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January 30, 2004

The Orkut/Data Connection

Jeremy Zwadony nails a key reason Google needs Orkut - it's the data...Yahoo, MSN, AOL all have boatloads of data about their users. For future search models like local and personalized advertising, and for user lock-in, this kind of information is critical. So far, Google has very little data on its users. Orkut could solve that, for a portion of the user base...if it would work, that is. It was offline (unintentionally) most of yesterday...wonder if they are ruing the .net decision...

January 28, 2004

Corporate Reputation Management Engine

So perfect is this, that I must simply quote from the release, and let it speak for itself. SEO has come to PR!

Converseon Launches First-of-Its-Kind Search Engine Reputation Management Service

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 28, 2004--

"SERMA(C)" Combines Innovative Content Management Techniques Together with Sophisticated Optimization Skills To Help Companies Better Manage Their Reputations and Brand Online
 
Converseon, a leading digital communications agency, today announced the global launch of the industry's first search engine reputation management service (SERMA) designed specifically to help companies manage their corporate reputations in search engines. SERMA was created in response to the increasingly important role search engines have in determining a company's reputation.

"Search engines have become the primary resource for journalists and other constituents to gather information on a specific company," says Robert Key, President & CEO of Converseon. "Yet, while many companies may pay close attention to how the traditional media portrays them, most companies are completely unaware of what information is appearing when search engine users type in a company's name." He points to examples like McDonald's and Nike, where users typing in the companies' names on Google are exposed to highly negative information, including McSpotlight.org, a "protest site," and the "Boycott Nike Homepage."

Booble Hears From The Lawyers

Predictable, as I said earlier, Google has sent a bigfoot letter to Booble. Full text here.

Interesting Twist: Google and WhoIs LookUps

logo-netsol.gifAndy Beal points out in his blog that Google has been blocked from performing Whois lookups by Network Solutions. The "Whois" feature (which lets you find out who owns a web domain) was one of many added recently by Google in its continued quest to "make the world's information accessible." Alex S. at BizWeek pointed out in a piece blogged here that there's a business model behind this intent (I'll take disintermediation for $500, thank you very much). We had a back and forth about it in the comments as well.

In any case, it's significant that Network Solutions is pushing back. Andy, who writes in large part to the SEO community, comments:

There's some hypocrisy here. Google publicly chastises anyone who run ranking reports on the Google Index, claiming that it is a drain of their server resources. Yet they seem quite happy to launch a service that has the same impact on Network Solutions...

As I think Andy implies, I'm not sure this has anything to do with drains on servers and bandwidth. I think it has a lot more to do with who owns the customer. Network Solutions knows Whois is a major draw for customers, they use that draw to convert Whois lookups into paying domain registrants. In this particular case, the argument that Google was, in effect, stealing their customers at the point of conversion holds some water. If I do a Whois lookup on Google and see a bunch of ads for registrars that are not Network Solutions, well.....that ain't good for Network Solutions. And if I'm Google, and thinking about doing registration at some point (like Yahoo does now)....well, having this feature didn't hurt. Network Solutions had to do something.

I wonder if others - airlines, UPS, etc. - will follow suit.

On Marketing Marketing

It's not easy to market marketing to marketers. David Galbraith points out a funny contradiction...

Another SE Chart

This one from SE consultant Bruce Clay. It includes overviews of all the majors. If you stare at this for more than five minutes, ping me. We have at least that much in common. (Thanks, Kottke).

January 27, 2004

Gigablast Connects Wayback...

Gigablast, still the work of one mad scientist (Matt Wells), now directly links search results to the Wayback Machine (link via Resourceshelf). This is pretty cool - I've always wondered why other engines don't crawl history, so to speak, or at least offer it as an option....

Google Clears Sarbanes-Oxley Audit, Next Stop....Wall St.?

Markoff writes in the NYT today that Google has completed an internal audit of its compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. This is no small feat, the law requires an audit trail of every third party transaction, and Google has millions of them a week in its PPC engine. According to the Times:

Google's board has been awaiting the report before giving the final go-ahead for the company to file a formal stock registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to several executives involved with the process....

