3G Search

Yahoo! Acquires SearchFox

2006-01-18T22:57:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to tell you that Yahoo! has purchased the SearchFox technology. Some of us have joined Yahoo! to work on cool things related to our experience with SearchFox technology.

Your support of SearchFox was and is very important to us and to Yahoo!. We deeply appreciate the excellent feedback we received that helped us make the site better.

Thanks for your patience, and please let us know if you have any questions.

SearchFox will shut down on January 25, 2006

2006-01-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

Thanks for all your help in making SearchFox what it is. We have enjoyed providing this service, and hope that you have enjoyed using it. Please export all of your links and an OPML file with your RSS sources before the site shuts down. In accordance with our privacy policy, we will delete all personal information on January 25 after we shut down the services.

Update: New Aging Policy for Posts

2005-11-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

We optimized the search engine index this weekend. In order to make more room for new customers and make the service faster for current customers, we implemented a new aging policy. We are aging documents older than 30 days from the "all" view. The optimization does not affect documents that have been marked "favorites".

Here is a quick description of the new "show" options:

Last Day: Unarchived posts for the last 24 hours
Last Week: Unarchived posts for the last 7 days
Last Month: Unarchived posts for the last 30 days
All: Unarchived and archived posts for the last 30 days

Our commitment to "search" will continue and we expect to release more "search" features moving forward. Stay tuned.

SearchFox RSS Makes It To The Top

2005-10-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

SearchFox RSS has been selected one of the top six RSS readers among the best 33 offerings in the market. Jdey Aref compiled a great report and selected the top six RSS readers based on the following criteria: subscription model, workflow and ease of use.

It's very exciting to see SearchFox making it to the top. However, I would like to see a similar report with emphasis on how good RSS readers are at helping people be more productive processing information, isn't that the bottom line?

First generation RSS readers were very good at allowing users access several sources form one place. Unfortunately, the model breaks rather quickly and makes the information overload problem even bigger.

The key feature of the next generation RSS readers is "intelligence". We need systems that learn what we like and don't, and rank incoming posts based on what's most important to the user. SearchFox is the first RSS reader to offer this technology, and users are reporting reading time cut in half. Again, I am happy to see SearchFox on top but I am expecting to see it ahead of the curve, as "intelligence" becomes essential in the RSS world.

SearchFox RSS Hotkeys

2005-10-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

We've implemented quick keyboard shortcuts to access most of the batch actions. You will find the hotkeys combinations on the "batch" menu next to the batch actions.

Here is a description of all the keyboard shortcuts:

alt+r : Mark Page Read
alt+f : Save Page to Favorites
alt+c : Collapse Summaries
alt+o : Expand Summaries
alt+p : Archive This Page
alt+a : Archive All Pages
alt+n : Next Page

Batch actions only affect your current view. Please tell me what you think and what other actions you would like to access through hotkeys.

Service Update : 10/24 11:00 AM

2005-10-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

SearchFox RSS is temporarily down. We are currently working on optimizing the index in order to provide with a faster and more reliable service. Please check back in one hour.

UPDATE 10/24 5:00 PM - We expect to be back online around 9:00 PM.

New! Bookmarklet & Chicklet

2005-10-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

We are happy to announce the release of a subscribe boormarklet for your browser and a subscribe chicklet for your blog.

The bookmarklet is a button installed in your browser's "bookmarks toolbar" that allows you to subscribe directly to the blog or site you're currently viewing. Click HERE to install the SearchFox RSS bookmarklet in your browser.

The chicklet is a image that you can add to your website or blog, and link it to an auto-subscribe link. By adding this chicklet to your website or blog, your readers will be able to easily add your feed to their SearchFox RSS account. In addition, you'll be helping us spread the word and get others to enjoy the benefits of a personalized RSS reader. Click HERE to get more information on how to add the chicklet to you website or blog.

New! Export Your Subscriptions

2005-10-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

The "export" feature is now available. You can export your subscriptions in OPML format by clicking on "export" in the "Manage My World" page. The export button is located next to the "Import OPML" button in the "Manage Feeds" box. I circled it on the picture.

Once you click on "export", you'll be prompted to save or open the OPML file. Select "save" and choose a folder for the file. You'll be asked for this file when importing your subscriptions into other readers.

Please leave a comment or email me at support at searchfox dot com if you have questions.

New "Manage My World" Page

2005-10-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

We just launched a new “Manage My World” page that allows users to organize and move existing feeds between folders. Although the process is extremely intuitive, here is a short description:

1- Expand the folder
2- Click on “move”
3- A small window will pop up asking for the destination folder
4- Select a folder or scroll to the bottom of the list to create a new folder
5- Done

We also highlight the entire feed row when you mouse over it. This should make the process much easier for all of you with wide or high-resolution screens.

By the way, the new “Manage My World” page only allows moving one feed at the time. We’ll be adding a batch menu to this page very soon. In the meantime, let me know what you think.

SearchFox RSS Goes International

2005-10-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

We originally designed the personalization engine to work best for the English language. We thought the private beta would mainly appeal to geeks in the valley. Surprinsingly, bloggers from all over the world wrote about SearchFox RSS. And today, 35% of our beta customers are from non-English speaking countries.

We are thrilled about that and have great news for our international customers. We just released a new version of the personalization engine that supports most languages. We are still working with some Asian languages and I will let you know as soon as we have those covered. In the meantime, if you are from a non-English speaking country, I will love to hear how SearchFox RSS is working for you. Please leave your feedback in the “comments”.

New Features for a Better Workflow

2005-10-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

We just released two of the most requested features. First, we added the “Batch” menu, “Archive This Page” button and “Archive All Pages” button to the bottom of the page. No more unnecessary scrolling. Second, we streamlined the “Archive This Page” and “Delete Page” actions by taking you straight to the following page if available. This will save you an extra annoying click. Finally, we enhanced all the progress messages that come up when clicking on a batch action.

These new features are 100% based on your feedback. So please let me know what you think and keep sending cool ideas. I am certainly driving the feature set based on what’s most important to you.

UPDATE 10/08 9:24 PDT: We noticed some Firefox users have problems using the archive features. Firefox is failing to read the new JavaScript file and is using a cached one instead. This is an easy fix, just pres Ctrl+F5. We are also pushing a change that should solve this problem for good.

The SearchFox RSS Workflow

2005-10-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

When we first looked at how people read posts in RSS aggregators, we came across two distinctive models:

1 – Non-aggregated model: You see all the posts for a single feed in one page. The system will assume you read all the posts as soon as you select a different feed.

This workflow is forcing users to check every single feed. It may work well for 10 or 15 feeds, but it breaks very quickly. In addition, all the posts are removed from the feed view once you leave that feed, even if you haven’t even seen the posts.

2 – Aggregated model: You see all the posts from a group of feeds, usually paginated. Read posts don’t go away, instead they are marked as read. Seen posts remain the same.

Aggregating posts from different feeds makes sense. Users care about a relatively low number of topics but have a much higher number of feeds that cover those topics. However, ranking the aggregated feeds chronologically produces an even bigger problem. It becomes harder to read the feeds you like the most and feeds that publish several times an hour take over your reader.

We looked at the shortcoming of the current readers and designed a workflow with the following goals in mind:

- Show what’s most important to the user first
- Don’t assume seen or displayed posts have been read
- Reduce the number of clicks to a minimum

Here is how the workflow works for one of my folders with 30 feeds:

- Click on a folder (1 click)
- Expand the posts I want to read (10 clicks)
- Go to next page (1 click)
- Expand the posts I want to read (1 click)
- Archive All (1 click)

Notice that I did not go pass page two because the “personalization engine” brought the most important stuff to the top.

Alternatively, you can use the “archive page” feature if you are not done with a folder and have to do something else. So you won’t miss what you haven’t seen yet. In addition, all the archived posts are accessible using search or clicking on “show all”.

Total of 14 clicks and spent no time skimming through the clutter. Time: 18 minutes. Not bad. Now, I would like to know how you do. Feel free to share you experience and time savings…

Improvements Update

2005-09-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

We are continuously working to make the best RSS reader for our customers. We read all your feedback and just released three important improvements:

- Easier to read “unread counts”
- Open posts in new window
- Allow longer passwords, between 5 and 30 characters

We’ll be announcing new features and more improvements very soon.

