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March 31, 2004

Fishing For Dipsie

lockupI won't get into the whole song and dance behind Dipsie. I posted on the company back in early November, and for a while it was one of the most searched terms on the site, as it seemed to promise That Which We All Long For, which is to say, The Next Google.

I spent some time over the past few months talking to folks about Dipsie, and have in fact been quite close to posting Real News about the company at one point or another. But as with many startups working through the inevitable kinks, the Real News never quite materialized. Now, Gary posts that Dipsie has told the Chicago Sun Times that it will launch its public beta on May 10. There's no other news in this piece, but it does reflect the bravado of founder Jason Weiner. As Gary says, let's see what happens in May. We can all hope, of course. But me, I'm a skeptic. Prove me wrong, Jason; I'd love to be wrong....

A Month of Search Patents

Gary has his patent roundup posted, and it has more interesting stuff.

There's a patent application for serving ads in email - from employees of Google. Overture gets a patent for search sets. Other search related patents go to Seibel, AT&T, Yahoo, IBM, et al.

My favorite: "Method of doing business by identifying customers of competitors through world wide web searches of job listing databases" - from IBM.

The Top Keywords of the Week

Another tool for you zeitgeist freaks, Wordtracker will tell you the top 500 search keywords updated daily (it comes as a ticker up top). It's an interesting reminder of the real world - "prom hairstyles" makes the top 15....

March 30, 2004

GlobalSpec: Domain Specific Search and the Semantic Web

GlobalSpecSearchEngineLogo I better watch out, or I'll draw fire from Clay Shirky soon. But much of the debate over the semantic web clears my head by quite a distance - I'm more interested in what works and why. I just got off the phone with the GlobalSpec team -Jeffrey Killeen, Chairman & CEO, and John Schneiter, President. It seems to me that GlobalSpec is one of those innovations in search that works - at least for its intended audience - by adding context, organization, and tagging to a limited dataset. Sounds semantic to me.

GlobalSpec is a domain specific (or vertical) search engine. It got its start eight years ago as a classic IT play - take all the catalog-based information about engineering parts - sensors, transducers, etc. - and roll it into a huge, cross-referenced database, which you then distribute over the web. Make money by connecting customers to parts suppliers. Simple.

Over the years GlobalSpec has evolved into a robust community of a million or so engineering types who use it to find and spec parts. That alone is pretty cool (I mean, a million engineers!). But the coolest stuff was just launched: They call it "The Engineering Web" and it's a domain-specific crawl of the web for engineering information. And not only have they crawled the web (about 100K engineering related sites, so far), they've also surfaced invisible web databases not found in mainstream search engines - patent and standards sites, for example, which are walled off by registration and business considerations. Anyone can use the service - it's not limited to registered users. In essence, GlobalSpec has built a portal that drives traffic and intent through their original database business, in the process building an intelligent island of engineering information that lives in the public sphere. Of course this means they can add AdWord-like functionality, which of course they are working on.

My thought: If only cars.com was this cool.

OK, you don't usually spend a lot of time comparing accelerometer specifications, so why should you care? Well, GlobalSpec points the way toward the creation of hundreds of powerful vertical search engines, engines which, because they are limited in domain and exclusive by nature, can in fact offer extremely cool tools to find exactly what you want. (This idea is of course not new, nor mine, but still...) They also will create important data mines of user behavior - GlobalSpec has the parametric details of every search ever made against every product in its database - which is a goldmine for companies who are trying to fathom what the market wants. Think about that for a minute...let it sink it. Yup, Battelle's on his Database of Intentions horse again.

I wish for the day when there's a GlobalSpec for every imaginable domain, and a meta search engine which intelligently crawls those verticals...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here's why GlobalSpec points to some exciting developments in search. Because of its limited domain, GlobalSpec can use relatively simple keyword-based algorithms to surface lists of ideas or terms related to your search. This allows you to refine your search in ways that simply don't scale in the Googleverse. These related ideas are inferred from the results of your initial query. For example, if you search on "aerodynamics", you will get "aircraft , Flight Mechanics, Helicopter Aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics and Theoretical Aerodynamics" as related searches.

It's clustering without the crappy results. This stuff really only works when you are living in a gated community of sorts - out on the big bad web, there are simply too many false positives. (I'd also point out that domain specific vertical search engines in more consumer/commercial domains - such as cars.com or Expedia - are further polluted by the commercial interests of the industry they serve. They could learn a lot from the GlobalSpec approach.)

The GlobalSpec guys outlined a useful trio of attributes shared by domain-specific search engines like GlobalSpec. First is organization. This is the basic premise of domain specific engines - through organization comes efficient search. Schneiter calls his engine "parametric" - everything in the index is organized against the standards and parameters of the engineering field, making "parametric search" a reality. Second is context. Domains engines are by definition contextual, but GlobalSpec has a drop down menu next to its search box that allows you to contextualize the search even more, across a bunch of subdomains like Products & Manufacturing, Company Name, Application Notes (engineers care about this), Suppliers, and Standards. And third is access. Vertical search products, by their exclusive nature, can provide domain-specific access to the invisible web, in fact, they can enable commercial transactions that otherwise would be impossible (as GlobalSpec does, see here - at the bottom is the option to purchase an engineering standard from a company with a deep database of standards, a database which cannot be accessed via mainstream search engines). To that end, I'd argue that a fourth attribute of vertical search engines is commerce - these engines enable serious, highly efficient closed loop markets.

Come to think of it, Topix feels a lot like GlobalSpec, but for local news/advertising instead of engineering. And so on...