The company has not yet picked a lead underwriter for its stock market offering, Google executives say, but several people involved in the process say that J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the only real candidates to manage the deal. Google is still weighing whether it should offer some shares through a public auction, in part to deflect potential criticism over whether the many investors eager to own a piece of the business will be treated in an equitable fashion.

The "dutch auction" approach popularized by WR Hambrecht is worth a longer think as it relates to Google specifically and others more generally. I'll post more later.

January 26, 2004

Way Cool Music Search

I found Grandaddy by using Amazon's collaborative filtering technology - when I bought a Flaming Lips album on the advice of a friend, the Amazon filter said "folks who bought 'Yoshimi...' also bought..." I bit, and am glad I did. Now, take this idea to search, at least in a way. Thanks to Scoble for this gem: MusicPlasma. More proof of what can be done on top of a search platform. This takes a Grokker-like interface to show how your musical tastes relate. Type in one band you love and it will show you others you'd like. You can drill down in sort of a Venn diagram-driven search - say "Radiohead" then "The Shins". As far as I can tell, this is built on the Amazon API (perhaps someone more astute than I can figure this out?). This is why, as I will say again, Yahoo and Google should really rev up their API programs.

Toolbar Wars: MSN Counters

Dow Jones reports that MSN has added a search toolbar. What took so long?

SEO/SEM Market Turns Sights Toward Inktomi


Until now, organic search was a one-horse race - Google. But with Yahoo coming online soon with its own search technology, based largely on Inktomi, the optimizers and marketers are focusing on Inktomi with the kind of ardor once reserved for Google. Will be interesting to watch how the two compare in the judgment of this world, once Yahoo takes off the wraps.

Highbeam

A newly named "intermediate" research service from Hoover's founder Patrick Spain, integrating eLibrary, Researchville, Alacritude, and encyclopedia.com. The idea is interesting - to target the individual info-seeker who wants more than Google can offer, but does not want to pay the enterprise pricing of Factiva or Lexis/Nexis. Rafta Ali's PaidContent has posted an interview with Spain.

BannanaSlug

You know that sense of vague hope which comes from entering a query into Google that will mostly likley return tens of thousands of results? And that vague sense of hopelessness that comes when those results turn up, and there's literally nothing that matches what you are looking for?

In such a case, have you ever scrolled down to the bottom of the page, where the Goooooooooooooooogle is, and randomly hit, say result page #21, just to see if that might help? Yeah, me too. Steve Nelson knows our pain. A while back, he hacked up a Google API-based application called BannanaSlug that adds a bit of whimsical serendipity to your searches. It takes your search and adds a random word to it, just to see what happens. It's kind of fun to check out...

January 24, 2004

Google Alert - Pointing Toward Search As A Platform

This application, built on the (rather limited) Google API, gives an inkling of the services and innovations which might prosper on the web should Google decide to become a true platform for developers. (To learn more on Google Alert, read SEW's write up here). In the FAQ, for example, the developers of Google Alert note that "Google Alert is a free service but bandwidth and CPU time cost money. Google's API terms prohibit commercial use so you can't even pay Google Alert for more results. In the future, Google Alert hopes to launch a premium commercial service with much greater capacity. Negotiations are currently under way with Google to arrange a license for this. "

My guess is that a quick witted developer over at Yahoo might just decide to open up their API for this kind of service, and the thousands of others which might flourish if they put a couple of big brains and some developer evangelizing behind it.

Paid Search Trademark Case Settled

A major case threatening to rain on the paid search party has been settled out of court by the parties - AOL/Netscape and Playboy. Terms were not disclosed. This takes some air out of the issue, but Google still has action pending.

January 23, 2004

NYT on Google Vanity

Man, someone at the Times is agog over Google stories. This one is on folks buying their own name as pay-per-click keywords. Anecdotal, but fun.

My Yahoo and RSS

Jeremy points to his company's launch of MyYahoo's RSS aggregator in beta (he also has comments on the Orkut news). Check it out...