I also want to let you know that the second pool of beta subscriptions is going fast. You can still invite your friends and people you think may be interested in using SearchFox RSS. Just tell them to send us an email at support at searchfox dot com with their preferred username and reference code xb17.

TechCrunch MeetUp

2005-09-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

Scott Roy and I had a blast at the TechCrunch Meetup last night. I had the chance to demo SearchFox RSS a couple of times and meet some outstanding people.

Thank you Michael and Keith for making it happen.

Expanding Beta Program

2005-09-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

We want our beta customers to be the first ones to take advantage of the new pool of available beta accounts. You can invite your friends and people you think may be interested in using SearchFox RSS. Just tell them to send us an email at support at searchfox dot com with their preferred username and reference code xb17.

New Feature: "Archive This Page"

2005-09-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

"Archive This Page" was developed as a result of the invaluable feedback received from our beta users. This new feature makes archiving more flexible. If you don't have time to go through all the pages for a folder or feed, you can archive a single page so you won't have to sort through read items later.

You can access this feature using the button next to the "Batch" menu or the alt+p keyboard shortcut.

SearchFox RSS Update

2005-09-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

We have experienced an incredible number of requests for new accounts in the past couple of weeks. This is a great indicator that early adopters are finding the personalization engine a real success.

Due to higher traffic than expected we had to take the system down for 30 minutes on September 12 at 10:30 PM for much needed hardware updates. We added more machines to the back end, implemented a new scaling architecture and increased the bandwidth with our hosting provider. These improvements will allow us to provide with a faster service and lots of new beta accounts.

If you know someone that may be interested in SearchFox RSS, tell her/him to send us an email at searchfox at support dot com.

Thank you for your interest and the great feedback.

New OPML Parser

2005-09-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

We just updated the OPML parser in order to accept exported OPML files from FeedDemon and Onfolio.

Unfortunately, RSS readers export OPML files in ways we can't predict. Send us an email at support at searchfox dot com if your exported OPML fails to import into SearchFox . Please include the OPML file and some information about the reader you are exporting from.

New Features - Archive All, Scores and My Profile

2005-09-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

We are adding new features to make SearchFox’s personalization even better. Check out these new features and let us know what you think:

Archive All Pages

It’s easy to find right next to the "Batch Menu". The "Archive All Pages" feature archives all the posts on your current view. You can get back to your archived posts using search or clicking on "all".

Scores

The scores to the right of the posts' title are the first cut at exposing the "Personalization Engine" at work. It provides a scale that you can use to determine how far down the list of incoming posts you should read.

My Profile

The profile on the left side of the screen reflects what the "Personalization Engine" has learned about you so far. You will notice that the profile changes as your interests change and you read more posts.

SearchFox Releases Personalized RSS Reader

2005-08-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

SearchFox has released an RSS reader that aggregates and personalizes web feeds. SearchFox RSS is a private early beta release, open only to current SearchFox Beta users, friends, and family.

The web is moving away from a search-centered model to one where individuals subscribe to the information they want to read. SearchFox uses machine learning technology to automatically rank and personalize incoming feeds to reflect each reader’s unique interests. Our RSS reader learns by watching what individuals and the entire community find interesting, taking into account various inputs such as the source, author, and topic of an RSS entry. Existing RSS readers only show information chronologically, which quickly leads to information overload. SearchFox makes RSS easier and immediately useful, so everyone can be part of the new web experience.

If you are interested in getting an account, please send me an email at support at searchfox dot com.

SearchFox Gets Nice Review From Steve Rubel

2005-07-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

Steve makes a good analogy: Google + del.icio.us + MyWeb 2.0 + Firefox = SearchFox.

Read his blog entry at: Micro Persuasion

Tag Content from the Toolbar

2005-04-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

Did you know that you can tag web pages from the IE toolbar in ONE STEP?

Just use the prefix " - " (space dash space). That way, anything after the space will be entered as tags (keywords). In addition, SearchFox will grab the author's title and take you to the "Add Entry" page so you can select a group and add a description if needed.

Give it a try and let us know at support@searchfox.com. Alternatively, you can leave a comment on this post.

SearchFox : New Features

2005-04-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

We are happy to announce exciting new features:

- Firefox Toolbar: http://www.searchfox.com/toolbar.php

- Full RSS support, you can now subscribe and keep track of links that other people or groups are adding. You can also syndicate your links and post the feed anywhere.

- Improved navigation

We appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to leave your feedback as a comment to this post.

Alternatively, you can send us an email at support@searchfox.com. We'll post your answered question in the SearchFox category of this blog.

First Look at Yahoo! 360

2005-03-25T10:21:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! 360 is launching a limited beta release on Tuesday (3/29/05). And they already gave some analysts the chance to check it out.

Charlene Li from Forrester has a complete description of the features and Yahoo's vision. According to the review, Yahoo is basically trying to integrate all its services (e.g. groups, pictures, reviews, music, etc) into a "blog" environment. In addition, they are adding flexible security settings and lots of sharing mechanisms.

I will circulate a more extensive review of Yahoo! 360 once I get my hands around a beta account.

Here is Charlene Li's full review.

SearchFox Beta - The Personalized Web Experience

2005-03-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

My name is Esteban Kozak, product manager for SearchFox. I want to introduce SearchFox and give you the chance to test drive it.

Let me start by posting the problem we are trying to solve. Search algorithms, like Page Rank, have grown broad, overwhelming and generic. Still good at finding the needle in the haystack, if you know enough about the needle, but not helpful when you are trying to accomplish any of the following tasks:

- Go back to useful content you visit all the time,
- Get interesting content about a topic,
- Learn from people and communities you care about.

So we decided to add context and human intelligence to the search world. In order to do so, we developed a social bookmarking tool that overcomes three of the biggest challenges in this area:

1. A way for individuals and groups to define vertical search spaces (you are starting to see this with A9's "Open Search", Become.com and mobissimo.com)

2. A way to converge folksonomies into a coherent index inside those vertical spaces

3. A way to leverage human intelligence in order to let users drive the ranking algorithm

We are already delivering on #2 ("real-time search" and "keyword suggest") and #3 ("sort by use" and much more to come on this). In a few weeks, we'll be launching "My World". "My World" will allow you to define your vertical space, you'll be able to group individuals and join communities. Your personal groups will remain small and relevant to your interests, although some will develop into bigger topic driven communities.

Let me pause here and let you try SearchFox first.

To get started, sign up at: http://www.searchfox.com/register.php. We'll send you an username and password right away.

Alternatively, you can try SearchFox using the following "guest" credentials:

Username: visitor
Password: myguest

We encourage you to sign up and get the toolbar to unlock SearchFox full potential.

We are looking forward to get your feedback on our current product. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions,

Esteban Kozak
SearchFox
esteban@searchfox.com

A9 Launches "Open Search" - Vertical Search, Syndicated

2005-03-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

From A9.com:

"We want OpenSearch to do for search what RSS has done for content."
OpenSearch is a collection of technologies, all built on top of popular open standards, to allow content providers to publish their search results in a format suitable for syndication. You can see how this works on A9.com.

Many sites today return search results as an tightly integrated part of the website itself. Unfortunately, those search results can't be easily reused or made available elsewhere, as they are usually wrapped in HTML and don't follow any one convention. OpenSearch offers an alternative: an open format that will enable those search results to be displayed anywhere, anytime. Rather than introduce yet another proprietary or closed protocol, OpenSearch is a straightforward and backward-compatible extension of RSS 2.0, the widely adopted XML-based format for content syndication.

Any site that has content—and a search box—can choose to return results in OpenSearch RSS. This includes travel sites, classifieds, encyclopedias…. If you can provide search results for something, it probably can fit into the OpenSearch model. Returning OpenSearch results is easy—the format is the standard set of XML elements, plus three additional elements designed to support navigation between pages.

