August 2002 Search Engine News

August 16, 2002 :: The Benefits of Simplicity

One of the most positive outcomes of the Dot-Bomb shakeout has been the demise of the "Eye-Candy" design set. During the IT-boom, and in some cases due to the boom, websites became more complicated and cluttered with FLASH, animated gifs, useless java-scripts to tell you the time and date (as if surfers couldn't simply glance to the lower right.), and other forms of visually stimulating filler that turned once simple source-code into varying levels of gibberish.

StepForth adopted a "Simple is Best" mantra two years ago when presented with a client who's site went way beyond his business needs and his staff's technical acumen. Our poor client had spent far too much money to have a site produced that was next to impossible to achieve strong placements with. In order to do the job for this client, StepForth had to create several basic HTML based leader-pages, (this was back when leader-pages were a legitimate method), thus costing our client even more money than should have been necessary.

There are several beneficial techniques that expand on the foundation of HTML. PHP, ASP, CSS, and CFM are all examples of good programming techniques that, when applied properly, can provide extremely useful tools for webmasters. There are, on the other hand, several ways to make a website far more complicated than it needs to be.

When designing a corporate website, hire a search engine placement firm as site design consultants. Chances are you will produce a better website with lower long-term marketing costs.

August 16, 1977 :: The King is Dead, Long Live the King :: August 16, 2002

25 years gone and still producing Top20's! (Elvis vs. jXL - "A Little Less Conversation"). The King lives on. Way to go big guy.

August 13, 2002 :: 10% of Earth's Population Have Internet Access!

According to European IT News portal, EuropeMedia.Net, just over 10% of all humans have access to the Internet. Rates of entry into the virtual world remain enormous with an almost 30% rise in the number of global netizens in the year 2001. Currently, Europe has the largest Internet usage with approximately 185,830,000 Internet users, or 32% of global Internet users. Following a close second is North America with approximately 182,830,000 Internet users, or 31.5% of global users. With the burgeoning Chinese Internet population and the rise of India as a tech giant, Asia has the fastest growing Internet usage numbers with approximately 167,860,000 Internet users in the region.

August 13, 2002 :: "Yahoo and Google, sitting in a tree, b-i-d-d-i-n-g."

It's about time the summer season got silly. This story actually started happening back in May but the rumours are just leaving the boardrooms now so here's the scuttlebutt as we've heard it.

Yahoo recently offered to buy Google for (the low, low sum of,) $700Million. Google, which has seen amazing success over the past two years, was so un amused with the offer, they made a counter offer to purchase Yahoo for $2Billion, the same offer Yahoo declined back in 1998.

In the past two years, Google has become the worlds #1 search tool while showing a string of successful business dealings with other search companies such as AOL, Overture, Yahoo, Open Directory and many others.

Based on this, and other recent rumours, we're pretty sure something big is happening with or around those Yahooligans.

August 12, 2002 :: AOL begins to draw results from the Google Database

When you're hot. Google has acquired yet another search partner in AOL. As of this week, America's favourite E-Z access Internet service provider (packager) will draw all search results from Google's database. Paid ads appearing under the heading, "Sponsored Links", will now be drawn from Google's "Premium Sponsorship" ads which now appear at Google near the top of the page in pink and green highlights. AOL will use a slightly different ranking algorithm to produce slightly different listings, however, StepForth has noticed distinct similarities in rankings at Google and AOL for the past two weeks.

August 6, 2002 :: Ask Jeeves asks Google to supply paid listings to "Google Killer" Teoma

Google has signed a deal with Ask.Com to supply paid listings to the new search engine Teoma. Acquired by Ask.Com, owners of the popular Ask Jeeves search tool, Teoma has been touted as the search engine that might actually end up displacing Google as the world's most popular search tool. By supplying paid listings, Google is betting on building its credibility through cooperative competition with its main technology rival. The deal, which is scheduled to last for three years, has raised a great deal of interest in the SEO community, many of whom watch the competition between search engines like football fans watch their local teams.