FWIW, GlobalSpec is backed by Warburg Pincus, and will be profitable this year. The company will not reveal revenues but say they are in a "scale position." Worth watching....

Eric S. Interview in WSJ

ericsCouldn't get onto the WSJ page yesterday, so missed this interview with Eric - and it's behind a paid wall in any case. Then I noticed this free link in Beal's blog today. Eric gives some insight into his management style, the possible IPO, and how decisions are made.

March 29, 2004

Baidu Chief On Google, China

Worth a read it you care about the Chinese market....

Google Says: Check Under Our Hood (Personalized Search, et al)

google_kaltix_resultsGoogle's got a refined look, and it's rolling out a Labs approach to personalized search. The approach is distinct, it requires a lot of input from the user. It's the result, I believe, of an integration with the Kaltix technology Google bought last year. The company, in a press release, calls their personalized search "revolutionary." We'll see. The Labs implementation walks you through a step by step process which uses categories to refine and personalize your search, and uses a search for "Stanford" in the health category as the example. I changed it to "Berkeley" and got a message that "Personalized results not available for this query." But I'm not *from* Stanford...

Google also released the ability to receive search results via email (called Google Web Alerts, a lot like Google News Alerts), and made a host of tweaks to its interface, most notably on the home page (the "tabs" are now links, check out the "more" link, and also the search box seems bigger, and there's a line imploring you to "get more from Google" ); in Froogle, which now has it's own spot on the home page and gets a redesign (new tagline, but it's still in beta); and in news (incorporates thumbnails).

My first take: This is Google saying "Hey, folks, there's a lot more to us than meets the eye. Come take a look, and get into a relationship with us." More when I get back from morning rounds.

BTW, the Google Directory lost its place on the home page....


(full release in extended entry)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GOOGLE INTRODUCES PERSONALIZED SEARCH SERVICES; SITE
ENHANCEMENTS EMPHASIZE EFFICIENCY

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 29, 2004 - Google Inc. today released three
new innovative features that demonstrate the company's ongoing
commitment to improving the search experience for users. The new offerings
include a revolutionary search engine that uses user preferences to match
search results to their interests, a service that delivers search results
via
email, and an enhanced interface for Google web sites worldwide.

Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts, both debuting on
Google Labs, enable searchers to specify what interests them and to receive
customized results based on those interests. Changes to the Google interface

improve the speed and accessibility of Google's search offerings, further
demonstrating the company's focus on providing the best search experience
for users.

"Today, Google takes the first step in providing personal search results
based on users' preferences," said Larry Page, co-founder and president,
Products. "We can deliver search results tailored to your interests or
promptly email you new information on any topic. In addition, Google has a
cleaner new interface and easy access to the comprehensive Froogle product
search."

Google's personalized search services
Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts deliver customized
search results based on preferences that users specify.

Google Personalized Web Search uses personal preferences to deliver custom
search results based on interests selected by users. Users can control the
degree of personalization in their results using a slider, and see the
results
change dynamically as the degree of personalization changes. For example,
music enthusiasts will see different relevant sites for a search on [bass]
than
people who indicate an interest in the outdoors. More information about both

services can be found at http://labs.google.com.

Google Web Alerts are automatic updates for web users who want to stay
current with topics that interest them. After specifying keywords they want
to track, users can receive daily or weekly email with links to new web page

results, plus top stories from Google News that are related to each query.
For
example, Google Web Alerts can be used to follow the progress of a favorite
sports team or a business competitor, all without having to perform searches

repeatedly.

Google interface enhancements
The Google homepages and search results pages worldwide have been
modified to include links across the top of the search box, which directly
connect users to other Google services including Froogle. These links
provide
a faster, simpler search experience. Also, with Froogle now available via
the
Google homepage, shoppers can directly search the web for products to buy.

Google search results pages also feature a cleaner look to better connect
users to relevant information, additional Google search services and
targeted
advertising. As always, Google's sponsored links are clearly marked, so
users
can easily distinguish between advertisements and search results, which
Google strives to make as objective and unbiased as possible.

Three additional search enhancements announced today include:

. New Froogle home page and search results page - Froogle's
simpler new design closely resembles the Google homepage and search
results page. The new Froogle homepage also features links to recent
popular product searches, such as [iPod cases] or [airzooka] instead of
categories. These links enable users to see the variety of products that can

be found via Froogle, from the most obscure to the most popular. Try a
search on Froogle at http://froogle.google.com.

. A new number range (numrange) advanced search command
enables users to specify that results contain numbers in a range they set.
Users can conduct a numrange search by specifying two numbers, separated
by two periods, with no spaces. For example, a user looking for information
about DVD players between $250 and $350 or technical information on high
capacity batteries, can conduct a search for [DVD player $250..$300] or
[50..1000 wh/kg battery].

. Images now featured in Google News search results - Google News
now displays thumbnail images of photos that relate to news stories. By
including these photos, users receive more detail about any given event.
Accessible from the Google homepage and at http://news.google.com,
Google News provides users with multiple viewpoints on numerous stories
from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide.

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.

# # #

Google is a trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names
may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are
associated.

March 27, 2004

MSFT Groks Technorati, Readies Blogbot

msoft1MSFT is claiming to be the first to focus on weblog search. I am sure the folks at Technorati , Feedster, Daypop, et al are curious to see what exactly they are talking about.

MSFT, clearing puffing out its chest, also claims it will roll out its version of news (already in beta) and, at some point this decade, a natural language query engine. Uh huh.

Thanks, Gary.

Mapquest Reverse Engineers Local Search

mq-logo-header
Used to be, you had your search, and you added the map/local angle. Well Mapquest has the maps, and now it's adding search. Gary reports that Mapquest has a local search beta up. Innaresting...Mapquest is an AOL company...

