Powered by

Movable Type 3.34

You are browsing the Of Note in Search Biz category

Of Note in Search Biz

-->

February 26, 2004

Compare Yahoo and Google Results

Via Google Blogoscoped, a neat tool that visually compares results at the two giants.

Semel Says: Social Networking Is Interesting...

At the (corrected) Commonwealth Club in the Valley last night, Semel said he's keeping an eye on social networking, and that he sees a day when Yahoo might have ad-free services. You bet......

February 25, 2004

News, Rumor Roundup

Off the Berkeley for the day to teach, but a few things worth pointing you toward.

First, the rumors are flying again about Jeeves being in play. CBS Marketwatch is fueling them, saying AOL might buy the company and drop Google. I don't think so, but you never know. Andy Beal has a nice interview with Ask's VP of Tech in today's SEW.

As long as we're talking rumours, my ruminations on FindWhat brought up some interesting private email, and one of them led me to thinking that, in the end, it might make a lot of sense for FindWhat to bulk up by merging with LookSmart, which is obviously hurting since its loss of MSN. What do you think?

Lastly, AP reports on Eurekster and other challengers to the search giants. Includes mentions of Grokker and Feedster, and quotes from Googlefolk claiming they are "watching the innovations" and will respond this year with their own.

February 24, 2004

Whitman Again Stresses Google Is Not Competitor...But Plans Local Play....

In this AP story covering a Goldman conference in AZ, eBay chief Whitman says she sees Google and Yahoo and other search players as enablers of her business. "We think both natural search and paid search are allies of ours," she said.

But, in the same speech, she noted that eBay is planning to get back into the local auction market, something they tried in the late 90s that did not take off. The story failed to note the obvious: local search is a very hot market right now, and I doubt that has escaped Whitman. Search is not a competitor? Perhaps. But just to be sure...better shore up the local angle. (AP story via Gary, thanks!)

Froogle Goes Wireless

Google Labs announced today they've enabled Froogle over wireless. Cool - now you can compare prices using your mobile phone or PDA....

From the release:

Users may find this service especially helpful when they're out shopping at a retail store and are interested in searching Froogle to compare prices online...Using the Froogle wireless service is simple:
- From a WML-enabled phone, point the browser to http://wml.froogle.com
- Enter search terms in the box and select the 'Search' button
- Use the phone's keypad arrows to scroll through the results.

SEW: Local Search Needs Small Biz

Good overview of the local search market on SEW today, in particular a good summary of some of the hurdles to sustaining growth in what might be called the "Yellow Pages" sector - those really small businesses which account for billions in local radio, newspaper, and Yellow Pages advertising:

To achieve any sizeable revenues from the local market, paid search needs to gain small business advertiser adoption. But how much of the small business market will pay-per-click (PPC) be able to penetrate? There are some very practical challenges, which include:
* The complexity and time involved in keyword bid-campaign management
* Limited ad inventory and competition between national and small business advertisers for that inventory
* The absence of local sales channels to "push" PPC to small business advertisers
* The lack of websites among as much as 70% of small businesses

These are not insurmountable by any means, though they should not be minimized.

Worth noting that Verizon's SuperPages deal with FindWhat to OEM FindWhat's auction process goes live next week on Superpages site...It's also interesting to note that Verizon did *not* do this deal with Yahoo or Google...

February 23, 2004

FindWhat Buys Again...

fw_logo2.gifPretty soon I'll have to take the time to really grok FindWhat. The company has been on an acquisition tear, merging with espotting, buying Miva, and today announcing it has purchased Comet (best known for that cursor download in the late 90s, now a search/platform/web privacy company).

OK. So FindWhat, in the end, is a strong second-tier pay-per-click network. Like Overture or Adsense, they match buyer and seller via paid search keywords. They have a distribution network, and they have an advertiser base of tens of thousands. Their biggest client is Lycos. They serve a significant base of advertisers, and with the addition of espotting, which has 20,000 advertisers, they are now a force in Europe.

The also have an SEO business, and with Miva, which sells ecommerce software to small businesses, they are looking to be a force in the SME website building space. In essence, they hope to sell loads of SME services to their advertising clients. Yahoo has a similar play. With Comet, FindWhat has acquired a company in the metabrowser/privacy/OEM space. I'm not sure I get the play here, but I aim to find out when I head to the Search Engine Strategies conference next week in New York.

Findwhat's stock is on a tear, up about 110% over the past year. It's earnings and revenues are also on a tear - its last quarter revenues were up 57%, and earnings have increased for 11 consecutive quarters. The company posted about $72 million in revenues for 2003.