OpenSearch is comprised of:
OpenSearch RSS: XML format for providing open search results.
OpenSearch Description Documents: XML files that identify and describe a search engine.
OpenSearch Aggregators: Sites, such as A9.com, that can display OpenSearch results.

OpenSearch is not a search engine—it is a way for search engines to publish their search results in a standard and accessible format. And because OpenSearch is built on top of standard RSS, existing tools—such as blog readers—can read OpenSearch results natively. While existing RSS tools can't take advantage of all of the advanced features that OpenSearch offers, this backward compatibility guarantees a rich set of client applications for OpenSearch today.

If you are a content developer and already have a search engine for your site, you will want to read through the documentation on OpenSearch RSS and the OpenSearch Description, along with the OpenSearch Query Specification.

Alternatively, existing search engines can be wrapped so that HTML search results are translated into OpenSearch RSS results. Please keep in mind that you will need the permission of the search engine itself before wrapping someone else's search results. Some content providers will encourage this, and will gladly allow their search results to be syndicated. Be sure to explicitly check the terms of use of any content you wish to redistribute.

This is just the beginning of OpenSearch. We look forward to hearing your suggestions and feedback about how this model can be extended in the future to support all types of search and customer experiences.

State of The Blogosphere, March 2005

2005-03-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

From Sifry.com:

Technorati is now tracking over 7.8 million weblogs, and 937 million links. That's just about double the number of weblogs tracked in October 2004. In fact, the blogosphere is doubling in size about once every 5 months. It has already done so at this pace four times, which means that in the last 20 months, the blogosphere has increased in size by over 16 times.

Full Report:

http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000298.html

Blog Reader Survey Results

2005-03-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

From searchviews.com:

Some interesting results in this year's BlogAds Reader Survey.

Looks like your average blog reader is most likely to be:

Male
Over 30
A Democrat
Has signed a petition of some sort
Believes in the usefulness of blogs as a source of news & opinion

Clearly, these demographics are the mark of a relatively intelligent, well-groomed bunch and not the unwashed masses the old guard would have us believe.

Most surprising about the survey - not many are using RSS (72.4%) and few have their own blogs (79.3%).

Tools for Exploring the Blogosphere

2005-03-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

There's a lot of great content being published in blogs these days, but it isn't always easy to find. While many bloggers link to other blogs, you're never really sure what the motivation is for providing the link. And even though blog search engines work well for finding specific posts related to a topic, they don't do a very good job of identifying specific bloggers that write regularly on topics that might interest you.

Today's SearchDay article, A Cool Blog Discovery Tool features services from Blogstreet that go beyond simple approaches, surfacing relationships and interlinkages between blogs that might not otherwise be readily apparent. These tools can help pinpoint bloggers that you might not otherwise stumble upon in the increasingly crowded reaches of the blogosphere.

Blog Tools: Blogrolling.com

2005-03-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal, helping you manage your ever-evolving linklist with ease. Managing your linklist still means having to crawl through the HTML in your template every time you want to add or remove a link. No more! Now it's as simple as clicking a link or making a pit stop at BlogRolling.

You'll never have to interrupt your surfing to add a cool new site to your linklist - just add the BlogRolling 1-click link to your browser's links and click it whenever a site catches your eye. Voila, instant linkage!

Here is another player in this space:

http://www.movalog.com/archives/plugins/mt-blogroll/mt-blogroll-10.php

FAQ : How do I move imported bookmarks to a new group?

2005-03-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

Create the new group here. Then import the bookmarks again. Make sure to select the new group from the pull down menu.

SearchFox will automatically delete duplicated bookmarks from the old group.

Vertical Search Facts #2

2005-03-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

From www.ClickZ.com

The paid search market will more than double from $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, and that growth will be driven by the "four horsemen" of vertical search, according to a new study by JupiterResearch.

The study, "Vertical Search: Early Marketers Will Reap Rewards of Low Pricing," predicts that the paid search industry will evolve similarly to media markets like television and magazines: with broad-based engines spawning a host of vertical players devoted to specific categories.

The study finds that paid search is densely concentrated within primary categories, or verticals: retail, financial services, travel, and media and entertainment. These "four horsemen" accounted for 79 percent of spend on paid search in the U.S. in 2004.

"If you look at the way other media have matured historically, they began with broad brands like Time and Life magazines that later spawned products targeting special interest niches," said Niki Scevak, the lead analyst on the study. "We began to see the same thing with search last year."

The study was based on analysis of comScore Media Metrix data quantifying the number of consumers the top five search engines drive to various categories; commercial density figures derived from executive interviews and SEC filings; and keyword pricing information provided by a number of search engine marketing companies, including iProspect.

Among the four leading verticals, retail and travel are the most developed and will continue to be the top categories through 2009. The researchers predict both markets will almost double in size over the next four years, with travel increasing from $54 billion to $91 billion and online retail growing from $66 billion in 2004 to $130 billion in 2009.

Examples of already established vertical search engines devoted to retail include Shopping.com and Shopzilla.com, with many more start-up engines like Become.com (a search engine devoted specifically to comparison shopping) expected to launch in the next 18 months. Travel search engines like Yahoo!'s FareChase, Kayak.com, SideStep and Mobissimo have also begun to make an impact in recent months.

While the four horsemen account for the bulk of paid search, the telecommunications category has exhibited strong growth in the last two years, accounting for four percent of the search market in 2003 and growing to six percent in 2004.

The pricing of paid search advertising is also projected to grow strongly from 2004 to 2009. Revenue will grow from $13.50 per-thousand-queries in 2003 to $28.05 per-thousand in 2009.

FAQ : How do I manage imported bookmarks/favorites?

2005-03-01T12:39:00.000-08:00

There are a few ways you can see your imported bookmarks/favorites. If you do a blank query, you'll see them all at once. You can sort them by frequency of use, title and time. The bookmark's original folder in Firefox becomes a keyword when you import bookmarks into SearchFox. Therefore, if you type a folder name, SearchFox will display all the bookmarks in that folder. You can edit these keywords by clicking the "edit" link. You can use advanced syntax if you want to add more flexible qualifiers.

If you want to move imported favorites to a new group, check here.

FAQ : I can't find a way to delete the "My Stuff" group?

2005-03-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

At this time, you can't delete all your bookmarks at once or your default group. However, we are happy to run a script that deletes all the bookmarks in your "my stuff" group. Send us an email.

FAQ : I get the following error message when creating a group: "The link you are trying to access is not in SearchFox"

2005-03-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

The system needs to identify each group with a unique "group ID". The "group ID" works like an invisible tag that the system uses to determine which users are allowed to see the links and how. The error is shown because the "group ID" is taken. Change the "group ID" and try again.

Vertical Search Facts

2005-03-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

Market analyst Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corp., issued a study that predicts growth in vertical search, particularly as the bid prices for popular keywords on general search engines such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. rise. Jupiter Research based its report on a finding that 79 percent of the $2.6 billion spent on paid search last year in the United States fit into four categories—retail, financial services, media and entertainment, and travel.

2 out of 5 users arrive at vertical search engines from broad-based engines such as Google or Yahoo!

Recent entries in the vertical search space:

GlobalSpec, in what it calls "The Engineering Web," has indexed 100,000 Web sites and about 20 million Web pages about industrial products, specifications and parts

Become.com's beta returns results based on an index of Web pages from 22 million U.S.-based shopping sites. The results include links to product reviews, buying guides and articles.

Startup search sites already are heavily pursuing the travel and retail categories. Already this year, Kayak Software Corp. launched its travel search site after earlier gaining an investment from America Online Inc. It competes with SideStep Inc., QIXO Inc. Mobissimo, and Yahoo's beta of FareChase.

More on this space in future postings...

Let's Get Vertical

2005-02-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here is agreat article about vertical search including a very cool analogy with TV.

Let's_get_vertical

Vimeo: Flickr for Video

2005-02-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

From Searchviews.com:

Kottke.org reports on Vimeo, a folksonomy site that promises to do for video what Flickr has done for images.

It's still in closed beta, but eventually you'll be able to organize and share clips, check out your friends' clips, and assemble multiple clips into what they call "automatic movies."
Check out an automatic movie about 'funny things' here.

del.icio.us is generally recognized as the first folksonomy on the web and is significant for a number of reasons, particularly because it helps push users down the tail to find sites within their interest segments that they might not otherwise be able to locate. Think of it as Friendster for websites.