March 25, 2004

MSFT & Search: Europe, Ballmer

ballmersjpgCNET reports that MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer got animated when the subject of search came up at the company's recent advertising forum.

"People say that Microsoft does it all, but this is the case where we didn't do it all," Ballmer told an audience of marketing and media executives on Thursday, here at the software giant's fifth annual advertising conference. Then, like an eager football coach pumping up the team for the second half, Ballmer reasserted that Microsoft is still in the game and plans to win.

"You'll see a lot of good competition in the area," he said emphatically, at one point throwing his pen.

In other news, the Merc reports that the recent EU ruling against MSFT may stymie the company's plans to integrate search into Windows.

Shopping.com IPO Is A Search IPO...

sdc_logoHow? Besides my own bias that all of ecommerce is driven by search, see this excerpt from a story on Shopping.com's $400 million IPO:

Shopping.com's biggest customer, responsible for 38% of its revenue, is Google. Shopping.com's agreement with Google is expected to continue, although the market is highly competitive. The Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) e-commerce site has launched a new price comparison service, and Google is planning to launch its own price comparison service, Froogle.

And, ahem, let's not forget Amazon...

Here's the Shopping.com filing....(BTW, they filed in 2000 but never got out...)

March 24, 2004

Silverstein Rides Again

craigsInterviewed in ZDNet, Craig suggests that voice-activated search is not so far away. Recall that his model was, at one point, Star Trek. Google Labs has a rudimentary application based on this idea here. And, as I noted yesterday, Opera has integrated it already into a version of their browser (using IBM speech technology).

Silverstein said he believes that within a few years Google could have a voice interface for everything from driving directions to help you finding the aisle for a particular food in your local supermarket.

"That's something you would never think to ask a search engine. You're not likely to be using your laptop in a supermarket, but in the future I think search will be far more accessible -- you won't be tied to your desktop, you will be able to do it from your mobile phone or PDA -- and you'll start to see search used in fundamentally different ways. The kinds of things people want information about when they are walking around or sitting in a bar is very different to what they want while they're at home," he said.

Thanks, Beal...

Kanoodle News

kanoodle2Kanoodle announced that is has snagged MSNBC.com distribution today, here's the press release. Earlier it announced "ClickFactor" - a new ranking system for its ContextTarget paid search system. Forgot what Kanoodle's deal is? Here and here....

NewsJunkie

msoft1Microsoft is readying its own entry in the news search game, according to this Mercury News piece on "Newsjunkie," the latest purposeful leak out of Microsoft's research labs. Features sound cool, and certainly point to some common themes I've heard cropping up in discussions of next generation search engines.

Using principles of artificial intelligence and information retrieval, NewsJunkie keeps track of what a reader has already seen. It reorganizes news stories to rank those with the most new information at the top and push those with repetitive information to the bottom, or filter them out entirely.

NewsJunkie can help improve news alerts beyond key words to offer only new information, the researchers said. Dumais is working on a similar project to make search happen behind the scenes to recognize what you're working on, search your hard drive and automatically present related files. ``In this day and age there's such replication around,'' Horvitz said. ``As Google's news site says, `There are 1,400 other news articles on this topic,' but there's no guidance for what you might look at next. You have to say, `How can I cut to the chase?' ''

The Newsjunkie research paper will be presented at the 13th annual WWW conference in NYC in May. Yow, cool agenda. I want to go.

March 23, 2004

GuruNet Founder Interviewed

guru_logoEMarketer has an interview with Bob Rosenschein, founder of GuruNet, which bills itself as an "answer engine." GuruNet has been around a long time, as these things go, and is worth a trial. It works by organizing licensed information into some 700,000 topics, which are accessed via a keyword-activated desktop application. In essence, any word or phrase you see - in an email, web page, Word doc, whatever - can be Alt clicked on to produce a GuruNet answer (as opposed to a list of SERPs, as with a search engine). Since it has a Mac OSX trial version, I plan to try it out....

Future of Commercial Search, Cont: Yahoo Autos

ab30If you want to track the commercialization of search, watch Yahoo. Yahoo has created new commercial search attachments around the theme of cars. MediaPost reports.

After nearly a year's worth of consumer and advertiser research, Yahoo! has relaunched its Autos section, aiming to build loyal audiences throughout the entire car-buying process and offer advertisers more refined ways to target them....

...One big change: consumers will be able to drill down deeper than before within particular vehicle categories. For instance, a potential SUV buyer can search for and compare autos within the luxury category, and can also drill even further by price or gas mileage. The site will also begin recommending auto comparisons based on what users compare most often...

...After nearly a year's worth of consumer and advertiser research, Yahoo! has relaunched its Autos section, aiming to build loyal audiences throughout the entire car-buying process and offer advertisers more refined ways to target them....

From what I can grok, seems Yahoo has taken a page from Amazon's book and will create a deep and rather intimate portrait of your car buying preferences, and make suggestions along the way. I plan to use this service as I happen to be in the market, if I learn anything, I'll let you know...

March 22, 2004

Toolbars De Mundo...

There are a lot of new toolbars out there, and I can't keep up (especially since I am on a Mac). But Gary Price can....here's his review of HotBot's new toolbar. It has local search...and RSS search...

And, speaking of RSS, Dogpile launched an RSS enabled toolbar as well this week...

T'rati Goes Live With New UI

Check it out, new UI, and more features....congrats to Dave, who is sitting behind me (a bit bleary eyed) with a grin on his face.