So...what's up with FindWhat? Any readers out there have experience with this company?

Search Ratings for January

Via MediaPost, Neilsen Netratings reports that 39% of the US population used search engines last month.

The top five search venues in January were Google (59 million visitors), Yahoo! Search (46 million), MSN Search (45 million), AOL Search (23 million), and Ask Jeeves (13 million).

February 22, 2004

Bravo...

Scoble asks search giants for "access to the variables." In other words, let users play with the guts of the engine, so they can tune the results to their liking. I hope the folks at MSFT are listening to one of their own. This kind of transparency, while problematic from a spam standpoint, would be most excellent.

February 19, 2004

A UI Designer at Google Rants...

About Yahoo Search. Interesting reading...

WSJ Does A Test

Beal points us to a WSJ article comparing the new Yahoo search with Google. The paper threads the needle and doesn't have an opinion on who's best, saying it depends. Sigh. We'll have to wait till the pros at SEWatch do it right.

February 18, 2004

Google's Brin on AdSense; Watch DCLK

Editor&Publisher interviews Sergey Brin via email, and while his responses have clearly been given a once-over by Google's professional PR staff, this response struck me as a bad omen for the DoubleClicks of the world:

2. Many newspapers are publishing display ads on the Web, with photos and graphics. Will AdSense evolve beyond text-based advertising? Or is text the best medium for these types of ads?

SB: At this point, text ads are the best solution for our users, advertisers and partners. However, online advertising, especially contextual advertising, is evolving rapidly. Google is committed to a leadership position in online advertising technology and we continue to explore new technologies in every aspect of targeting, delivery and display.

In other words, it won't be long before Google combines the contextual relevance of AdSense text links with more brand-driven, rich media ad units. And that means they start becoming a major ad serving service in the vein of Doubleclick and its kin. Perhaps Google simply buys DCLK, which Safa recently claimed is undervalued. It could make a lot of sense...if Yahoo/Overture doesn't get there first. I'm not a stock picker, nor a seer, so don't hold me to this. Just noting an interesting trend.

The Switch Is On

Seems Yahoo's switch is now upon us, as most news outlets had been given an embargo of midnight EST last night (a reporter called me and told me as much), and Search Engine Watch is one of the first with a deeper take on the meaning of it all - the story is called "Birth of a New Machine". In an email to me last night, Chris disagrees with my earlier post that "size matters" and I agree that in the end what matters most is relevance, but...perhaps I should have said "perception matters". Expect the mainstream media to weigh in soon...

Chris's take in one line:
Bottom line: I'm impressed with the quality of results that Yahoo is delivering. It's a very viable alternative to Google and the other "last engine standing," Ask Jeeves/Teoma.

Yahoo's press release, issued 4 hours ago, is here.

Highlights:

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that it has created a more comprehensive and relevant search experience for users through the deployment of its own algorithmic search technology on Yahoo!(R) Search (http://search.yahoo.com). Starting today, the company will begin rolling out the new Yahoo! Search Technology (YST) and expects to continue the process on a worldwide basis over the next several weeks. With the completion of the deployment, Yahoo! Search Technology will power nearly half of all online searches in the U.S....

As part of the company's next steps in customization and personalization, Yahoo! is introducing a new search service that integrates Yahoo! Search with My Yahoo! by adding links to XML/RSS site syndication content in search results. This service enables users to search for millions of sites that support this format and easily add them to their My Yahoo! personal homepage. Once added to their page, users will see instantly updated headlines and links from these sites, keeping them in touch with all of their important information from the Internet in a single place.

Additionally, Yahoo! Search has combined its own proprietary anti-spam technology with the talents of its team of editorial experts and Yahoo! Mail's leading SpamGuard technology to help filter out irrelevant, redundant or low-quality URLs and links. Taking advantage of the synergies between Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Mail, these two services will share data to reduce spam and further improve the user experience across Yahoo!.

February 17, 2004

Yahoo: New Index "Highly Competitive"

In response to Google's release today, SVP/Search Jeff Weiner told me: "We are extremely confident our index size is highly competitive." My read on that statement is that when Yahoo unwraps its new search technology, the index will be at least 6 billion strong, if not larger. Weiner took pains to add that "comprehensiveness" - ie big indexes - is only one piece of the total search quality puzzle. While the arms race to the largest index is something of a perception game, it's an important one nevertheless. It's inescapable: size does matter.

Resourceshelf Interviews Dipsie Founder

Gary interviews Jason Wiener, the CEO of Dipsie. I've spoken with Jason a few times, but I'm still waiting to hear confirmation on various aspects of the story before I post. Meantime, Gary's post is a good overview of the company's intentions....