Man, With All These Shoes Dropping...

i_orkut.gifGoogle has launched a Friendster killer. Or, perhaps it's best to say, Google, in its inimitable style (one passionate engineer working one day a week on a side project - I am starting to think this is a bit disingenuous) has launched a beta social networking site - Orkut.com. You will recall rumour had it that Google tried to buy Friendster a while back and F'ster took a better offer from Benchmark and KP. Now Google lets this cat out of the bag. Hmmmm. The site is named after the engineer who started it (apparently he has been obsessed with this stuff for a while, including starting social networking projects for Stanford alumni), and is not officially part of Google's product portfolio yet, according to Google spokesfolk, though Google owns the technology. One Google employee comments on it here. News.com piece. Search Engine Watch's coverage. Update: By the way, the unique thing in this system, far as I can tell, is that the only way you can get in is to be invited by someone who is already in. And the first folks in were at Google. That in itself is an interesting plotline.

January 22, 2004

Overture: We Can Do Email Too...

Kevin Lee over at Marketing Wonk noticed that Overture has changed its terms for advertising to include email as a third party venue where its PPC advertising might end up. This in response to Google's apparent move to do the same.

I Know I Saw It Somewhere...

Nice piece in the NYT today, in Circuits no less, about finding stuff you've seen online before. The author speaks to researchers working on the cluttered and useless Bookmarks feature found in most browsers. (One researcher compares Bookmarks to a messy closet no one wants to open). Researchers found that "some people try to keep track of Web sites by sending themselves an e-mail message with the link and a note of why it might be useful. Others print pages or use sticky notes. Some people, the researchers found, make no attempt to save a page, counting on being able to find it again with a search engine." Sound familiar?

The article references the MSFT Research project called Stuff I've Seen, which automatically watches sites you've been to and recalls them based on keyword searches, regardless of whether you bookmarked it. A good idea, I think. MSFT says it is considering adding it to Longhorn, but will probably not break it out as a separate utility.

PS - Dave Winer points to a new beat application that addresses this problem: Furl. I like the premise: Furl is a new web browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages (you know, the ones you want to save for future reference but then can never find again) in a personal "web page filing cabinet".

Once saved, you can effortlessly find any page again later using a powerful full text search tool. With Furl you can forget trying to save and organize dozens of bookmarks, forget saving web pages to your desktop, in fact forget everything except how to find a useful web page again next time you need it.

January 21, 2004

Thinking About Adding AdSense?

Play with this first. AdSense Sandbox. A great idea.

Talk the Talk?

Via Search Engine Guide I came across this: SearchLimo. You know how Google employee #1 and supergeek Craig Silverstein used to always say he wanted a search engine to "be like the computer on Star Trek"? Well, this is a step in that direction, though I am in no way qualified to judge if this company has the goods to deliver. So what is it? Simply put, voice-driven search.

Now, I *hate* the metaphor used here - a limo - and they've made it worse by beating an already dead horse with the tagline "The Web's Luxury SE." Gawd. And it's damn near impossible to find out who is behind this. All the links and About pages are about...how to advertise. The only reference to who is responsible is this: "(SearchLimo) ...was developed and built on a freeware VRU platform designed by a prominent institution of higher education..." OK...so...which one? By whom? Can't find anything. Anyway, it launches officially on Feb 15.

Eurekster Gets Noticed

eurekster-logo.gifI wrote about this a month or so ago, but it's ready for media prime time - Eurekster launched today. There's got to be a better name for socia-networking-driven search (er..Searchster?). What's news: Eurekster has a deal for search results from Overture, but as MediaPost notes, So far, only the "natural" search results a user clicks on are added to the list of sites recently visited by the user's community of friends. "The current version of the product offers no re-ranking of sponsored search results," notes Steven Marder, Chairman, Eurekster Inc.

I'm going to quote liberally from the Eurekster "about" page for you, then ask a question:

See how eurekster personalizes search results
Type in a search term e.g. your name
Click on a search result that you think is best (this can be on any page of the search results). Stay at that website for at least 1 minutes (or we will assume that it wasn't useful for you). Repeat this as often as you like.
In 3 minutes do the same search again and you will notice that the results you preferred will be at the top of the list of search results (excluding sponsored search results).
We remember the result you liked so you never have to repeat trawling through a long list of search results again!