Eric S. At PC Forum

ericsListening to Eric speak here at PC Forum. He's already made a few interesting comments. First, he dodged the IPO question. Then, in response to a question about Google's business model, he made an interesting declaration: He went on a practiced riff about the media business, how large it is, and how many "platform players" can thrive and no one approach will win. In other words, Eric views Google as a media company, or at least that's the take I came away with. That is new, last time we spoke, Google was a technology company driven by media revenues...


Eric also told an anecdotal story about the "Don't Be Evil" mandate at Google. Early in his tenure, when he still felt it was a bit odd for a company to be run by such a rule, he was in a meeting where a (unspecified) idea was tossed out, and one of the employees yelled out "That's Evil!!" A lengthy debate ensued. Eric pointed out that Google's culture has built in DNA around what is and is not evil, and when something comes up that might be evil, employees bring up an "evil alert." I dunno. I still think it's potentially dangerous for this kind of ad hoc, socially driven morality to drive cultures within large media companies.

March 19, 2004

Just Announced: Microsoft Will Clean Up Its Search Act

msft_118x35This just in, from the folks at MSFT PR: Today MSN will announce that beginning July 1, MSN Search will clearly delineate paid ads from organic search results, with the result being that organic (or algorithmic) results will be above the fold (the top half of the page) for the first time since...well since recent memory.

This is clearly an opportunistic announcement (timed as it is in the wake of the Yahoo CAP dust up), but I must say, it's a welcome one. Bravo, Microsoft, and I hope the execution lives up to the context and timing of this release. I've complained over and over about how crappy MSN search is, mainly due to the fact that you can't see the organic forest for the commercialized trees. According to an email I received from MSFT PR informing me of this, "The changes are being made to allow better positioning of sponsored links based on relevancy. These changes are a result of a series of consumer testing to determine user satisfaction and search relevancy with various UIs."

If I'm reading this right, MSN tested the idea that clearly labeling ads equates to more ads being clicked on and a better overall experience for the consumer, and found out - Holy Shit! - the hypothesis proves out.

Other highlights (again, quoting the email):

- MSN’s Search Featured Sites (SFS) and other paid listings will be outlined and the background shaded, and designated at “sponsored.”
- The number of paid links in the SFS will now number up to three (reduced from up to 4).
- MSN will now have up to one Editor’s Featured Site (EFS) below the SFS
- The right rail will continue to include up to 5 Overture paid search links.
- Overture continues to have sponsored links in the right rail

March 18, 2004

Paging Gary Price: The Librarians Have Found the On Switch

Launched: "Ask A Librarian" - a new service in Florida that puts the reference librarian online. Cool. ResearchBuzz reports.

Interesting New Toolbar

Viewpoint launched today. Beal reports a cool feature is the thumbnails in the bar itself...

Fire One Over Google's Bow

Jeremy (yeah, he works at Yahoo) says: Google local needs work...

March 17, 2004

Yahoo Announces New News Search

main5So Yahoo has made its News Search feature more robust...but, I wonder, where is the fresh angle that Yahoo brings, unique to Yahoo? Google has the "not touched by human hands" angle. Yahoo could do so much here...and I hope it does. For now, the news is this: the News search feature now sources 7000 sites, adds a "also try" feature (related queries), and some other nifty features. I'd like to see a "make this news search an RSS feed" feature...

PS - Rich Skrenta and others point out, use the beta URL...

PPS - Turns out, this news is a couple of months old. Sorry....too busy lately.

Is Search Important to Ebay?

ebay.jpgSure is..."eBay Enhances Stores for Search Engine Optimization "... for more, see my talk with Monier here...

Google Takes Local Out of The Labs

This just in...Google takes local search and integrates it into main index...it's not a tab, following instead Danny's invisible tabs stategy....Have not had a chance to really play with this, though this link is for "Pizza Kentfield" and shows our local pizza joint first. Gary has done some testing, and he reports it needs more work.....Press release in extended entry below. (Reuters story here)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GOOGLE CONNECTS SEARCHERS WITH LOCAL INFORMATION Innovative
Feature Combines Traditional Business Listings with Local Resources Drawn
From Google's Index of More than 4.2 Billion Web Documents

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 17, 2004 - Google Inc. today announced the
integration of local search results into Google.com with the availability of
Google Local. This new feature enables users to find relevant local
information with neighborhood business listings, maps, directions, and
useful web pages.

Google Local represents the next step in local search technology. Now, users
can search beyond traditional sources of local information, such as the yellow
pages and local business listings, to reach a greater diversity of local
resources drawn from the web at large. This innovation demonstrates
Google's commitment to developing products that make it faster and easier
for people to search across diverse sources of information from a single
search box.

"Google's goal is to connect searchers with the information they need
whether it's half-way around the world or in their neighborhood," said
Sergey Brin, co-founder and President, Technology of Google Inc. "Google
Local combines a wide array of sources including Google's more than 4
billion web page index, to produce the deepest local search."

Google Local search functionality is integrated into Google.com so relevant
local information for specific keywords or locations is automatically presented
to users at the top of search results pages. When these results are available,
they are marked by a small compass icon which, when clicked, connects
users to a Google Local search results page.

For example, users searching for a pizza restaurant in their neighborhood
simply enter the keyword [pizza], and either a zip code or the name of a
town or city [Palo Alto] into the search field to receive a comprehensive list
of local pizza restaurants. Each result is accompanied by a phone number,
street address, and a list of related websites such as those of local pizza
restaurants, store reviews, and related information. Clicking on a business
name delivers a new page featuring an easy-to-read map, directions, and
more related web pages. If needed, users can limit or expand their results to
include listings within a 1-mile, 5-mile, 15-mile, or 45-mile radius of a
specific location.