The real power in folksonomies, particularly the image and video versions that Flickr and Vimeo offer, lies in the creation of rich meta-data. As the role of the search engine evolves from helping users locate flat .html pages to providing access to content pages across multiple categories (images, RSS, video, SKUs, local info, etc.), there needs to be some mechanism to help the search engines interpret what these sites are about.

Of course, with the good comes the bad, with more dubious results stemming from the perceived vulnerability of folksonomies to some awkward naming conventions and spam, particularly once the public adoption curve kicks in.

Flickr, Yahoo Deal Rumored

2005-02-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

Om Malik reports:

Rumors are flying thick and fast in Silicon Valley: Yahoo is all set to buy Ludicorp, the company behind the hot photo blogging web service Flickr, for an undisclosed amount of money. Its not the first time rumors of these talks have made the rounds. Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake told my colleague Michael Copeland, that they had received buyout offers from both Google and Yahoo. (Read the story here. )

Google and Yahoo want to buy it outright, while venture capital firms are flooding it with all kinds of creative proposals. "We get four or five calls a week from VCs," says Stewart Butterfield, who co-founded Flickr with his wife, Caterina Fake. "We even had a health-care fund call recently. I guess they wanted in on the excitement."

Most of the deal-related chatter is coming from blogging world insiders who have said that Flickr might have inked the papers last week, but Yahoo is holding off on an announcement until March 1. At this point, it could all just be that--chatter. Yahoo's spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on rumors and speculation. In other words, take a hike. I could not reach Butterfield and Fake, the husband-wife team who started Flickr. I have dropped them an email, but have not heard back from either of them.

Flickr, which allows you to upload and share photos on the Internet, has been a big hit with the blogging community. Often described as "Friendster of photo blogging," Flickr allows folks to upload photos directly from their camera phones to the Flickr website. The service has inspired a whole slew of copycats. The service has more than 250,000 members and 3.5 million photos on its website.

Firefox Up to 25 Million Downloads!

2005-02-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

From ResearchBuzz.com:

Firefox announced yesterday that there have been over 25 million downloads of Firefox! You GO Firefox.

New York Times to Buy About.com for $410 million

2005-02-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

From searchenginelowdown:

The news is out that the NYT will spend $410m buying About.com from Primedia.The New York Times Co., whose newspapers include the New York Times and the Boston Globe, said it will expand About.com's content and visibility and use the site to market its products. The Times Co. said it paid a multiple of 23 times About.com's estimated 2005 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

New Tagging Player: Tagsurf.com

2005-02-15T09:39:00.000-08:00

Tagsurf is a new type of online message board, which uses tags to help organize subjects instead of threads or channels. You can start a thread by posting a message about any webpage from a browser button and tag it. They also have a "notication" component that alert users when someone replies to thier messages or is using tags users want to keep track of.

Thay also claim to have the Google Suggest functionality for adding keywords, but it did not work on my browser. Here is a blog entry about this feature, the picture looks very familiar:

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008301.html

New Vertical Search Engine: become.com

2005-02-11T14:04:00.000-08:00

The research service enables users to locate valuable (and often hard to find) shopping-related research: buying guides, reviews, articles, specifications, forums, merchants, and a variety of other relevant information.

Unlike general purpose search engines, become.com avoids providing users with search results composed of information unrelated to shopping or merchants. Rather, they direct users to research-related information.

WebSideStory Acquires Atomz

2005-02-11T14:03:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Some breaking news this morning for those of you who follow the hosted site search space. Web analytics firm WebSideStory has announced that it plans to acquire Atomz (aka Avivo Corporation) in a stock and cash deal. A conference call is scheduled for later today.

Under the terms of the agreement, WebSideStory will issue approximately 3.1 million shares of common stock and options to purchase common stock and will pay approximately $4.3 million in cash, in exchange for the outstanding capital stock and options of Atomz.

This news release has more info about WebSideStory's plans.

About.com Up For Sale... Again?

2005-02-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

From techdirt.com:

It appears that Primedia is looking to sell About.com. Primedia, of course, seriously overpaid for About.com a few years back and then did very little with it, other than to make it less and less useful, on the theory that if they put more and more ads on it, it would somehow pay for itself, rather than driving users away. Especially in an age of blogs, the whole reason for About.com seems to make less and less sense. However, apparently some people think it's actually worth between $350 and $500 million -- which is almost scary. The article says that Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves, the New York Times (who, it appears, broke the story) and AOL are all bidding for the site. Of course, Google already supplies ads to the site (they bought About's advertising service a while back) so it may be a protective move. Still, isn't it interesting that search engines and media plays are bidding on the same property? It certainly suggests the business model convergence that's happening between media and search these days. Either way, if they were smart, they'd save their money. The various attempts at blogging "media empires" are probably much cheaper, and a better long term deal.

WebSideStory Acquires Atomz

2005-02-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

Web analytics provider WebSideStory has acquired site search and Web content management provider Atomz for $39 million in cash and stock.

Full_story

Vertical Search Tools Getting More Attention

2005-02-08T10:44:00.000-08:00

Interesting article about answer.com and vertical search:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050207-145438

Don't miss Forbes' review of answer.com here

Ask Jeeves Acquires Bloglines

2005-02-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

From Searchenginewatch.com:

Today, Ask Jeeves is announcing that they've acquired Bloglines, a well-known, critically acclaimed, and free web-based RSS aggregation tool for an undisclosed sum of money. The move confirms rumors that have been around since Saturday.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050208-000100

Technorati Launches Tag Search and Navigation

2005-02-06T14:11:00.000-08:00

Technorati is basically aggregating tags from sites like Del.icio.us, Flickr and the "category" field on blog platforms like TypePad and Blooger. So users are able to perfrom a more vertical search by defining a "tag" first and then browsing the content.

Check it out, use the following syntax "tag:keyword" at www.technorati.com

From www.sifry.com:

Tags are a simple, yet powerful, social software innovation. Today millions of people are freely and openly assigning metadata to content and conversations. Unlike rigid taxonomy schemes that people dislike, the ease of tagging for personal organization with social incentives leads to a rich and discoverable folksonomy. Intelligence is provided by real people from the bottom-up to aid social discovery. And with the right tag search and navigation, folksonomy outperforms more structured approches to classification.

http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000270.html

New player: Feedmelinks.com

2005-02-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

Found a new player in the bookmarking space:

http://feedmelinks.com/portal

Here is what they do:

Feed Me Links stores all your bookmarks so you can use them on any computer or browser. Tag your links to keep them organized. Share tags (example) via email, super-compact URLs, and XML/RSS, spy on your friends' links, subscribe to favorite tags and stay on top of recent links.

Direct Answers Continue to Gain Momentum

2005-02-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

When MSN rereleased their search beta last November, they joined several other general purpose web engines offering direct answers on search results pages. At that point, these types of results seemed to appear for very few queries but with today's official launch, I'm noticing many more direct answers.

Direct answers and search shortcuts continue to gain momentum as way that can an search engine can save the searcher effort while at the same time delivering them an answer or a direct link from a trusted sources. In many ways, this is a prelude to search engines becoming answer engines for certain types of "ready reference" queries.

Shortcuts and direct answers were first introduced by AltaVista in 2002. Since that time, Ask Jeeves (they regularly add Smart Search options), Yahoo, Google, and most recently AOL have joined in. We have an overview and links to what each of these services offer in this blog post.
MSN offers direct answers for several types of queries on search results pages. Material comes from their Encarta encyclopedia. Here are a few examples:

+ Mathematical (via their web calculator)5x2
+ DefinitionsDefine baseball
+ ConversionsHow many feet in one mile
+ Geographical DataCapital of Canada What is the mass of Pluto?
+ SportsWho won the World Series in 1979?
+ HistoryWho was Jimmy Carter's Vice President?
+ Popular Culture BiographiesWho are the Rolling Stones?
+ NutritionHow many calories in a strawberry?

