search engine showdown update the shifting sands of search

Search Engine Showdown Update The Shifting Sands of Search

Greg R. NotessSearchEngineShowdown.com

March 14, 2003

Search Engine Showdown Update Slide 2

CIOL 0’3 - Greg Notess 2

Year Worth of Changes

Google Prominence & Dominance Other Search Engine News

Ownership Shuffle Vital Statistics

Mortality & Natality

March 14, 2003



Google Prominence

Often now: first & only search engine Heavy traffic & time spent Now claims 250 million searches per DAY

Very active early in 2002 Partnerships at end of 2002 Portal / Destination Move?

March 14, 2003



Early 2002 Activity

Google Catalogs Google APIs Google Programming Competition Google Labs

Voice search Keyboard shortcuts Google sets Glossary project

March 14, 2003



More Recent Activity

Froogle Product (Shopping) Search

Buys Blogger Not Directly Search Related

Combined with News = More Destination Google Labs Adds

Google View Web Quotes

March 14, 2003



Revenue Generating Activity

AdWords Select Competes with Overture, Espotting

Google Search Appliance Google Answers Content-Specific Ads

Not Search Related

March 14, 2003



Evolving Partnership Deals

Switched from Inktomi to Google AOL CompuServe iWon

Made Google more Prominent Yahoo! Netscape Search

Go Goes from Overture to Google

March 14, 2003



Google News

Expanded scope Over 4,000 news sources A 30 day archive

Emphasis on Algorithmic Browse Commercial Online

Has Much More Archive Depth

March 14, 2003



Search Feature Changes

Aggressive spell checking in English automatic correction if misspelling = 0 Now turned off?

Stop words searchable in phrases Even ‘the,’ formerly non-searchable

Wildcard in phrase “addictive * vice of biblioscopy”

March 14, 2003



Google Backlash

Banned in China for awhile Censored at google.fr, google.de

cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/google Sued in U.S. Privacy Concerns Dominance / Monopoly Concerns

March 14, 2003



Other Search Engine News

Google is not comprehensive Others offer unique features, content FAST at Lycos & AlltheWeb AltaVista Inktomi at MSN Search & Hotbot Teoma

March 14, 2003



FAST Activity

Starts Indexing PDF, Flash, Word Docs Lycos adds Fast Forward Main Activity at AlltheWeb Overture Announces Intent to Buy

AlltheWeb and Web Search Portion of FAST Not the Enterprise Search Side

March 14, 2003



AlltheWeb Changes

Full Boolean Searching (finally) Size limits, IP address limits PDF and Flash file limit User-customizable date limit Embedded content limit KWIC display Home page/doc depth limit (now gone) FAST Topics also gone

March 14, 2003



AltaVista

Overture to Acquire Remodeled: Larger, Fresher Geo Targeting Added PDF indexing Prisma (11% Usage, More Languages) Truncation Improved (* = unlimited) News Search: More Depth & Features

March 14, 2003



HotBot Relaunch

Now with 4 Databases AlltheWeb, Google, Inktomi, Teoma Sequential, not simultaneous searches Emphasis on Customization & Advanced

Search Some Inktomi Search Features Gone

No truncation No page depth No unclustering

March 14, 2003



Inktomi (at MSN Search, HotBot) Yahoo! Buys Inktomi Indexes PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint Larger, Fresher Database Geo Targeting Smart Abstracts

KWIC, editorial, or custom

March 14, 2003



Teoma

Bought by Ask Jeeves Last Year Teoma Adds More Advanced Features

Field searching intitle: inurl: site:

Boolean capability expands OR available, but does not yet combine well

Advanced Search Page

March 14, 2003



Search Engine Vital Statistics Mortality

Northern Light Direct Hit

Natality OpenFind (Taiwan research)

Large, but very much a prototype Gigablast

Advanced Features, Cache, Honesty in Dates

March 14, 2003



Current State of Search Engines Google Remains Important

Sole source for some info Google Groups File types such as .rtf, .ps, .wpd

Size and scope Cached files

Other Search Engines Offer additional content & features Still surviving New ones still being created

March 14, 2003



Current Status of Major SE DatabasesDatabase Also At Owned ByAlltheWeb Lycos, HotBot Overture

AltaVista -- Overture

Google AOL, Yahoo!, others Google

Inktomi HotBot, MSN, Overture

Yahoo!

Teoma Ask Jeeves, HotBot Ask Jeeves

WiseNut -- LookSmart

March 14, 2003



Search Engine Update

SearchEngineShowdown.comMore on Advanced FeaturesFeature ChartDetailed Reviews

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search engine showdown update the shifting sands of search

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