Google searches its entire collection of web pages to pinpoint geographic
information that is relevant to a user's query. Google combines this
information with comprehensive local business, map, and service information
drawn from a wide variety of U.S. databases such as the yellow pages and
other sources. Today, Google Local connects users to U.S.-based local
information. The company plans to include local information for international
markets in the coming months.

Google Local, currently in beta, is the latest in a number of recent
innovations that enhance the utility of Google as a resource connecting users
to a wide variety of information sources. In addition to local information,
Google recently integrated flight tracking, UPS and Federal Express package
tracking, zip code information, and UPC code search into Google.com. A
complete list of Google.com search features can be found at:
http://www.google.com/options/.

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.

# # #

Google is a trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names
may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are
associated.

Contact:
Nathan Tyler
Google Inc.
650-623-4311
nate@google.com

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March 16, 2004

Diller Buys TripAdvisor

The ever-alert Gary Price points out that Diller has made another move - buying the travel search engine TripAdvisor.

Want to grok Diller's company, IAC? Me too. Gary points us to the recently filed 10-K...

Mamma's Got a Cuban

mamma_reg.gifMark Cuban, as entertaining a fellow as you might ever find in sports or technology, revealed in a filing yesterday that he owns more than six percent of Mamma.com. The stock is up nearly 30% today.

PS - Mark has a blog and discusses his investment here....

(all hail Gary)

Kanoodle: A Different Approach

As I pointed out earlier, Kanoodle is a company formed essentially in opposition: It was founded by the execs behind About's Sprinks contextual advertising service, after that service was bought and then discontinued by Google. eWeek today has a good overview of their plans. Excerpt:

ContextTarget, and its upcoming expansion, determines the placement of ads on the bidding for particular content categories rather than on keywords in the content, Josephson said.

Kanoodle.com maps the table of contents of partner sites to build its categories and match appropriate ads, he explained. The automated program will use the same approach but more dynamically map Web publishers' pages to ContextTarget's categories.

"The way we look at the world is that the Googles of the world are great search companies that are trying to put the same model on ads," Josephson said.

I say, competition is good....(though like everyone else, they're stealing Google's holiday-theme logos!)

Geo Search: MetaCarta

I've pinged MetaCarta before, when they got more than $6 million from Sevin Rosen, but Shore points me to a good overview of MetaCarta's technology in Directions magazine. Geo-located content/search has been something of a blind spot for me, reading through this helped a lot. Seems MetaCarta does something akin to WebFountain, but only for location-specific information. Geolocation unlocks all sorts of interesting applications, in fact, the concept came up several times in my conversations with Bill Joy this past Friday. Watch this space.

March 15, 2004

Bray's Other Shoe: Sun

OnGoing to Sun...

March 13, 2004

Watch Out, Google, Here Comes...

Coneteq, the next Google...from Lebanon. I'm thinking of creating a section on my site for engines which claim to be the next Google...the "US consultant" who is pushing this new engine points out w/r/t Google:

“Their pre-tax profit last year was $350 million. That’s not bad for a couple of guys,” he said, reiterating the often-cited fact that one of the founders, Sergey Brin, is a Russian émigré while the other, Larry Page, is a hippie.

That's how we win! Call em hippies!

Jerry Yang Interviewed In Taiwan

Jerry visits his hometown (Taipei) and sits for an interview with the Taipei Times. Interesting to hear Jerry, who is not often in the press, talk about competition with Google, Yahoo's strategy, etc. Excerpts (sounds a bit like it's been translated from English to Chinese to English, though I have no idea...):

As Microsoft also uses our technology, it means that nearly 50 percent of all searches in the world use Yahoo technology. This coverage gives us the advantage of learning more about consumer behavior and what they want to find, which is a foundation for us to improve ourselves on...

I think I will be a Yahoo lifer, since I still have a lot of passion for it. The Internet is becoming the most important medium, because it is unrestricted from time and space. The Internet revolution has, and will continue, to bring profound influence on people's life and culture, making it more potential than the time I established Yahoo. Therefore, I will keep contributing to this field to explore the potential of this technology, as well as my own brainchild, until I'm too old to move.

March 12, 2004

Yahoo Updates Battelle

Had a nice chat earlier in the week with Yahoo's Tim Cadogan, who in the face of the paid inclusion dust up has been given, or perhaps even has willingly taken, the role of Explain It, Then Explain It Again Yahoo. Tim knows from controversy and market overreaction, he was at Overture before paid search was cool, and there are some similarities to how the market is reacting to Yahoo's CAP program. Namely, he believes, the whole content acquisition program, misunderstood now, will eventually be seen as a rational approach to the market, and, ultimately will lead to a much more robust search experience.

Now, I stand by what I wrote earlier, that CAP forces the issue of trust and transparency to the fore, and most small business owners (arguably those most affected by this program) are not yet ready to trust a big company like Yahoo. They feel coerced to pay up, mainly by fear of missing something if they don't. Tim said he understood these sentiments, and said that only time will prove that CAP has no influence over ranking. He also points out that CAP is entirely optional, and that Yahoo's goal is to crawl the entire web as throughly as possible, regardless of paid inclusion.

I pointed out to him that if Yahoo could simply state that its organic crawl and resultant index was as comprehensive and fresh as Google's, then perhaps folks would see that CAP is simply an added value service for URL submission, reports, and the like. Tim responded that indeed, Yahoo stands by its index and results as the equal of Google, and again time will tell.