How this helps other eurekster users
* After you sign up to eurekster and get your friends using it, when one of them does the same search as you then your preferred result will appear higher up their list of results. So everyone can learn from the search activity of people they know and trust.
* eurekster takes care of sharing the quality results around social networks to allow groups of people to learn from each other, while protecting identity and allowing the option for complete privacy.
* If users try to boost poor or inappropriate results they will not be spread to other users. The only people affected by this will be their direct contacts that they have invited to join their personal network. This social network filtering of search results works just like word of mouth that we count on in everyday life.

My question: is search a strong enough attractor to get folks to create new social networks, outside of those they may have already created with LinkedIn or Friendster? Put another way, isn't it easier for Friendster or LinkedIn to add search, than for search to add Friendster or LinkedIn?

Now that Eurekster has launched, I guess the answer is: we'll know soon enough. (Let's not forget the raging rumor some months ago that Google tried to buy Friendster, but was rebuffed.....)

PS - I am not sure that delimiting a site's usefulness by forcing someone to hang out there for a minute or more is a good idea (though I do like the idea of tracking the path folks take out of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and rearranging subsequent searches based on that input). Many folks who come to blogs, for example, stay for less than a minute. It takes about 35 seconds to read a blog post. Except this one, of course, which has gone on for too long.....

January 20, 2004

Booble

On some level, you have to love this: A porn search engine. If only it worked. I crashed it on a search for "sex," tried again, and got 291 results - 291! Don't even try more sophisticated fare, there are few results to speak of. It's a great idea, poorly executed, and with a terrible name - Booble - that's derivative *and* sophomoric. The lawyers over at Google must be sharpening their knives, because the trade dress ripoffs alone warrant a bigfoot letter, if not more. Booble's put out a press release, lightheartedly claiming they are parodying Google, but they also claim the engine actually works. It's a directory of sorts - the release claims they've added 6000 sites that are vetted by human editors, but ...really. Note to Fleshbot: This is a good idea poorly executed - get on this asap!

(Thanks to the folks at Boing Boing for the pointer).

Sprawler: Another Ally in Open Source Search

What with Yahoo pointing to Nutch as one of the centerpiece projects in its new Labs, perhaps the stars are aligning for open source search. I recently got wind of another project in the works. It's called Sprawler, and it's in "pre-alpha" over at SourceForge. The man behind Sprawler is Eric Anderson, who is a systems analyst at a large unix installation in Austin, and came to search via an interest in physics. It's early - Anderson does not expect to start indexing until later this Spring - but its good to see more and more interest in the space.

January 19, 2004

Yahoo Wants the Innovation Mantle Back, Thank You Very Much...

lYlabsogo.gifIt was bound to happen - Yahoo announced today its own research labs. The labs live here. Seems this is the old Overture research warmed once over, their too-short list of research projects include Nutch, which was supported by Overture (I wrote an early piece on Nutch here). I've been on Yahoo for a while, even back before the Overture days, to take a leading role in search and internet technology innovation. I'm not entirely wowed by this unveiling. The second project, Cluster Graphing, linked to a 404 error. The "Concept Discovery" research is important, however. Let's hope this is more than just a press release...though at first glance, it kind of looks that way.

Google Labs, for comparison....

And While We're On The Topic Of News...

topix-logo.jpgCheck out Topix, another new news aggregator (in Beta), this one from a handful of DMOZ and Netscape refugees. What makes Topix special? From an email sent to me by Rich Skrenta, one of the founders:

Our project is a news aggregator that reads all the news, everywhere, and sorts it into thousands of categories depending on what the stories are about. One kind of sorting we do is geographical, so we produce an online news rollup for each of 30,000 towns and cities across the US. We also track every mention of a celebrity, sports team, health condition, country, music group, public companies, and some other stuff...

The geographic sort makes Topix a local news player, which is potentially a major source of revenue once local search gains full traction. Take note, media investors.

For another Topix grok, here's what Tara of Research Buzz had to say...

Check out this example he sent to me, a rollup of news associated with the Search Engine Industry....

Now, why doesn't Topix support RSS? I asked, update when I hear.

Findory - News Search-cum-Contextual Recommendation Engine

David Weinberger today reports on Findory, a personalized news site that requires no registration and no personal information, it simply watches what you read and builds a profile via your information habits and those of others who also have viewed the same articles as you. Very cool idea. No idea if it works, but worth a pointer....