AOL Says Adios to Newsgroups

2005-02-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

A brief story in The Register mentions that AOL has stopped providing access to newsgroups. AOL tells users who want to search or browse these groups to visit Google Groups.

An AOL spokesman said the service is being withdrawn because so few people use it: "Google does a very good job of hosting newsgroups and the typical AOL user probably doesn't use newsgroups that often."

Yahoo Video vs. BlinxTV

2005-02-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Yahoo! Video Search will allow you to search every word spoken during television news broadcasts from the BBC, Sky News, and Bloomberg. You'll be searching the closed captioning associated with the broadcast and then can click to view the full-motion video of your search terms being spoken.

It's worth pointing out that video search databases like BlinxTV and audio search database, Speechbot, use speech recognition technology to create a searchable transcript that you search by entering keywords into the search box. BlinkxTV offers content from many television and radio broadcasters (including the BBC) while Speechbot offers more than 15,000 hours of keyword searchable radio programming.

Ask Plans Mobile Search In 2005

2005-01-31T09:45:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.vom:

I said several times in '04 that mobile search and access to info would continue to grow in both usage and the number of mobile services available.

An IDG News story: Ask Jeeves Developing Wireless Search Service, reports that the butler will have a mobile search tool available sometime in 2005. I think mobile access to Ask's Smart Search technology (ANSWERS not only links) will be a plus for the mobile searcher since research time and other issues are major considerations when searching via a mobile device.

In developing its wireless search services, Ask Jeeves will focus on providing very specific information to queries and not try to replicate the conventional Web searching experience, given the nature of wireless communications and devices, he [Daniel Read, Ask Jeeves' vice president of product management] said.

The second half of 2004 was a busy time for mobile search. We saw new releases from Yahoo (who already had a very robust platform), Google, Smarter.com, and others. Btw, RSS and other syndication formats also work very well on mobile devices. Bloglines already offers a special interface for mobile web users.

A New Service from Yahoo! Local

2005-01-31T09:37:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Yahoo Local users can now easily and quickly send phone numbers and addresses from the Yahoo! Local database to their cell phones or mobile devices as text (SMS) messages. The service is free but your phone provider may charge for text messages.

Each Yahoo! Local entry now contains a link labeled, "Send to Phone." Click the link and enter a phone number (U.S. only). Then, click "send." In a matter of seconds the name, address, and phone number of the Yahoo Local entry you've selected will be accessible on your phone or mobile device. Some phones even hyperlink phone numbers so don't even after enter the number.

Cool Resources for Behavioral Advertisement

2005-01-31T09:35:00.000-08:00

Behavioral Targeting 101: From iMediaConnection, this dives into the second part of a series looking at some major players and ramp-ups last year in the space.

Behavioral Targeting Beyond the Network: From ClickZ, on tracking and delivering ads based on surfing behavior across a series of web sites.

Beyond Search: From ClickZ, a short recap of major behavioral and contextual players.

Behavioral Marketing 101: Defining the Terminology: Short and to the point, on the differences between contextual and behavioral ads.

Amazon's A9 Launches Visual Yellow Pages

2005-01-31T09:32:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

A9's new nationwide yellow pages directory comes with a twist—thumbnail images of business storefronts that let you take a virtual walk through the streets of 10 major U.S. cities.

Full_Report

Video Search

2005-01-26T17:34:00.000-08:00

Here is a complete coverage of the video search space:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050125-071400

Here are two players provideing video search for the blogsphere:

+ Blogdigger Media Search
+ FeedsterTV

AOL pre-populating with straight answers

2005-01-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

AOL is coming up with a very interesting strategy for "search". They are trying to do what we did for some enterprise customers:

From John Battelle:

AOL is taking "programmed search" to the extreme. It is, after all, a major division of a gigantic content player, and up until now, that content was locked away behind the failing access business model. No longer. AOL Search is taking the media model of search to the maximum - they have 60 full time employees creating edited "snapshots" which respond to what AOL Search chief Gerry Campbell says are 20% of all queries. That's 2.5 million snapshots preloaded, so when you type in a popular query, you get an "answer, not just a list of results." I imagine that number will only continue to grow. Yahoo circa 1995, anyone? This time, however, AOL only has to pre-load queries which prove out to be worth the time - the log files will tell them which ones. As will the economy. "We won't have a smart box for a query like 'birds of the Maldives'" Campbell told me. " But that's why we have Google."

Google's user experience

2005-01-18T13:26:00.000-08:00

Here is a nice article about Google's user experience. It was extracted from a talked given by Marissa Mayer at PARC on 01/11/2005. It has good pinters on how new features get implemented at Google.

http://alan.blog-city.com/read/1003011.htm

Filangy

2005-01-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

I just heard about this company from John Battelle. Here are the key features:

Instantly find previously viewed web pagesWe’ll index the pages you visit so you can instantly find information you are looking for from anywhere.
Never re-search. We’ll keep track of your searchesYour previous searches are stored so you can search again with the single click.
Make your Bookmarks portable with WebMarks. Import existing Bookmarks. Create new WebMarks with a click and access them from anywhere.
Access your personal web space from any computer.We have gone to great lengths to make Filangy securely accessible from any computer. Learn more about our features.

I'll review the toolbar and search features as soon as they send me the invite.

www.filangy.com

Google Released Appliance for Small Business

2005-01-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

Google just released an appliance for Small Business. It indexes up to 50,000 pages and comes with 1 yeear service agreement. It costs $4,995.00.

http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/

Search Mandatory On All U.S. Government Web Sites by End of '05

2005-01-10T16:34:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

According to a just released memo (PDF) from the U.S. government's Office of Management and Budget, all publicly accessible federal government web sites and main entry points must have search capabilities by the end of 2005.

In some circumstances, mostly for small Web sites, agency officials may still rely on site maps or subject indexes, the memo states...some Internet experts also warn that building a better search engine is no panacea. "Search is, in many ways, second choice for most users," said Larry Freed, chief executive officer of ForeSee Results, which sponsored portions of the ACSI poll. "Most users would rather navigate the system."

More info in this Federal Computer Week article. You can read the full text of the OMB memo here (PDF). Section 5 deals with search.

Build Your Own Topic Specific Engine With Gigablast

2004-12-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

Gigablast is offering something very cool search service for websites. It still retrieves algorithmic results but very targeted to the site audience. This validates the need for site search engines that only retrieves information from a vertical market.

From searchenginewatch.com:

I've wondered when web engines were going to begin offering the following type of service. Today is the day.

Something new and potentially very useful from Matt Wells and the Gigablast team: Build Your Own Topic Search Engine.

Gigablast now allows you to create a search tool that searches only the sites you tell it to (using the Gigablast web index). You're able to select up to 200 urls (or subsites). In other words, you can easily create your own subset of the complete Gigablast index.

Simply copy and replace a few lines of code, list the urls of the sites you want your topic engine to search, paste the finished code into a web page, and you're done. You do not need to register and you can create as many topic engines as you like. Very cool!

Yahoo and Verity Announce Partnership

2004-12-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Some news that spans the enterprise and web search worlds. It's also another example of the increasing importance of federated search tools.

Yahoo! and Verity are partnering to create an application called Verity Enterprise Web Search.
...with a single query - simultaneously search the high-value information in internal repositories as well as all of the relevant Web content indexed by Yahoo! Search...Search results from internal content repositories and the Web are merged and ranked for relevance, eliminating the need to submit multiple queries to internal sources and public search engines, then manually assimilating results to put the information into perspective.

More in the news release.

Ask Jeeves Launches Desktop Search

2004-12-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Ask Jeeves has launched a beta desktop search application, capping off a very busy year in the desktop search space.

Ask Jeeves' interest in desktop search became apparent when the company purchased desktop search technology company Tukaroo in June.

Google Announces Plan to Digitize Millions of Books

2004-12-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Google is announcing a new program to digitize millions of library books (full text) from five large research libraries (Stanford, University of Michigan, Harvard, Oxford, New York Public Library) and make them accessible via their Google Print database. The project will take several years to complete. For more, read today's SearchDay article Google Partners with Oxford, Harvard & Others to Digitize Libraries.