In any case, whatever your view on the paid inclusion issue, it's clear Google will make hay on this for sometime to come. Over time, what matters is results, and this is where Tim thinks CAP will bear fruit. He makes the point, echoed by Gary Price and others, that the press pretty much overlooked what he thinks is a huge differentiator for Yahoo: CAP's ongoing program to index the deeper, structured web, in particular CAP's work to surface databases at the University of Michigan and Library of Congress. I agree, this is a big deal, and in the long run will matter a lot as the web gets more and more structured (to good end, in my mind).

I noted that perhaps the LoC and other deep web efforts were discounted by much of the press as so much PR to cover the paid inclusion portion of the CAP program, and Tim said he hoped the press wasn't *that* cynical. The press, cynical?!

PS - if you want to hear Tim talk about Yahoo in the pre CAP days, a webcast of a talk he gave a year ago (thanks for the correction, Brad) is available here.

PPS - Look who has the #1 result on Yahoo search for "Yahoo CAP". Given the minor fracas that post started about bias in algorithms...that's pretty funny.

PPS - I forgot to ask Tim, and wish I had, about the fact that when you sign up for SiteMatch (that's the name of the paid inclusion portion of CAP), you agree to pay .15 to .30 cents a click for anyone who clicks on the URLs you submit. That's basically embedding Overture into the main listings, and it could get quite expensive (or lucrative, depending on your business), and it strikes me as...unusual. In other words, it adds the very distinct ka-ching of commerce into organic results (yes, I know, paid inclusion already has that ka-ching, but it's not so transactional - it's not *on the click*...). A post over at this new search marketing site, The Pre-Commerce Blog, got me thinking about that...

CEO of Northern Light on Future of Search

Gary points us to this speech by the CEO of Northern Light, David Seuss. (Gary also links to Suess' ppt slides). Interesting, Suess says the future of search is intelligent, human edited databases that are subject specific. The Google approach will stop scaling, if it hasnt' already, he predicts. (Recall that Northern Light was an early innovator in search which Suess bought out of bankruptcy last year).

Email Search, Cont: Bloomba

Stata Labs' Bloomba gets a rave, of sorts, in Fast Company. The company Demo'd at Demo last month. Demo guru Chris Shipley called it "the Google of email."


The bottom line: Bloomba 1.0 is an incredibly innovative product that turns the way we think about email entirely on its head. Searching, not power-foldering, is probably the wave of the future for serious email communicators. But it's not yet ready for prime time

(thanks, Hylton)

March 11, 2004

iPhrase

Another roundup on the search landscape over at the Herring (registration required). Most interesting find: iPhrase, which provides intelligent "self service" search for corporate clients interested in creating better experiences for their customers online. Schwab apparently is using it to good end. And Gary points out ha tif you want to demo the tech, head over to Lycos's stock screener application...

Things Are LOOKing Up

ls_logo_splash.gifLooksmart is trading higher today after revising its numbers upwards. Fact is, there's room for plenty of players in search right now, even one that lost its biggest client, MSN. (Interesting, but Looksmart recently signed a deal with MSN to supply it with results on a sporadic basis, according to Dow Jones.) In fact, LOOK is in a good position to be the comeback kid, given it's long history in the space. Odds are things will only get better, in this market anyway. I'm meeting the new CEO soon, look for a report then.

(Hat-tip to Beal)

More on the Googleverse

CNET weighs in with a roundup piece on various companies nipping at Google's heels, both in pure search, interface, advertising business model, and the like. Industry Brains, Quigo, Eurekster, Grokker, Vivisimo, et al are discussed...

March 10, 2004

Industry Brains Beefs Up Financial Network

Logo_IndustryBrains.gifWhen I met with Erik Matlick of Industry Brains last week, he mentioned that the company was about to get much stronger in the financial publishing vertical. The news is now official, IBrains has added The Motley Fool, Kiplinger, Zacks, and Salary.com to its portfolio. I certainly am encouraged by this, and hope the company and lots more like it flourish. Press release in extended entry....

IndustryBrains Expands Site-Specific Paid Listings
In Financial Category with the Addition of
The MotleyFool.com, Kiplinger.com, Zacks.com and Salary.com
 
NEW YORK (March 10, 2004)  IndustryBrains, the leader in site-specific contextually relevant advertising, announced today it has further expanded its financial vertical by partnering with The Motley Fool, Kiplinger.com, Zacks, and Salary.com.


The MotleyFool.com. Kiplinger.com, Zacks.com and Salary.com join a prestigious network of sites that include BusinessWeek and BankRate to offer financial advertisers site-specific and category-specific cost per click opportunities. A buy into the financial category results in exposure to 5 million monthly unique visitors across all six sites.


“Site specific targeting on premium sites has consistently proven to generate a lower cost-per-lead than programs utilizing a network model.” says IndustryBrains CEO Erik Matlick. “The addition of The Motley Fool, Kiplinger, Salary.com and Zacks Financial Network means that our advertisers will have access to the highest-quality audience on the web.” says IndustryBrains CEO Erik Matlick. “


We were able to point to the benefits of IndustryBrains almost immediately, from both a revenue and a partnership perspective," said Jeff Kaplan, General Manager, MotleyFool.com. "In the short period following the roll-out of IndustryBrains listings on MotleyFool.com, IndustryBrains has proven to have our best interest in mind while being able to generate additional revenue for our site.”

Unlike network driven paid listings programs, IndustryBrain’s technology is private-labeled by partner sites and is totally transparent to the user. This enables publishers to leverage their own brands to bring in advertisers who are willing to pay more for placement on a highly-regarded site.

"IndustryBrains provides an effective way for us to easily derive incremental revenue from our editorial pages and email newsletters," said Edward Kelleher, General Manager, Kiplinger.com. "They have created a unique product that helps us grow our business."