Microsoft: Same Old Same Old?

Relatively deep in John Markoff's piece "Plaintiffs Say Microsoft Still Behaves Badly" these charges are related: In a separate report, filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, which is the lone holdout from the antitrust settlement, stated that its investigations "portend badly for the efficacy of the Nov. 1, 2002, judgment."

"We have continued to receive and review indications that Microsoft is engaged in troubling business behavior," wrote Assistant Attorney General Glenn S. Kaplan.

The Massachusetts report said that the state was reviewing allegations that Microsoft is "engaged in a campaign against various Internet search engines similar to the campaign it previously waged against Netscape's Navigator browser."

Now, run of the mill charges that MSFT is trying to kill Google et al are not new. But this portends more significant allegations are at work. I'd be damn interested to know who Assistant Attorney General Glenn S. Kaplan is hearing from.

January 17, 2004

The Yellow Pages Strike Back

Dex, the newly named Yellow Pages unit (formerly of Qwest/US West), announced Friday they have made all 240,000 of their listings - covering a major swath of the midwestern and western US - searchable online. Said Dex President and Chief Executive Officer George Burnett, rather defensively, "We think our product is better than any portal."

MediaPost has a story on it here.

Reuters: Google Planning Email-based AdWords Service

This piece (via Forbes.com) explores the idea, which Google does not deny or confirm. Says Google may do its own branded email service.

From the piece: Google last year purchased an e-mail management software maker and in 2001 registered the domain name googlemail.com.
Some in Silicon Valley also believe Google could be preparing to launch free e-mail to compete with offerings from Yahoo and MSN's Hotmail.
"If they were to go the e-mail route they'd have to provide an offering that competes with free (e-mail). Anti-spam is one form of strong differentiation," said Jim Pitkow, chief executive of Moreover Technologies, whose personalized search company Outride was acquired by Google in 2001.

January 16, 2004

Battle of the SEOs

"SEO" stands for "search engine optimizers," an oft-maligned class of businesses who specialize in helping companies rank better in organic - aka "pure" - listings. In other words, these are the folks who will help your site get in the first page of results in Google, as Google is (for now) the only game in town when it comes to pure results. And as we all know, getting on the first page of Google results can mean a massive amount of traffic and business to your site. Plus, you can avoid having to spring for paid listings.

Now, SEOs have a long and rather mottled history, and it's not my goal in this post to revisit it. Suffice to say that many SEOs use tactics which fail the integrity sniff test, and most observers of this space would agree that the overzealous use of search-engine optimization has created a massive spam problem for Google - crap results which clog up otherwise relevant SERPs (search engine results pages). In fact, it's not at all uncommon to call the dance between SEOs and Google's programmers an "arms race" - wherein Google will shift its algorithms to thwart obvious SEO deviousness, and the SEO community will respond with new and ever more crafty techniques to foil Google's algorithms.

But many SEOs perform a honest and valuable service - they play by the rules, and they help sites organize themselves so they rank just about where they reasonably ought to. Optimizing for Google is not a new idea - nearly every good site does it, from CNet to Amazon. The SEO industry recently took a major step toward becoming an industry with standards and practices when it self-organized SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (though I can't yet find the equivalent of SEMPO Member Guidelines, which I imagine is still a pretty hot potato within that nascent community).

All of this came to mind when I saw this link via Google Blogoscoped: The Google SERPs SEO Competition. Far as I can tell this is an open call for entries for SEOs to prove they can push a particular page (in this case, the #1 SERP for the term "SERPs") to the top of the heap in Google. No rules, winner takes all (which I think in this case means basically bragging rights). I'm pretty sure this contest will be less than warmly received over at Google, but I wonder what SEMPO thinks? I'll send a note and be back when I have an answer....

January 15, 2004

Metrobot

Chris Sherman over at SearchDay (SEW) gives Metrobot, a new kind of local search engine, a rave review today. From his piece: "Metrobot is one of the most useful specialized search services I've seen in a long while. It also shows how thinking outside of the (search) box can lead to a creative yet incredibly useful solution to the local search problem all of the major search engines are throwing a lot of resources at. Here's hoping they all take a close look at what Metrobot has to offer."