MSN's Desktop Search is Here (finally)

2004-12-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

The long anticipated MSN Desktop Search application finally made its debut today, joining the horse race that's shaping up between Google Desktop, the forthcoming desktop search applications from Ask Jeeves and Yahoo, and offerings from smaller companies such as Copernic, Blinkx, Autonomy and many others.

My initial impressions of the application are favorable. The program is fast, results are generally high quality, and the indexer is polite, playing nice (so far) with other desktop search applications. About the only downside is that MSN has embedded desktop search into its search toolbar, taking up yet more precious browser window space. But this is a minor quibble given the functionality built into both the toolbar and the desktop search app. For more, read on in today's SearchDay article MSN Joins the Desktop Search Fray.

Google Announces "Google Suggest"

2004-12-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

http://labs.google.com/suggest

From Google PR:

In our ongoing effort to create innovative technologies that enable users to search more of the world's information, Google today released an experimental search service on Google Labs called Google Suggest. This new web search service suggests queries as a user types what he or she is looking for into the search box. By offering more refined searches up front, Google Suggest can make searching more convenient and efficient, because it eliminates the need to type the entire text of a query. In addition, the service can connect users with new query suggestions that are useful, intriguing, and fun.

Google Suggest is similar to Google's "Did you mean?" feature, which offers users alternative spellings for a query. But, Google Suggest works as the user types in a query in real-time. For example, if a user types "bass," Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar." Similarly, if a user types in only part of a word such as "progr," Google Suggest will offer query refinements such as "programming," "programming", "languages,"progesterone," or "progressive."

Suggested queries are displayed in a drop-down menu below the search field and users can scroll through and select queries using their keyboard arrow keys. Google Suggest draws from a wide range of information, including the aggregate popularity of Google.com searches, to predict the queries and URLs users most likely want to see. An example of this popularity information can be found in the Google Zeitgeist. Google Suggest does not base its suggestions on the searches of an individual user or searches conducted from a particular computer or browser.

More on Friendster / Eurekster Deal

2004-12-13T09:41:00.000-08:00

Here is another move by a search company to partner with an established site. The deal is estimated to be worth half a million per year for a community of 13M users.

From an article on Stuff, a New Zealand news site:

Eurekster president Grant Ryan says the contract will bring in "at least mid-six figure" revenues per year and is the biggest deal the company has secured so far.

Thanks to the deal, Mr Ryan expects Eurekster to be cash-flow positive in a few months.

Yahoo Details Desktop Search Plans; Ask Jeeves & MSN Launch This Month

2004-12-10T10:15:00.000-08:00

From searchenginesearch.com:

Yahoo has announced that it will release a desktop search product after the New Year, putting the search engine firmly in the desktop search race that Google kicked off earlier this year and that other major search engines have already declared that they'd be entering as well.

Ask Jeeves, Microsoft's MSN and AOL have all confirmed to date that they will launch desktop search applications, leaving Yahoo as the only major service remaining only in "rumor" status. That's now ended.

Full_article

Google's algorithm gamed again

2004-12-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

From John Battelle:

From the WSJ's Online Journal:

Google News is a great site...(but) If you want to know what the top stories are, you're better off going to a news site that has an actual human editor (at this point we'd be remiss if we didn't plug The Wall Street Journal Online), but some of the stuff that makes its way through Google's algorithms can be a source of high hilarity.

Example: A left-wing site called Axis of Logic published a satirical (though unfunny) article yesterday titled "Canadians Authorities Arrest U.S. President Bush on War Charges," and it ended up as Google's top story. Seriously.
Link to the image.

Forrester Stats, Search Defection & Vertical Search

2004-12-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

Charlene Li shares some stats from internal Forrester research about search loyalty in The battle for search loyalty drives innovation.

I find her conclusion on vertical search very favorable for SB.

Another Yahoo Co-Branded Toolbar Announced

2004-12-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

Yahoo is clearly putting some effort to expand its toolbar market through partnerships.

From searchenginewatch.com:

We mentioned a few weeks ago that the Yahoo Toolbar would be available with downloads of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. About three weeks ago, Yahoo announced a co-branded version of their toolbar with library database provider, OCLC.

Today, another co-branded toolbar is available from Yahoo and partner, InterContinental Hotels. Members of Intercontinental's Priority Club Rewards program can download and use the toolbar to not only access Yahoo services but also manage their PCR account.

AOL Ad Revenue and Search

2004-12-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Media Post has more details on Time Warner's CEO Richard Parsons commenting about AOL nearing the one billion dollar mark in ad revenue.

[Mike] Kelly [president of AOL Media Networks] says the AOL division's revenues are derived from a combination of cost-per-click (CPC), pay-for-performance, and brand advertising, as well as revenues from AOL Europe. One-third of AOL's advertising revenue comes from search revenue via the company's relationship with Google, and through direct search from AOL, according to Kelly. That percentage is expected to grow, although it was unclear by how much.

Eurekster Search Coming to Friendster

2004-12-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Eurekster's personalized search will soon be available on social networking service Friendster, according to this Reuters article.

The new search tool, due to be rolled out on Thursday, will use Eurekster's personalization technology to rank search results based on preferences of Friendster users. Friendster Search powered by Eurekster will use Yahoo results and contian Overture ads.

Convera Plans to Enter Web Search Marketplace

2004-12-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

The Washington Post article: Agencies Find What They're Looking For, takes a look at Convera, a popular provider of search technology to many government agencies (CIA, FBI, etc.)

The article concludes with the news that Convera plans to enter the commercial web search marketplace next year.

"...Convera plans to make its Internet search engine available to regular computer users for free sometime next year. In that business segment, Convera would seek to profit through the sale of online advertising, which is growing. Convera's search results, based on proprietary technology, would be different from those provided by Google and Yahoo, [CEO Patrick] Condo said. 'We have applied technology we built for the intelligence community to an advanced development project to index the Web,' Condo said."

New Version of Copernic's Desktop Search App Released

2004-12-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Copernic has released a new version (v 1.2) of its impressive desktop search app.
According to this announcement, the new version includes:+ Full support for Firefox (history and bookmarks indexing) + Support for the latest PDF file format (v1.5)+ A redesigned user interface for Web searching+ Improved handling of French, German, Spanish and Italian content.

You can read our positive review of Copernic Desktop Search in SearchDay article: A New Player in Desktop Search. Mamma.com recently announced plans to acquire Copernic.

Get Ready Blogger (aka Google), Microsoft is Ready to Launch Blogging Service

2004-12-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

From searhenginewatch.com:

Mary Joe Foley reports that Microsoft will launch its weblog publishing service, Microsoft Spaces sometime this week. The service has been available in Japan since August. It will compete with Google's Blogger and Blogspot services as well as other web-based blogging services like Typepad.

MSN is expected to tout MSN Spaces as a direct competitor to blog-creation and hosting tools, such as Blogger, Blog*Spot, LiveJournal and TypePad. Microsoft also will position MSN Spaces as a way to allow users to more easily share photo albums and music lists, too, insiders said.

Foley also reports that MS might allow users to post to their MS Spaces blogs via IM once a new version of MSN Messenger is released in early '05.

Snap Stats: Seeing What's Up With Snap.com

2004-12-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Via John Battelle, news of a nice nice write-up from SiliconBeat looking at the data Snap is freely providing about its operations, such as daily earnings, number of enrolled advertisers, ads generating clicks per day and other information.

Any worries that too much information is being given out? Nope, said founder Bill Gross, in the story Snap: the future of transparency?

You can see Snap's data directly via the its stats home page. Charts show number of advertisers, paid click, daily searches and more.

Drilling down via the financial stats page, I see that November has been the best month for the company, earning it $1,631.68. That's above the $1,176.40 in October, the only other month revenues have been earned.

Via the advertiser stats page, LookSmart is revealed to be the company's top advertiser in the last 30 days, spending $1,303 with Snap, dwarfing the next highest advertiser of Smarter.com at $90.

A traffic stats page shows that Top20.com just edges out Google as the site's top referring source. Both generated on the order of 50,000 referrals over the last seven days.
And yes, there is a keywords stats page, with "location" as the odd top query for the last seven days, followed by "book summary."