Germane to the Last Post...

Stefanie's piece on CNET this morning: Search wars are about to get personal. In it she notes that new comScore research points to a lack of loyalty toward search brands, even Google.

Google Index Swells, Yahoo Switch Imminent

google.gifGoogle put out a press release today noting that its index has swelled to 4.28 billion images, and combined with images and usenet, total pages indexed now reaches past 6 billion. Full text of release is in the extended entry below. Gary's Resourceshelf has commentary here.

My question: why now? It's generally considered true that Google can raise its index number pretty much when it feels like it (this isn't some technical breakthrough or new achievement, a lot of folks claim Google has been underreporting its number to date), so what provoked this timing? Could be the pressure to keep appearance of innovation up, and/or the pressure of new competitors, recently feted in various articles, who promise larger indexes, such as Dipsie, or a response to Yahoo's new search solution, which is rolling out...well now it seems... as Andy Beal sends word that Yahoo's switching over to its own technology, even though the announcement has not been made. Here's Yahoo's Search page - go check it out. Andy also points to a survey on Yahoo that Webmasterworld folks found about the search experience.

UPDATE: As to the company's timing, Google PRmeister Nate Tyler says: "We hit the milestone and thought it might be nice to let our users know." In other words, this is not a reaction to anything...

As for the Yahoo news, I spoke again with Jeff Weiner today, and he is really on fire. He acknowledged that the new Yahoo crawler, Slurp, is out and about, and that changes are afoot....more when I can tell you more...

GOOGLE ACHIEVES SEARCH MILESTONE WITH IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO MORE THAN 6
BILLION ITEMS

Google Connects Searchers to World's Most Comprehensive Index; Increases Web
Page and Image Collections

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Feb. 17, 2004 - Google Inc. today announced it
expanded the breadth of its web index to more than 6 billion items. This
innovation represents a milestone for Internet users, enabling quick and
easy access to the world's largest collection of online information.

"People worldwide can find more information with Google than with any other
search engine," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of
Products.

Google's collection of 6 billion items comprises 4.28 billion web pages, 880
million images, 845 million Usenet messages, and a growing collection of
book-related information pages. Web surfers worldwide can now search across
Google's collection of items using the following services:

- Google Web Search: The company's flagship search service now offers 4.28
billion web pages. Google's powerful and scalable technology searches this
information and delivers a list of relevant results in an instant. Google
Web Search also enables users to search for numerous non-HTML files,
including PDF, Microsoft Office, and Corel documents.

- Google Image Search: Comprising more than 880 million images, Google Image
Search enables users to find electronic images relevant to a wide variety of
topics.
Advanced features include search by image size, format (JPEG and/or GIF),
coloration, and the ability to restrict searches to specific sites or
domains.

- Google Groups: This 20-year archive of Usenet conversations is the largest
of its kind and serves as a powerful reference tool, while offering insight
into the history and culture of the Internet. Google Groups offers more than
845 million postings in more than 35,000 topical categories.

- Google Print: A test service that enables Google users to immediately
access a range of book related information, such as first chapters, reviews,
and bibliographic information. These pages also offer users links to
directly purchase titles.

"Google Image Search has been significantly updated," said Sergey Brin,
Google co-founder and president of Technology. "We've doubled the index to
more than 880 million images, enhanced search quality, and improved the user
interface."

Today's news follows the announcement last week that Google received eight
awards in the 4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards, which recognize
outstanding achievements in web searching. Google was recognized as the
"Outstanding Search Service," for helping internet users locate information
from across the Web. Google has received this distinction every year since
the awards were initiated in 2000. Google AdWords was also given top honors
for value, targeting, tools and overall advertiser satisfaction.

About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around
the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D.
students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in
all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program, which is
the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all
sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience
for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout
North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

February 16, 2004

Scoble Says: Watch This Space

Feedster and Technorati: Scoble says they might be the ones to "steamroll Google."

Jeremy On Yahoo's New Search

Jeremy posts a few insights and such on Yahoo's forthcoming new search...

More Demo hacks

Dave Sifry, who is also at Demo, has posted a Demo conference conversation page on Technorati...looks like there's some healthy competition going between Feedster and Technorati! This page is a combination of keyword search (which Technorati recently added), and link cosmos around Demo-related URLs... (thanks for the pointer Dave)

Times on Local Search

This Times piece explores the Yellow Pages market of small businesses (plumbers, etc) who don't have websites but increasingly feel the pressure to have an online advertising presence. Why? Because the customers are increasingly using search instead of the Yellow Pages (the Times based that conclusion on research from the Kelsey Group and Bizrate.) The article provides an overview of the current state of Overture and Google's local search solutions.

