A new shopping search engine has brought to the public a technology that has been used mostly in movies and the offices of law enforcement – visual recognition. The new search engine, Like.com employs their “Likeness Technology™ to create a digital signature that describes the photo’s contents and enables a more accurate search for similar looking items and products,” says the About Us page on Like.com. Read more…

Search engine company A9, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com has launched a secure beta called Clickriver which allows advertisers to launch pay-per-click campaigns on Amazon.com. The service is currently in Beta and for the moment is only offered to pre-screened applicants – apply here.

Advertisers will be able to promote their wares “on search results pages and on many product detail pages” according to Clickriver’s FAQ. Opening Amazon to the PPC marketplace has some impressive implications considering the millions of consumers that Amazon caters to. For example, advertisers will now be able to advertise next to products that are currently being reviewed for purchase; a qualifier that will undoubtedly heighten the interest of cutting-edge advertisers. Simply put, the cross-promotional potential of this new offering is huge.

If you happen to get in on the beta I would love to get your opinion on this new service. Just drop me a note via ross@stepforth.com or post a comment.

Special thanks to John Battelle and ResourceShelf for cluing me in on this excellent new offering.

It is widely known that the Indian economy is booming and as a testament to this fact a new search engine providing entirely Indian based content has recently launched: Guruji.com .

The design of Guruji is very nostalgic of Google’s early days; clean, simple, no advertising, and quite attractive. Created to capitalize on the growing need for local search, this 30 million page index is bound to grow considerably over the next year. Currently in English, Guruji will offer search in the following languages within the next 6 months: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali.

If you are interested in getting some exposure in Guruji then your site had better have some Indian content. From my own tests I have to say that their filter to ensure Indian-only content is quite good.

Google has another, somewhat secretive search engine called SearchMash.com. Kudos to Nathan Weinberg for releasing this valuable piece of information! Search Mash appears to be a testbed of sorts for AJAX search technology (the same technology that Microsoft’s new Live.com search engine uses). Check out the Search Mash features list and you will see how some of the options seem to steer more toward a higher level of personalized results; a direction Google is forging towards. Read more…

Since I initially wrote about the RedZee search engine I received some requests for direct contact information. Apparently the 1-800-475-9470 number that RedZee publishes does not work within Canada so my Canadian readers have been a bit frustrated trying to find the local phone number.

Search no more! Thanks to RedZee’s participation in the Better Business Bureau I managed to find a local number: (727) 399-8394

Please Share Your RedZee Story! What do you think of RedZee?
Remember, if you have any stories that you want to share with the world please send in your comments and I will be happy to pass the word. Unfortunately RedZee did not respond to my request to explain the ethics of their marketing tactics.

If you want to share your story just email me: ross@stepforth.com

Have you noticed how infrequently and deeply Ask appears to be indexing websites? I reviewed a number of my client’s websites and discovered that of the big 4 robots (Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK) Ask is dramatically falling behind. Where the other search engines are indexing daily or at least every couple of days Ask has, in some cases, not indexed at all! Read more…

Well I am researching topics for tomorrow’s StepForth Weekly and I came across this unbelievable new search engine that uses Google’s system to search for certain questionable files. I just had to share this with you!

Unbelievable? Yes it is definitely that… it is called “Malware” by Metasploit. Essentially it is a search engine for finding malware (aka. viruses, trojans, worms – all the bad out there). Here is the link http://metasploit.com/research/misc/mwsearch/index.html now you tell me if this is what you would call useful? Read more…

What is RedZee™?
RedZee™ is a Meta Search Engine that opened its doors officially in July 2005. Now open just over a year it was recently brought to my attention that this search engine with a darn cute mascot (I love zebras, especially ones that grin!) along with some decent design concepts also have some significant caveats that I believe my valued readers and clientele should be made well aware of. Read more…

Search engine optimization, as a practicing sector of the greater search engine marketing industry, is seeing an upswing in business over the past few months. This trend is fueled by a number of concurrent factors, the least of which is the actual effectiveness of organic search placement.

Today’s search marketing metaverse is made up of a multiplicity of mash-ups. Paid and organic results now appear in any number of venues beyond the traditional SERPs that are directly or indirectly associated with a branded search engine or social network. While search has been big business for over five years, a growing sophistication is entering the marketing space as creative people find intelligent and interesting ways to get a growing number of applications to work together. Read more…

Links are the primary arteries of the Internet, the underlying connectors between different places. Links are the transporters that take you everywhere on the web. You likely came to this space via a link and are as likely to follow one out again. Links keep you going online, hopefully to places you want or need to get to.

Google created the most successful information retrieval device of all time based on sending spiders to follow each and every link they can find on each and every web document they come across. Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and all the other search databases have acquired the vast amounts of information they contain in similar fashion. Links play important roles in the ranking formulas of all search engines, especially Google, by providing numerous pieces of data for their algorithms to chew through. Read more…