I tried the San Francisco search, and was not impressed - I searched by "type of business" and could not find a bike shop or a dry cleaner. New York was better populated. The service is very new and the CEO promises to add listings as fast as they can. I'm inclined to listen when Chris or others at SEW say nice things about a new approach to search, and the map feature is really cool (here's an example here). It's surprising, in a good way, to see local businesses in context of what else is on the street nearby.

January 14, 2004

Another Not-News Story About Search

Wired News rounds up the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) today, going so far as to quote Danny saying "this is not news." More proof that anything related to Google gives editors the urge to assign a story. However, one can always find something of note buried in me-too news - for example:

According to Kelsey Group program director Gerg Sterling, '2004 is going to be the Year of the Search'..."

2004?!! I better get my book done and quick....

Also...

When analytics firm Nielsen/NetRatings last measured search habits in March 2003, the company found that the number of unique visitors to Yahoo Search trailed Google by a mere 10 percent.

That's less of a gap than I thought.

January 12, 2004

Beyond the Browser Again...

Cnet's Stephanie Olsen notes that several portals are considering following Google into the taskbar world...effectively increasing pressure on MSFT to get its Longhorn act together. This is a significant threat to the mindspace that Windows occupies: If Windows becomes a layer that is built upon by others...where is the margin for Gates & Co? Hence their massive efforts to get into search...

January 9, 2004

Yahoo Getting Into RSS Aggregation Game

While I was down in the Valley Weds. I heard word that Yahoo's aggregator was up and running. But then I couldn't find it when I got home. Seems they put up a brief beta in MyYahoo, then brought it back down again. Internet.com has a story on it..."Insiders at Yahoo confirmed the plan to add an aggregator as a module within the 'My Yahoo' section but described the public appearance of the beta Wednesday as an accident."

Also of note, NewsGator has a new service to push RSS onto mobile devices.

January 8, 2004

Good Overview of Local Search

Comes, as usual, from Search Engine Watch. My posts will be brief for the next day, as I am taking Friday off, but this is worth a read if you care about why local search seems to be a big deal...

Baidu: A Chinese Google? OK, I'll Bite

Via Reuters, Forbes reports on another Chinese search company planning to go public, this one called Baidu - the name "comes from a Song dynasty poem about a man searching for his lover." The company claims to be profitable, and to serve 30 million searches a day ("one seventh that of Google") - the largest in China.

Crawler Available, Will Work for Free

From Boing Boing I learn that the Internet Archive is releasing its crawler for free under a LGPL license. Why is this news? As I've argued in the past, it's not cheap or easy to innovate in the search space, but the search space desperately needs innovation. If key components like crawlers can be snapped in place relatively easily, new ideas heretofore unthinkable become possible. I also like the philosophy behind the crawler, which is named Heritrix: "Heritrix (sometimes spelled heretrix , or misspelled or missaid as heratrix / heritix / heretix / heratix ) is an archaic word for inheritess. Since our crawler seeks to collect the digital artifacts of our culture (my emphasis/link) for the benefit of future researchers and generations, this name seemed apt."

Way to go, Brewster!

MetaCarta Gets MetaFunding

Ever wondered how local search is going to work, really? Or how the government might associate particular documents or databases with specific geographic locations? MetaCarta makes a business of wondering just that, and just got $6.5 million in a series B round, led by Sevin Rosen. This company has clearly stepped into a significant role in "geographic search." It's customers include intelligence agencies, the military, and energy companies (Chevron is an investor.) What do they do? From the site: "With MetaCarta Geographic Text Search™ (GTS), analysts accelerate their efforts by searching text documents in a geographic context. MetaCarta GTS turns text documents into geographic data layers.  This accelerates decision support and analytic workflow."

January 6, 2004

Yahoo Gets Set

Two Yahoo items this morning: First, the Journal (sub req'd) reports that Yahoo is set to drop Google (this is not a surprise, but rather the other shoe of the Overture/Inktomi purchases dropping). Second, CEO Semel promises many more innovations (and profits) from Yahoo search in the next year at a conference in NYC (link via CNet/Search Engine Lowdown.) The plan is to create personalized search products and beef up paid inclusion, a controversial practice, certainly, but one that is quite profitable. Google refuses on principle to do paid inclusion.