Neat Feedster Hack

Feedster is demo'ing at the Demo conference today, and Scott sent along news of their latest feature: Feedpapers. They've got proof of concept here: Political Feedpapers for each candidate. In essence a Feedpaper is a search of the blogophere for posts on a particular topic, which are then organized and presented for you. It's well done.

Feedster has a page with more on Feedpapers:

When you think about what Feedster really does, it lets you listen to the web. A Feedpaper is a sophisticated daily newspaper, a "Feedpaper", automatically constructed from what people are saying about a subject. We offer a handful of general interest Feedpapers and you or your organization can sign up for a personal Feedpaper (not yet available; coming soon).

I'm looking forward to creating Feedpapers on topics like search, TiVo, etc.

Another example of how Feedster feeds the political sphere is on this Kerry site, which uses Feedster to search the blogosphere for Kerry news.

UPDATE: I should have noted the public "builder" they've got as well, it's a tool for rolling your own feed or Feedpaper...

February 14, 2004

Tech Review: Search Beyond Google

A good overview of various approaches to search, with sections on Mooter, Dipsie, and Microsoft, as well as an interview with Google employee #1, Craig Silverstein. A minor but interesting piece of infoporn: Craig tells the reporter that Google engineers spend 10 percent of their time on outside projects. That's down from 20 percent. Or maybe it was a mistake. Thanks to Gary for the pointer....

February 12, 2004

Vivisimo Targets eBay Listings

AP reports Vivisimo has released a search application that uses eBay's API to search eBay's listings. Sort of like what Grokker does for Google, Vivisimo does for eBay listings. Interesting. Wonder if eBay will respond...

Paid Search >$2 billion in 2003, Local Next

On Weds, eMarketer released a report claiming that paid search crossed the $2 billion mark in 2003, and that local paid search will be the critical next step for the industry. MediaNews also reports.

February 11, 2004

Neat Tool

Queryster lets you toggle between a bunch of different search engines on one search. Really cool. Here's "searchblog" results. (via Beal)

Forrester on Google

colony.gifGeorge Colony, CEO of Forrester, opines on Google in a registration-required brief released last week. Readers (thank you!) alerted me to this immediately, but the etech conference meant my posting has been and will be slower this week.

Colony begins by effusively praising the company. "The Web has gone through two major phases in its short history: pre-Google and post-Google...Sergei Brin and Larry Page, Google's founders, may go down in history as the guys who saved the Internet."" A bit sweeping, IMHO.

But Colony is setting up a straw man, and he goes on to knock it down. "Is Google's search good? Yes. Is the company worth tens of billions? No."

Colony is reacting to the (now rather attenuated) Google-Will-Save-The-Valley-Through-A-Huge-IPO meme. He lists three factors that he says proves Google is not worth what the Wall Street crowd is whispering. First, competition - Yahoo, MSFT, etc. Second, low barrier to switching (ie, a better search engine can come along, and folks will simply switch to it). Third, it's still early in the web ecology, and there will be a lot of change, including a waning of the core value upon which Google is based - the economy of links (Colony argues that XML etc. will change the basic shape of how the web works).

Colony concludes that a Google IPO in the $6 billion range would be defensible, but a $15 billion+ IPO would suck the capital out of the market and be very bad for the tech world. "The company's primary strategy should be a diversification beyond search and the "we've got the best technology" syndrome into a defendable market position," he says in summary.

There's really not a lot of new thinking in here, but the response to the piece so far indicates the world was ready to hear this - it's another course correction in the media's ongoing love affair with search in general, and Google in particular. It's also a fine way for Forrester to get some contrarian-tinged PR. The comments section on the piece, again available only if you register, points out some of the weaknesses in Colony's analysis, in particular the idea that there are no barriers to entry, and that Google is too search focused (orkut, anyone?).

February 10, 2004

Search Your Mother Could Use...

Dan Gillmor points us to Soople, a search tool which seems destined to wear out its 1000-search-a-day API limit over at Google. The engine rides on top of Google and makes that engine's advanced features easier to use.

From the About page: (Soople is) a site that softens all the fantastic (advanced) functions Google offers. Initially I made this site for my mother, who, though computer-savvy, still didn't know about all the possibilities Google offers.

MSFT: A Good Actor in the Search Wars

John Carroll writes a guest editorial in ZDNet. It's an interesting and thought-provoking argument that MSFT should not be seen as the bad guy in the MSFT v. Google story, and includes some good suggestions on how MSFT might integrate search in a fair and open manner. Whaddya think, Scoble?

