Search Engine News Bytes and Updates

November 2002 NewsBytes

November 27, 2002 :: TerraLycos - Retrenchment and Globalization

Lycos has not yet recovered from the last few years of turmoil and is now seeing several top US executives preparing to leave the company. Lycos, the fifth most visited Internet property in the world was purchased by Spain's largest ISP, Terra Networks in mid-2000 for over $12.8-Billion in the hopes of creating a dominance outside the US Internet market by merging the ISP services with a well known search engine. As a part of that deal, the German media giant Bertelsmann promised up to $1-Billion in advertising over a 5 year period, a deal that fell apart in April of 2002 when Bertelsmann said it wanted to re-negotiate the remaining $625-Million. Other advertisers have followed suit as Lycos has seen competitors AOL, MSN and Yahoo take pieces of its market share. Added to the corporate woes at Lycos is the absolute dominance of Google which has taken the lion's share of the market from everyone.

Recently, several executives at the US run Lycos search engine have notified management that they are preparing to resign, siting too much control from Madrid standing in the way of growth for the search engine arm of the company. The assumption is that TerraLycos is retrenching its considerable assets (rumoured to be in the neighborhood of $1.8 Billion) into its global search efforts while removing resources and assets from the US. The effect of these changes should be felt most keenly around February and March of next year.

November 21, 2002 :: Environmental Changes in the Search Engine World :: Special Update

The search engine business and ranking environment has changed radically over the past 12 months and is expected to continue changing in the next 12 months. Here is our most recent update.

Overview
Twelve months ago, the search engine market was shared between 16 major search tools, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, AOL, Excite, Go.Com, Overture, Google, InfoSpace, Iwon, LookSmart, Lycos, MSN, Netscape, Open Directory, Sympatico and Yahoo. Today, there are only 2 major search tools accounting for the Top3 listings across the board, and only 8 other search tools generating enough traffic to be considered as important, (as opposed to "major") players in the industry.

The two top search tools are Google and Overture. These two entities account for the Top3 listings on all other important search tools and hundreds of smaller, less-visited search tools. The eight other important search tools are, Inktomi, AltaVista, Open Directory, AlltheWeb, Lycos, Yahoo (Google), LookSmart, and Ask Jeeves.

Fallout from the Dot.Bomb - The Contraction of Search Tool Properties
The year 2002 was as brutal as 2001 for most Internet businesses. Those who survived the first wave of industry recession had to struggle to remain afloat in the rough waters of a prolonged industry wide recession. Once popular entities such as Excite and InfoSpace simply no longer exist as viable search tools. Dominant search tools such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN have all receded to near-irrelevancy due to the continued downturn in "traditional" forms of online advertising such as banner ads and text-impressions and their decisions to purchase results from other players in the industry. The biggest change over the past year, aside from the contraction of unique promotion opportunities, is the advent of paid-inclusion, paid-placement, and bid-per-click advertising. Below are several new factors to consider when articulating a search engine promotion plan.

Conglomeration
Last year at this time, there were three dominant search tools, Yahoo, MSN and Google, with the remaining major search engines receiving enough traffic to make them important players in the industry. Currently, the only truly dominant search engine is Google with Overture filling in gaps left by Google's business and results-distribution models. Most of the other search tools, including Yahoo are now drawing from the Google spidered database while others, such as Lycos and AlltheWeb are striking alliances through the sharing of spidered databases, thus producing nearly duplicate results. In many cases, search tools that were considered large enough to have a noticeable impact on website traffic have now relegated themselves to the second-string bleachers as the results shown on these engines often directly mirrors results shown either at Google or on one of their partner sites. The most startling example of this trend is Yahoo. Once the dominant search tool, Yahoo is no longer primarily drawing from its own database! As of late October 2002, Yahoo has been drawing from the Google database and directly mirroring Google results. Another notable conglomeration is the alliance between, FAST, AlltheWeb, Lycos and HotBot. These four search tools all share the same database of spidered sites and often show duplicate results.