Autonomy Enters Desktop Search War

2004-12-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

Add another player in the desktop search war. Autonomy has jumped in with a new product aimed at the enterprise market. More in this ZDNet UK story. Autonomy's new product offers something called "Active Folders" and has a description that sounds VERY similar to the "Smart Folders" feature that Blinkx just unveiled in their 2.0 release.

Surprised by the similar sounding technology? Not at all. It's known that Blinkx licenses some of Autonomy's technology for their "conceptual" and consumer focused search app.

Also, "Blinkx co-founder, Suranga Chandratillak formerly worked for Autonomy, a San Francisco company that develops search technology for businesses to use in-house. Chandratillake realized that Autonomy's 'conceptual search' technology would be useful to consumers."

Babelplex

2004-11-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

From searchblog.com:

Meant to post this a couple weeks ago, and now SEW and Corante have gotten the word out: Babelplex is a new tool that allows you to search side by side results in two languages.

This is the first search based project for Babelplex's author, HK Tang. Born in Hong Kong and educated at the University of Washington, Tang tells me "For Babelplex, I've realized if you simplify search down to the simplest equation there are two sides. Output which Google has solidly nailed down, and input which is very relevant when searching in foreign text. I've observed users who are limited by the language of their keyboard would use Yahoo! Directory rather than Google Search to find International pages. Also, my family is bilingual, so that has some influence on the inception of Babelplex."

More "Fishing" and Multimedia Search

2004-11-29T08:37:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

What is is with "fishing" and multimedia search? Earlier today we posted about a new beta at Singingfish, AOL's multimedia search site. The new Singingfish slogs is, "It's a Strange World. Fish It." Instead of clicking a "search" or "find" button, you'll click the "Fish It" button. SingingFish crawls the open web looking for multimedia content.

Beginning Monday, SingingFish will not be the only "fish" site doing multimedia searching.
In today's Merc (and on his Silicon Beat blog yesterday) Michael Bazeley lets us know about GoFish.com that will officially launch on Monday.

Think of it as a meta/federated shopping search site that allows you to find material from, "Napster, Buy.com, iTunes and a host of other online music merchants."

As Michael puts it, "It functions in much the same way as comparison shopping sites, which aggregate feeds of product information from online retailers. GoFish pulls in catalog feeds from music sellers, grouping them into a searchable index."

GoFish will generate revenue by earning a 9 percent to 15 percent commission from merchants for every sale it sends to a merchant. Bazeley also reports that GoFish management hopes to partner with a "second-tier" engine before the end of the year.

Could GoSingingFish be in the works?

New Singingfish Beta Web Site Online

2004-11-29T08:32:00.000-08:00

Frpm searchenginewatch.com:

Singingfish, the multimediamedia search tool (owned by AOL), is online with a new beta version of their site. Old interface is still available here.

- New Slogan: "It's a Strange World. Fish It""Fish It" is a trademarked.

- New interface allows you to "save searches" (cookie based)

- Email search queries

- Toggle "advanced features" on/off main interface

- Toggle "saved searches" feature on/off main interface

- New button labeled "I'm Bored" allows you to ," play something guaranteed to make you say, 'huh.'"

- View recent searches, popular searches, and staff favorites

- Button to run a search is now labeled, "Fish It."

New Web Search Engine From Australia Coming Next Week

2004-11-29T08:29:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

ITWorld.com is reporting that Australia-based Ansearch will officially launch MySearch.com.au, next week.

The article includes a bit of detail on MySearch.com.au plans in terms of ranking and crawl.

- Quality of data: focus on a relatively small list of the most popular websites in the world rather than those with the most number of websites linking to them
- Ranking: based on usage rather than link farm size.
- Focus on a site versus pages: IE's Geocities will feature in its database only once, rather than the extensive network of millions of free pages / Web sites that are found within Google. This will result in a natural tendency to feature more business/commerce sites.
- Top sites index: a listing of top Web sites updated and ranked regularly.
- Small data footprint: allows for a daily update of the top-ranked Web sites, as opposed to updates every six weeks.

Ansearch will generate revenue via cpc and offering enteprise search services. There are three other revenue streams that will be revealed in Quarter Four, 2005. "To the best of our knowledge, no other search engine -- global or Australian -- is addressing these other areas." --Louise Williams, marketing manager, Ansearch.

Mamma Has Plans to Acquire Copernic

2004-11-29T08:24:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

Mamma.com, the Montreal-based metasearch engine has signed a letter-of-intent to acquire Copernic.

Copernic, also a Canadian company, offers several desktop and enterprise search apps including Copernic Desktop Search. Here's our review.

Other products Copernic offers include a metasearch client app (Copernic Agent), a free toolbar that allows you to add any search engine to it with a single click (Copernic Meta Toolbar), and summarization software.

About a month ago Copernic created a seperate company, Conveo Solutions, to market its enterprise search software.

According to the announcement, the plan is to close this transaction in the first quarter of 2005.

Top Search Engine Toolbars Reviewed

2004-11-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

CNet reviews the top 7 search engine toolbars and looks at compatibility and features.

Ebrary: search and PDF enhancer

2004-11-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

From silliconvalley.com:

Ebrary takes PDF versions of publications -- typically supplied by publishers -- rips them apart and reconstructs them so they can be entered into a searchable database. A downloadable piece of software called the ebrary Reader embeds itself into Web browsers and allows users to view the documents, aided by a bevy of features not available in standard PDF readers.

Clicking on a word within an ebrary document, for example, triggers a pop-up menu that allows you to highlight text, look up the word in a dictionary, or search for it within the document, the ebrary database or the entire Web.

Ebrary's been around for nearly six years, but the company has grown tremendously in the past year or so. Its collection now totals 50,000 to 60,000 titles, from books and reports to journals and sheet music.

The 30-person company is privately held and is partially funded by three major publishers, Random House Ventures, Pearson and McGraw-Hill.

New Search Engine: Creative Commons

2004-11-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

From CreativeCommons.org:

“The Creative Commons search engine helps companies, educators, and artists find content they can re-use without having to call a lawyer, and it offers authors and artists who want to share their work a competitive advantage toward having their work discovered online,” said Neeru Paharia, assistant director of Creative Commons and the search engine’s product manager.

For example, a documentary filmmaker could use the Creative Commons engine to search for “images of the Eiffel Tower free for noncommercial use,” and incorporate any or all of the many photographs indexed. A DJ seeking songs free to remix or mash-up could browse listings of MP3s by their legal terms. An entrepreneur seeking illustrations for her slideshow presentation could reduce costs and liability by using a Creative Commons image-specific search. An educator building course materials could include texts and videos found by the engine.

What distinguishes the Creative Commons engine from other search services is that all of the above are possible without the hassle of rights-clearance, licensing requests, or royalty payments.

At the core of the Creative Commons search engine are two key innovations, one legal and one technological. First, Creative Commons offers authors and artists a simple, standardized way to mark their work as free to share or transform, on certain conditions. By applying a Creative Commons copyright license and (cc) notice to her work, an author invites the world to make certain uses of it without giving up her copyright. Rather than the traditional “all rights reserved,” a Creative Commons license declares “some rights reserved.”

Second, and complimentary to this free legal tool, is Creative Commons machine-readable translation of the copyright licenses. When an author affixes the (cc) copyright notice to her webpage or MP3 or image file, it is automatically marked with Creative Commons “metadata” as well. It is this metadata -- akin to a library catalog card describing a particular book -- that the Creative Commons search engine then reads, processes, and presents to users as it crawls the web for their search requests.

Wondir, very familiar model

2004-11-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

Wondir is a question-answer service still in beta. John Battelle just interviewed its founder, Matthew Koll.

I was amazed to learn that Wondir's strategy is practically an exact copy of our initial vision. First of all, they realized that depth and scale come from focusing on vertical markets (groups) first, so they sold the service to ichef.com, ratemyteachers.com and icerocket. Secondly, they came up with a model that shares AdSense advertising with the answerer. Thirdly, they incorporated a reputation system that ranks answerers based on a 5 stars model.