Users tend to trust paid listing results returned on branded sites they are familiar with. The result is more cost effective advertising performance. One U.S.-based client reported cost-per-lead acquisition using IndustryBrains to be only $7.00 vs. $48.69 using Overture and $21.49 using Google.

The Motley Fool, Inc. educates, amuses, and enriches more than 30 million people each month and is a leading provider of financial education and independent advice. Since 1993, The Motley Fool has been on hand to help people achieve financial independence across a wide variety of online and offline media channels including: its award-winning website at www.Fool.com ; its best-selling Simon & Schuster and self-published books (over 1.8 million sold); a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column carried by more than 250 publications; and "The Motley Fool Radio Show," a joint venture with NPR.

Kiplinger.com , the companion site to Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, is organized to help visitors learn, plan and meet their financial goals, as well as assist them in getting the most for their money. The site introduces investment basics, updates on the latest news, trends, tax, investment and product information, and gives visitors the tools they need to make the best decisions. Kiplinger.com is also a gateway to all of the company's products and services.

Founded in 1978, Zacks began processing, organizing and evaluating research produced by US brokerage firms. Today Zacks receives daily electronic data feeds and printed research reports on over 10,000 companies from over 185 brokerage firms, produced by more than 3,200 analysts amounting to over 500,000 pages of brokerage research. In addition, ZIR records 25,000 earnings estimate revisions and changes in broker recommendations weekly. This information is made available through institutional and non-institutional product lines and web sites, as well as www.zacks.com, and www.zacksadvisor.com.

Salary.com is the world's technology leader in compensation management. The firm's enterprise software helps companies manage their compensation expenditures with real-time, decision-ready data and analytical tools. Other Salary.com products include the widely syndicated Salary Wizard, which offers packages of data and analysis geared toward individuals, managers, and growing businesses.

Launched in 2002, New York-based IndustryBrains , is the only business performance based media firm that specializes in contextual site specific advertising. IndustryBrains offers custom publisher solutions for monetizing content and search pages. Real-time tracking and reporting allows publishers to easily manage advertiser relationships and optimize revenue. For advertisers, IndustryBrains offers contextual category placement on premium sites like Infoworld, ComputerWorld, PC Magazine, EETimes, Network Magazine and BusinessWeek. Advertisers bid for placement on site-specific categories that are related to their business. Listings are delivered whenever a customer performs a search on the specified terms throughout its network of 50+ premium sites.

George H. Simpson Communications
212.309.9068
georgehsimpson@att.net

MSN Money Says: No Bubble Here

MSN Money columnist Michael Brush takes a look at the search space from an investment standpoint and says the exuberance is justified. There's a very fine line between exuberance and "irrational" exuberance, a line that is quite hard to draw. Clearly the indications are quite healthy, as my last post points out. And we've seen irrational behavior in the past, so (I hope) we'll hold ourselves back this time. If nothing else, many of us just don't want to go back there again. Once is enough.

(thanks, Beal)

Just 1 in 9 Small Business Know About Paid Search

According to this Kelsey/ConStat report. Those that do quickly put 23% of their marketing chips in the PPC basket. I can't do the math this early in the morning (what would happen if, say, 3 in 9 small businesses put 23% of their chips into PPC), but ...there's a lot of upside left in this particular market. Not to mention what happens to average CPC as more and more competitors get into the market.....

(via Wonk, Internet Retailer)

March 9, 2004

Sign O' the Times...

Got my first SEO spam today promising I could be "#1 On Yahoo." That was in fact the subject header. The email sent me to a place I don't think I'll bother to link to. I'm not in the bullseye for this kind of spam, but it's a sign o' the times....

Smart Maps: Search+Maps at Yahoo

Yahoo's integrated location/place search into a visual map interface at maps.yahoo.com. It's intuitive and cool. The image at left shows my neighborhood - local restaurants are highlighted on the Yahoo application, but not emdedded in the .gif, unfortunately.

(Thanks, Beal.)

Salon on the Deep Web

Sub-required overview of the issues inherent to the deep web, including access to government files and the implications for mediators. Tim Bray is quoted (always a good sign). I missed the author's call, though I'm not sure I'd have added much...Excerpts:

As new search spiders penetrate the thickets of corporate databases, government documents and scholarly research databanks, they will not only help users retrieve better search results but also siphon transactions away from the organizations that traditionally mediate access to that data. As organizations commingle more of their data with the deep Web search engines, they are entering into a complex bargain, one they may not fully understand.

...The CIA and Dick Cheney notwithstanding, there is no secret government conspiracy to hide public documents from view; it's largely a matter of bureaucratic inertia. Federal information technology organizations may not solve that problem anytime soon. The deep Web search engines may just solve it for them....


Deriving search results from structured data sets will open up new possibilities for search engines. In all likelihood, search engines will gradually abandon the flat listings-style result pattern you see on a typical 12-page Google result. (And who ever gets to the 12th page, anyway?) Not only could deep Web search engines present more useful and manipulable views into structured data but, given some basic lingua franca of structural vocabularies, they could also aggregate those results in endlessly permutable combinations...

...Every search query is a unit of desire. Search companies, like all businesses, exist by transforming desire into hard currency. As deep Web search engines insinuate themselves into deeper and deeper levels of organizations, they will not only offload search traffic, they will trigger a series of massive disruptions in the information economy.

If you buy the Cluetrain maxim that "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy," then surely deep Web search engines will amplify that subversion. As search engines extend their reach deeper into and across organizations, the boundaries between those organizations will feel more fluid -- both to consumers and to the organizations themselves. The first thing most of us notice may be better search results.