Paid-Inclusion
In an effort to actually make money, most search tools now charge a small fee for inclusion in the database of URL's that receive frequent visits from spiders, ultimately ranking higher than non-paid inclusions. Paid inclusion search tools now charge for the right to be found in their databases. For search tools sharing spidered databases, paid-inclusion generally means the search tool will only display URLs from its own paid-inclusion program. The largest paid inclusion search tools are, Lycos, FAST, AlltheWeb, HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, AOL, and Sympatico. Yahoo is also a paid inclusion search tool, however it is currently drawing directly from Google, thus negating the prime benefits of paying the $299US listing fee. (Please see Yahgoogegans article below)

Paid-Placement & Bid-Per-Click
Paid-Placement programs refer to the new box-type ads (generally appearing to the right of traditional search engine listings), and text-based ads appearing above the traditional listings. For a generally steep fee, webmasters can purchase guaranteed placements that will remain constant. Examples of paid-placement programs include Google's AdWords and the Top3 spots at Overture. Quite often, fees for these programs are based on a variety of factors relating to the number of click-throughs received by the advertisement, it's placement on the page, and the length of time contracted for advertising. Both Google and Overture have inked deals with other important search tools for the distribution of paid-placement ads.

Algorithm Shifts
The shift from keyword-based ranking to theme based ranking is almost complete. Last month, Google made a radical shift in its algorithm. Last week, AltaVista introduced theme based ranking as a component of their algorithm. This week, Inktomi also introduced theme based ranking. While "leader-portal site" promotion campaigns were designed to take advantage of THEME based ranking, there are several changes we feel necessary in order to bring the promotion in-line with the way search engines are tending to perceive THEMES between websites.

November 20, 2002 :: Inktomi Rebuilds and Re-brands with WebSearch9
As reported here on several occasions, there is a major shakeup happening in the search engine environment and everyone involved is racing to catch up with the current leader, Google. Though relationships in the search engine industry have always been fairly intense, many search engine companies seem to be fighting for their very survival.

The Inktomi Search Corporation has undergone several major changes in the past two months, resulting in a more dedicated focus on improving the technologies used in their search-engine database. Inktomi produces search results for major search engines, MSN and Overture and countless other smaller search tools run from corporate websites such as HP, ADM and IBM. 2002 has been a rather dismal year for Inktomi seeing the sale of their corporate search-solution business and the loss of AOL as a content purchaser. In the last quarter of this year, however, it looks like the search engine programmers at Inktomi have finally received notice to dramatically improve the functionality of the Inktomi database and have risen to meet the challenge.

According to Inktomi's recent news release, WebSearch9, ".meets or exceeds all other search engines in the key metrics of search performance: relevance, freshness and index size." Inktomi has switched from a keyword-driven ranking algorithm to a relevancy-driven ranking algorithm which bases ranking more on the topic and consistency of a website than the actual keywords found in that website. Here are some of the new features to look for at the new and improved Inktomi:

Geotargetting: Paid-Inclusion customers will be allowed to target (or avoid) 30 specific global regions.

Custom Summaries: Paid inclusion customers can tune and customize summaries that are returned with their query results. Summaries reflect the most accurate and up to date information, such as product promotions or editorial reviews.

XML Interface: Allows paid inclusion customers to feed product catalog and other types of dynamic-site data directly into search index, providing unparalleled flexibility and freshness. Information previously hidden from crawlers, and often residing in databases, is made available to the index through a direct feed.

Relevance: Inktomi has moved towards a THEME based search algorithm based on the relationship between body text, description and other pages of similar topic.

Freshness: Inktomi will now refresh its entire database every 10 - 14 days with paid-inclusion content being refreshed every 48 hours.

Size of Index: The Inktomi index has grown to encompass over 3-Billion unique websites. This number, if accurate would make the Inktomi database the largest in the world.

With the search engine wars heating up again, this move may represent the beginning of a great deal of innovation in the world of search engines.

StepForth began working with THEME engine technology in January 2001. We are very excited about the steady switch to theme based ranking algorithms and are looking forward to the predicted improvement in search engine results over the coming months.

November 6, 2002 :: Yahgooglegans
Yahoo is now displaying mirrored results from Google. Due to this change, StepForth is no longer recommending paid-submissions to Yahoo, except in special circumstances. Why Yahoo decided to make such a drastic switch is still a mystery, however we know that Yahoo is preparing to introduce several paid-services such as personalized news, Email and digital storage space.

Whatever the reasons for the change, there are a number of angry webmasters out there who feel they have been charged ($299US) for services not rendered and a class-action lawsuit is forming. If you have a website that was receiving a lot of traffic from Yahoo but is no longer receiving this traffic, call StepForth at 1-877-385-5526 and we will see what can be done through Google to restore prominent rankings on Yahoo.