February 9, 2004

WashPost: Search Is Scary

From the WashPost, via the Straits Times, comes this instance of scaremongering: "Your secrets aren't safe - from the search engines." A casual reader might conclude that somehow search engines can scan your hard drive and tender your private information to anyone. But in fact, the point is, some people (and more often, companies/universities) are dumb enough to put the wrong thing online, and there is a subculture of folks who make a sport (or a business) of finding these documents (ie excel spreadsheets with credit card numbers). "It is all legal" the paper warns omminously, "using the world's most powerful Internet search engine." Sigh. Reminds me of early coverage of the net itself.

Seekscan

Via ResearchBuzz, a meta-search engine with reference, shopping, and weblogs tabs...Seekscan.

Technorati Got Search

In true Pull-An-Allnighter style, I get an email from David at around 3 am, letting the world know that Technorati (which is hiring) now has search, which was one of my big beefs with the site. I haven't had a chance to check it out much yet (traveling this morning to ETech), but this is a cool development. The site now searches at the post-level - not just URLs, which means they can add feeds should they wish to. Should be cool to watch...

February 6, 2004

Jeremy, Yahoo, RSS

Jeremy can't heat up his lunch at work without someone asking him about RSS. Certainly the meme is spreading. Read his comments if you want good dialog/intro on why RSS matters.

February 5, 2004

Call A Librarian...

Gary points to this article, which I missed this morning...the NYT does a nice piece on why humans in fact can do stuff computers can't...

"Maybe they could have found the answer faster on Google, but who knows if it would be right?" Ms. Tuckerman (a librarian) said. "It's not that I don't like Google, but we're the information experts."

Finding Sounds

SEW writes up FindSounds, a search engine for audio. Cool.

February 4, 2004

More on Trademarks

Dana Blankenhorn continues the discussion on Corante w/r/t the trademark issue and paid search. This one is not going away, though I think this will come down to shades of gray, not black and white legal rulings. If a legal precedent is set that is too restrictive, many will cry foul and claim the suffocation of an entire industry (ie, the $6 billion paid search market). If there is no precedent, trademark law is weakened and those who depend on their trademarks will suffer. It will take time for the standards to emerge from case law.

Dana points to an email from BizWeek's Alex Salkever, in which Alex notes that Google has already given in to Dell and eBay and disallowed others from advertising using those trademarks. But it's worth noting that there is something of a quid pro quo - Dell and eBay buy massive amounts of keywords related to their trademarks, to cover searches which use the trademarks in the first place. Interesting - with no competition for those keywords, I wonder how the price is set? (thanks for the pointer, Hylton!)

February 3, 2004

Queries Getting Denser

Via DMNews, saw this study from OneStat (a web analytics company) on query trends. It basically said that folks are starting to use more words in their queries. Why? They're not getting the results they want? They know more words will mean a better result? Little of both? Not much here on that piece of the story.

February 2, 2004

This Search Blows

Blowsearch aggregates 20 different engines and claims to be "fast as the wind." The site also has a toolbar that's got some buzz round the search community (link via Search Engine Lowdown).

Udell on Scylla and Charybdis

Over at Infoworld (thanks Matt) Jon Udell is working out what might be a neat hack between the full text approach to search found at most search engines, and the rather utopian approach of the fully structured semantic web. It involves, among other things, converting RSS feeds into XHMTL. Not for the faint of heart, but an interesting angle in terms of grokking how useful search may evolve from the feed-o-sphere....

When Gary Price Writes...

...many folks listen. Gary is the Editor of Resourceshelf and a strong voice in cutting edge librarian/geek culture. In this piece, guest written for Pandia.com, Gary lists his top ten grips about Google. Many of them run along a theme which might best be summed up as failures to nurture the open, geek culture from which Google sprang.

Highlights:

1) Google needs to fix several advanced search problems. Many of them have been known for several months. These are things that should work....

2) Google's page estimates haven't been close to accurate for many months. I've been told that they're, "just estimates." However, can't estimates be more accurate?

4) The company should clearly state that they don't show all backlinks when running a link: search.

9) In late August IEEE announced that Google was crawling abstracts of their publication database. According to the news release, the project was to be completed by September. That was five months ago and a very small percentage of IEEE material appears in Google. What happened?

10) In 2001 Google spokesperson David Krane told News.Com, "...we've firmly established ourselves as the No. 1 search service on the Internet, and this can be attributed to our laser-like focus on a search-only business model." It's obvious that this business model is gone.

His conclusion:

The company now has many constituencies to please and will have even more once they go public. Is Google doing what AltaVista, Excite, and so many others did by trying to become all things to all people?