John Battelle seems to like the model a lot. He even envisions the top 5 "search" gurus sharing a Wondir platform to provide their readers with answers and make money doing it. Does it sound familiar? I am pleased to know the model is appealing enough to have John excited about using a new product to help his community and get paid.

Here is John Battelle's article:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/001058.php

Personalized information (sci-fi)

2004-11-22T18:40:00.000-08:00

Robin Sloan produced a clever Flash movie called "EPIC 2004" speculating about the future of personalized news and information. Worth watching.

Findory Begins Personalizing Web Search Results

2004-11-22T13:05:00.000-08:00

They basically rearrange Google results based on your history. Example:

Con www.findory.com:
- Search for "Incredibles"
- Click on the IMDB link (fourth down)
- Search for "Nemo".
- The IMDB page on Finding Nemo will be highlighted and popped up to the top slot.

It takes the Eurekster concept to the next level but is still not very reliable. If the link you clicked on is not good, the system will still use it to rearrange your results. In any case, I like the idea of trying to present something better without asking users to do something different from what they normally do.

Blinkx trying to raise £20m, fire co-funder

2004-11-22T11:26:00.000-08:00

From timesonline.co.uk:

IT IS just as well Kathy Rittweger knows all about “search”. After a bust-up at Blinkx, the internet search company she founded, the engaging American entrepreneur is looking for a new job. Unfortunately, Kathy has fallen out with her partner, Suranga Chandratillake, the former technology whiz at Autonomy.

Blinkx appears to have conducted its own intuitive search for Rittweger’s replacement. Mark Opzoomer, who used to run Yahoo in Europe, was appointed chief executive only days after Rittweger gave an upbeat interview to The Times. In an e-mail, Rittweger told us: “I have left Blinkx. But I’m bound by confidentiality and cannot discuss the ‘why’.”

Opzoomer has been brought in to help the firm raise £20m. In the wake of Google’s soaring share price, search engines are hot, and Blinkx wants its share of the investment dollars.
Opzoomer kept a low profile at Yahoo. His CV strangely omits his time as co-chief executive of Talkcast Corporation, one of the most ill-considered and chaotic flowerings of the dotcom boom. This is a big claim, but Prufrock has it on good authority — our financial editor, Paul Durman, once worked for Opzoomer there.

Google releases Deskbar API

2004-11-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

From Google's PR:

Today, Google announced the availability of the Google Deskbar API(application programming interface). This technology makes it possible forsoftware developers to build their own features, or plug-ins, for thepopular Google Deskbar.

For instance, a developer could use Google Deskbar APIs to create a moviesearch command that enables users to search their favorite movie site byentering a movie name into the Deskbar search field and typing a specialcommand such as "Ctrl'M." Other examples include:
- Locate and play a music play list on your hard drive
- Solve algebraic equations
- Send instant messages from the Deskbar (example: type "AIM- [screen name] [message text]")

Results will be displayed within the Google Deskbar mini-browser whichappears to the bottom right of the user's computer. New features developedwith the Google Deskbar API will be displayed as an option in the Deskbar main menu.

The Google Deskbar API is in the experimental, beta phase. We invitedevelopers to use the service and encourage them to send us their input andfeedback. Plug-ins can be written in any .NET language, such as C# or VisualBasic.NET. More information about the Google Deskbar API can be found here: http://deskbar.google.com/help/api/index.html.

Ask Jeeves & Yahoo Next With Desktop Search Products?

2004-11-18T11:26:00.000-08:00

From searchenginelowdown.com:

Matt Weeks reports confirmation from Ask Jeeves that they will launch their desktop search in December. While Emeryville, Calif.-based Ask Jeeves hasn't provided many details, its product appears likely to follow the approach of other Web search engines by combining hard-drive results, such as from e-mails and files, with its core Web results.

And what about Yahoo? According to Tim Mayer, director of product management for Yahoo Search..."We feel the desktop is important, and we want to provide a full search experience," Mayer said. "It's a strategic entry point, and a lot of [Web] search is about distribution."

"Google Scholar" is Born

2004-11-18T11:14:00.000-08:00

In a nutshell, Google has built an algorithm that makes a calculated guess at to *what it thinks* is a scholarly content mined from the OPEN WEB, and then makes it accessible via the Google Scholar interface.

In addition, Google has been working with major publications to index content behind password protected sites.

Good article from resourceshelf.com:

http://www.resourceshelf.com/2004/11/wow-its-google-scholar.html

Overture Extends Deal With Microsoft As MS Builds Its Own Technology

2004-11-18T10:42:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

A news release let's us know that Overture has extended their relationship with Microsoft through June, 2006.

Under the terms of the extension, Overture will continue to provide its sponsored search results to MSN sites in the U.S. and Canada, Europe and Asia. The previous agreement ran through June 2005.

The WSJ is reporting (subscribers only) reports that Microsoft is building its own technology. A portion of the article is available here.

- Microsoft also is building its own ad-placement technology, which could allow it one day to displace Yahoo, according to people familiar with the matter.
- The people familiar with the matter said Microsoft expects to release a test version of its ad-placement system by the second half of next year. But it remains unclear whether, or when, Microsoft plans to replace the Yahoo-provided ads with its own. The contract extension suggests Microsoft doesn't think its own system will be ready by the middle of next year.

Searching for Real Time Information

2004-11-17T10:28:00.000-08:00

From searchenginewatch.com:

If search engines have an Achilles heel, it's that the crawling process lags the content creation process. While content from some sites appears quickly in search engines, it takes up to a month for crawlers to do a comprehensive refresh of all new web content. This means that all search engines, no matter how comprehensive, are to one degree or another out of date.

Today's SearchDay article, Managing the Firehose of Real-Time Information, focuses on PubSub, a service that monitors blogs, SEC filings, Newsgroup postings and other sources, and matches your keyword based queries against those sources in real-time. It's a great "prospective" tool for supplementing the "retrospective" results you get with search engines. It's also a terrific early warning system for new sources of information that you might miss using other tools, such as feed aggregators or blog search engines. Definitely worth a look.

Buy.com to Display Google AdWords

2004-11-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

More and more B2C sites are adding Google AdWords despite risking traffic to click away from their sites. Interestingly, PPC revenue must be high enough to justify some cannibalization. This is a good trend to keep in mind when people say that SEA will jeopardize their business.

From searchenginelowdown.com:

This is an interesting announcement. Buy.com will start showing Google AdWords on its web site.This is a growing trend among large B2C web sites, but why would a company, that is trying to generate its own sales, tempt visitors to leave and potentially visit a competitor's site. Shouldn't Buy.com be focussing on keeping visitors at their own site, instead of cannibalizing their own sales?

New search related patents

2004-11-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

List of latest search patents:

Personalized search methods including combining index entries for categories of personal dataAssignee: Ask Jeeves, Inc.Awarded: November 9, 2004

System and method for mobile electronic messagingAssignee: YahooAwarded: November 2, 2004

Method and computer program product for color coding search resultsAssignee: IBMAwarded: October 26, 2004

Method and apparatus for query-specific book marking and data collectionAssignee: HPAwarded: October 26, 2004NOTE: Krishna Bharat, now a Google employee (and a principal architect of Google News), is listed as inventor.

Method and apparatus for finding information on the internetAssignee: IBMAwarded: October 5, 2004

System for creation of visual representation of dataAssignee: Plumb DesignAwarded: October 5, 2004NOTE: Plum Design, now known as Thinkmap, offers VisualThesaurus.com

Method for scoring documents in a linked database Assignee: Stanford UniversityAwarded: September 28, 2004Note: Google co-founder Larry Page is listed as the inventor. This is a continuation of this patent, awarded in 2001.

Metasearch technique that ranks documents obtained from multiple collectionsAssignee: NextPageAwarded: September 21, 2004

Automatically initiating an internet-based search from within a displayed documentAssignee: IBMAwarded: August 31, 2004

System and method for rapid completion of data processing tasks distributed on a networkAssignee: Overture ServicesAwarded: August 10, 2004

Method and apparatus to restrict free hyperlinking by internet content distributors to web sites of original content producersAssignee: IBMAwarded: August 3, 2004