January 5, 2004

Declaring the Relationship (RSS related)

Neat: Winer has created a feature that allows folks to see who subscribes to their blogs via RSS. I've always wanted to know who cares enough about Searchblog to check it regularly via RSS. In fact, I think such a connection is one of the cooler things about blogs and the web - the two-way conversation is declared and nurtured, the community is known. It's like an email subscription, but more intimate. But some folks prefer anonymity with their RSS habits, and I respect that as well. How do you all feel about it?

Bloomberg: Google Chooses Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs to Lead IPO

This is not confirmed by any parties, but Bloomberg claims to have an inside source. If this means the bakeoff is final, then the IPO is 90-120 days away, maybe sooner depending on the SEC. Exciting times for all concerned, and possibly and end to all this speculation. WR Hambrecht (the Dutch auction folks) is named as a banker on the deal, but not as a lead, and there is no immediate news on whether an auction or online distribution scheme will play a part in the deal. Slashdot has hundreds of comments on the deal already, for those of you with a lot of time on your hands...(Thanks to Ross for the tip!)

Tipping Point For Shoppng Engines?

Shopping.com doubled its holiday traffic this past season, DM News reports today. Execs from the site are quick to claim that online shopping (or, as I like to call it, the shopping search vertical) has hit critical mass. It's hard to argue. From the piece:

The San Francisco company doubled the number of unique visitors in the 2003 holiday season to 58 million and the number of shopping sessions to 69 million. Leads referred to merchants listed on the site grew 123 percent in holiday 2003 to 29 million, and sales for them rose 132 percent to $181 million. ...

...Shopping.com ... stood fourth among U.S. multi-category e-commerce sites for November in terms of unique monthly visitors, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, trailing only eBay, Amazon and Yahoo Shopping. Walmart.com, target.com and BizRate.com followed. ...

....five years down the road, we're seeing a rapid uptick of consumer awareness, interest and acceptance. In a sense, we've hit the tipping point, or critical mass. Major branded merchants have seen the market mature and are now interested in selling online." ....

..."It's been a landslide ... and it shows no sign of stopping. Online shopping sites are no longer marketplaces of technical equipment for technical people. We've attracted and are repeatedly serving a much broader audience and general merchandise category mix." ...

Wired News: Narrowing the Search

Not much you haven't seen before, but a fair roundup of a few more focused search tools, including TouchGraph, which I had not previously grokked.

January 3, 2004

The People Search Meme Grows: Plink

plinkVia Jeff Jarvis today I came across Plink, an experimental "people link" search engine built on the "Friends Typelist" and/or blogrolls of Moveable Type users. It is explained by Anil Dash in the Six Apart blog here. This is a neat implementation of search based on FOAF ideas. Basically, Plink (cool name) lets you search for people you know, and then see who they know, and who knows them. To be included, you have to create a FOAF file, which I have not done, and honestly, am not sure I want to deal with. Those that have, however, are pointing the way for applications that eventually will do it automatically. Might this auger the future of Friendster or LinkedIn, where the intelligence and relationships built into those closed networks become part of the open platform of the Net?

January 2, 2004

"Ungoogle"

ungoogleI suppose it had to happen. "Ungoogle" is a meta-search engine is that uses the "major search engines besides Google." I can't find anything else on the site to tell me who is behind this, save a reference to the "Hound Internet Family of Search Engines" which a quick Google search shows will return you to the same page with a few different URLs. (Found via the Google Blogoscoped site.)

January 1, 2004

Grokking WebFountain

IBM logoIf you're like me and you want to understand what IBM is up to with WebFountain, this overview from IEEE Spectrum is as good a piece on it as I've seen anywhere. WebFountain is clearly one to watch in 2004, I'll be talking with them early this year and will have reports back shortly....also, I'll be watching this joint venture with Factiva, which will be one of the first commercial executions of the technology.

Happy New Year, 2003 Zeitgeist

plinkThe Google Zeitgeist for 2002 helped to spark the idea for me that I had to write a book on search. Here is the 2003 version, fresh off the presses. It barely scratches the surface of what the Database of Intentions has to say about our culture, but it's a fascinating scratch nonetheless. Also, Yahoo, Lycos do the same...