesses about what to include and may not refresh that content frequently.

Is it any wonder that Yahoo's gained bad press after unveiling its new programs? Either you have a great search engine or you don't. Trying to play it both ways simply doesn't fly."

See Google's chastity belt too tight (PartsExpress.com listing removed via SafeSearch because "sex" in domain name) and Google In Controversy Over Top-Ranking For Anti-Jewish Site (Google picking out Googlebombed results) for recent examples.

Nielsen's Top 5 Search Destinations for February has Google at the top with 40% of the audience, MSN and Yahoo tied for second at 30% each. In a long race it is never safe to count Microsoft out.

Here's another way of looking at it. Last year, Google returned about 79% of all search results on the web - a very impressive number. That's because both Yahoo and Aol used Google search results.

However, now that Yahoo no longer uses Google, it is estimated that Google will only return about 50% of the search results on the web - Yahoo will now return about 43%. See the before and after pie diagrams and numbers at Danny Sullivan's SearchEngineWatch.com article.

For those of you who have been depending on traffic free from the boy scouts at Google, who have deliberately avoided lots of different ways to monetize their main asset, have you looked at how you rank on Yahoo lately? And have you checked out Yahoo's Site Match program, where you pay BOTH for inclusion in their index AND PER CLICK THRU if anyone happens to find your site?

Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion on Monday January 19, @04:02PM

Posted by simoniker on Monday January 19, @04:02PM
from the ultimate-internet-moogles dept.
GillBates0 writes "According to a CNN/Reuters story, Google is developing a service to attach its lucrative keyword-based advertising to email: ''I'm sure Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle."

SearchEngineWatch says that "today, both AltaVista and AlltheWeb continue to maintain separate indexes, and Yahoo isn't saying publicly whether this will change with the introduction of the new Yahoo Search Technology index."

Overture is a non-entity in this field, as most people do not consider paid-for search results as valid when considering whether a search engine returns accurate results or not. Paid results may be helpful and relevant, but they were purchased to be displayed alongside specific keywords anyway. Big whoop -- that just means better salespeople.

Yahoo will not be a player in the search market (with Inktomi/AltaVista/AllTheWeb) until they merge the three databases together AND clean up their search interface. One reason why Google thrives is that they have what is generally considered the best web interface ever: one text box and a submit button. You can't get confused. Searching for a person's phone number? Don't hunt for the "People Search" page, just type in their name. Want to track a FedEx? Don't go to the FedEx Tracking Search Page, just type in the tracking ID.

To paraphrase: "One input box to rule them all. One submit button to find it. One search engine to rule the world and on the Internet bind it."

Also, what is the basis of a search engine?

Well, the paper from 98 that describes the PageRank algorithm (as used by Google) can be found here

Theres a simple explanation of various indexing/ranking schemes here, but if you really want to get up to speed on research into searching the web, try looking at some of the papers from the TREC Web Track

Happy reading,

Dave

Amazing thing about Gigablast is that it's a one man effort.

There are good reasons for a hierarchy. Control is devolved, rather than concentrated in a single body. Each country has control of their own TLD, (excepting those that have sold it off) and believe it or not outside the US they *are* used, particularly for local businesses. And so on to the following levels: a domain owner has the freedom to set up as many third-level subdomains as they like (smtp.mydomain.com, pop3.mydomain.com, etc.). I don't know how this would work with a single-word system.

Anyway, many browsers *will* try .com on the end if you type in a single word, or you can just stick your favourite sites in your hosts file:

66.35.250.150 slashdot