Somewhere inside that complex apparatus of desire and fulfillment, a transformation is taking place, one whose effects we can barely foresee.

March 8, 2004

Summary of SES

Fine summary of the trends at SES at ClickZ by Rebecca Leib...

Neat Ranking Hack

Another nifty API-based hack: RankPulse. This site tracks popular keyword terms (glasses, camcorders, etc) and shows what sites have moved up or down Google's rankings. It has tons of interesting charts and lists.

From the site's FAQ:

Whenever you visit Google and enter a search term or phrase, Google's system must decide which sites to display first. Some terms appear in Google's database hundreds of millions of times, but the first page of results displays only ten websites. Google works very hard to ensure that the top results are the most relavent to your query.

Google, along with other leading search engines, rely on complex algorithms to determine which websites to list first; they tweak their systems daily. As a result, the rankings fluctuate, and that is where RankPulse comes in - we track and chart the daily fluctuations of 1,000 keyword searches at Google.

Search engines are amazing gateways to virtually unlimited content, and at RankPulse our goal is to provide some insights into how they work. One of our primary intentions is to show webmasters that although unscrupulous search engine optimization (SEO) techniques may yield temporary benefits, they are not foundations for a sound and sustainable website......

Google, along with other leading search engines, rely on complex algorithms to determine which websites to list first; they tweak their systems daily. As a result, the rankings fluctuate, and that is where RankPulse comes in - we track and chart the daily fluctuations of 1,000 keyword searches at Google.....

(Thanks again, Philipp)

March 3, 2004

Forrestor on Google Again

This time it's analyst Charlene Li, whose commentary runs on CNET today. In the piece she gives a fine overview of Google's weaknesses vis-a-vis MSN, Yahoo, and presumably AOL. Her overview is good, but I disagree with some of her conclusions.

In summary, she argues that Google can't compete with the portals search offerings, in particular once the portals have integrated search across their sites. Portals, Li argues, are in the best position to incorporate personalization, contextual searching (ie a search for "price delta" within Yahoo Travel yields different results from the same search within Yahoo Finance) and the like. Li further points out that when MSFT integrates search into the desktop qua Windows, Google will really be hard pressed to compete.

Li concludes that Google's only true advantage lies in its independence as a non-publisher: In a choice between Yahoo, which competes at multiple levels with publishers, or Google, which is focused solely on search, publishers have and will continue to sign up with Google in droves. As contextual marketing makes inroads, Google will evolve its ad network into utilities that will enable the contextual placement of display ads--and siphon a portion of traditional branding ad dollars away from the portals.

Here's where I think this analysis misses a few key points. One, Google is already a portal, but a loosely joined one. It has Orkut, Groups, Blogger, and - rumored to be coming soon - email (well, they already have email - it's in Orkut). If for some reason they have to move in that direction to compete, they can and they will.

Second, Li bases much of her analysis on the interface presumption that Google will always take the "blank slate" approach to search - that is, the user comes to a blank box, with no context to guide the search results. While this is true now, it need not be in the future. Page was recently quoted saying "it takes five seconds to type in a zip code" - and I am sure the folks at Google can figure out a way to make sure that zip code (and any other personalized information) only has to be typed in once. In other words, if Google feels compelled to add personalization, they will (and if you're an Orkut member, my guess is you'll be able to personalize your search pretty darn soon).

And lastly, Li assume that publishers will prefer Google over the portals, because the portals are competitive with publishers. In fact, publishers will go with whoever sends them profitable traffic, end of story. If Yahoo or AOL can do that, the publishers will work with them.

In any case, I'm glad to see this kind of business model thinking out and about on the web. It's a refreshing change from the party lines we see so often in the press.

PS - on Yahoo's CAP

(Bray weighs in here - as Mark Pilgrim said, ouch...)

More Ad News

It must be the SES show, but there's a lot of "online advertising rocks" stuff out there of late. Jupiter released a study with figures claiming that 7 of 10 paid search advertisers plan to increase their spending this year. Also, the percentage of marketers buying 100 keywords or more increased from 18% last year to nearly 50% this year. (via Wonk)

March 2, 2004

The Big Shift

One of the news items buzzing here at SES is Yahoo's announcement of its paid inclusion program, covered by the Times here. That they intended to shift to paid inclusion index-wide is not news (discussed in more length here), but it is a clear signal that Yahoo has no trouble being labeled as the "commercial" search engine. Google continues to differentiate as "pure." More later on this...(meantime, good and deeper overview at SEW here).

BTW, posting will be light today. On a plane later, traveling home. SES continues apace for the next three days...I'll have to cover it remotely.

March 1, 2004

Speaking of Money...

Contextual search company Quigo today announced $5 million in financing from Highland Capital, ie, Lycos founder Bob Davis. They plan to "take on Google" in contextual advertising. Them and Kanoodle, Overture and whoever else might have a go at it. Go get em, guys....

At SES

It's not easy to post from here, as the show does not have wireless coverage (I am sure by the next one, they'll realize the importance of wireless to coverage of the blog/press kind). Anyway, missed most of the sessions today due to other meetings, but I did run into an old friend in the media investment banking business. His presence marked an interesting development in this homegrown industry - the money folks are starting to pay attention. Today there was a session track devoted to the financial side of running a SEO/SEM business, with titles such as "Coping With Growth," "Valuing Your Company," and "Cashing Out." My investment banking friend, a media business specialist, said he got plenty of leads and interest after he spoke, and he mentioned more than one person had approached him with the idea of rolling up the SEO space. It's happening already, and will continue apace - maybe this time we can avoid the Razorfish/USWeb/Sapient syndrome...