Google is proud of its 20 percent rule. Its employees may spend 20 percent of their time on their own personal projects, as long as these projects are — in some way or other — relevant to Google’s present or future activities.

Google can only win through this deal, as their employees work more than 100 percent anyway. Many innovations thought up in these 20 percents are subsequently put to the test in Google Labs, and some become permanent members of the Google family.

This may lead people to think that Google is a company focusing on bottom-up innovation, with a strong belief in serendipity: Give the employees enough time and freedom and they will come up with something useful, eventually.

This narrative fits well with Brin and Page’s university background. Google’s Pagerank algorithm was, after all, born out of curiosity driven university research.

This story has become a smoke screen covering the real strategy of Google, which is a patient, and very long-term plan for continuous Google domination of the Web. This is a plan that will (if it works) ensure that Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing will continue to lag behind, even in ten to twenty years time.

Long term planning

No, we don’t have access to Google’s secret archives. The company’s ability to think long term is out there for all to see.

Here’s an example:

In 2001 Pandia presented a Google innovation called Google Catalogs.

It didn’t make much of an impression at the time. Google was scanning and indexing American mail order catalogs, letting you search their content using a Google search engine.

It didn’t make much sense to us at the time. We speculated that they might be thinking of future ad revenue.

This was not the case. Google Catalogs never became a popular search tool and was probably never intended to become one (it was closed down in January).

Indexing all printed material in the world

The real reason for doing this was to develop a technology that made it possible to scan a lot of printed publications and turn their content into searchable text.

Google was as early as in 2001 planning to turn Google from a web search company, to a content search company. Google wanted to become nothing less than the primary destination for searching all kinds of content, including all text that has ever been printed.

This may sound like madness, we know, but thanks to the Google Catalog experiment, Google has been able to develop a technology that makes it possible to scan a large number of books in a very short time.

In 2004 we reported that the company was planning to scan books owned by the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford, and the New York Public Library. Since then the number of libraries have increased dramatically, and Google has made complex deals with publishers regarding copyright.

Although Google Books will not (yet) give you the full content of books that are not in the public domain, Google will give you extracts, and you may use Google Books to identify the books you want to buy in print or as a file.

Indexing printed material makes a huge difference

Most people are not aware of the importance of this move. So far, most of the debate on Google Books has been dominated by authors worried about their intellectual property rights.

Having nearly all printed material available at your finger tips will, however, completely change the way — for instance — academics search for books and papers.

As soon as Google finds a good way of including printed material that is relevant for the regular Joe in regular web search, that will also change the world for the rest of us. Google is already adding magazines to Google Books.

Preparing for a world of digital print

Soon the difference between printed and digitalized content will become blurred. Most books are produced as digital XML files today, and when the ebook/ereader revolution takes hold, we will probably read our newspapers and magazines using digital tablets.

At that point Google doesn’t have to scan new material, only index it. Thanks to Google Books it will be the only company that has all the legal agreements with publishers in place. Google had the right vision and was able to think ahead.

It is important to keep this in mind, when we discuss the importance of Microsoft’s Bing initiative. Bing proves that Microsoft has — in many ways — caught up with Google as regards online search.

However, as far as we know, Microsoft does not have a plan for the next phase. In 2008 Microsoft closed down its own book scanning project!

Search content of any language

Here’s another example: Google is spending a lot of money on developing new and better automatic translation algorithms.

Yahoo! has also got a translation service called Babelfish (you may know it as AltaVista’s Babelfish), but Yahoo! does not own the technology used in Babelfish (it is developed by Systran). Google definitely owns Google Translate, and — as for the scanning project — it is part of a larger, long-term strategy.

Google plans to go far beyond Babelfish’s ability to translate paragraphs of text or the web pages you feed into its search field. Google plans to use Translate to include translated content into regular web search results.

This means that if you sit in China and do searches in Mandarin, Google may include English language content that has been automatically translated into Chinese. This is not going to make the dictators of the world happy.

Combined with Google Books, this service will break down the language barriers between the English, French, Spanish and Chinese language spheres of science and technology.

Google Translate has some way to go

At the moment the Google Translate technology is not good enough for this purpose. One Google representative told us that the service is improving, getting it right some 70 percent of the time. This makes it usable for rough translations, but not for the kind of service we are talking about here.

Still, given the resources Google set aside for this project, they are probably going to get there in a few years time.

This is actually an area where Microsoft should be able to compete. They have their own translation technology which is used by Bing.com.

Google Chrome OS

The lesson learnt from these examples is that Google has long term strategies, often based on what more timid souls would call megalomaniacs’ dreams of madness.

The fact is, however, that Google may actually reach is objective of indexing all content in all languages — in time.

The Google Chrome OS is part of such a long term strategy.

Microsoft threatening Google’s position

A few years ago there was an intense debate regarding Microsoft’s virtual monopoly as regards operating systems. Microsoft succeeded in crushing the Netscape browser, making its own Internet Explorer browser the most popular browser on the Web.

This combination of operating system and browser was a huge threat to Google, as Microsoft could use the default search boxes in these tools to direct searchers to its own search engine. Google needed a strategy that could help it face this threat.

As it turned out, Microsoft managed to lose its advantage.

It was completely unable to develop a branding strategy for its search engine (until this year, that is), meaning that it lost many of the searchers it could have gained via Windows and the Explorer.

Nor did it manage to develop a search engine technology that was better than Google’s, thus luring in the tech savvy searchers.

Then the company made the major mistake of not updating the Explorer browser, leaving room for Firefox. Google made deals with Firefox, Opera and Apple (Safari) making Google the default search engine of these browsers.

A more conservative company might have left it at that. Google seems to have won the search engine war against Microsoft.

The king of your content

However, there is another side to the Google/Microsoft battle, one that goes beyond search.

Google is not satisfied with being the king of published content, it wants to become the king of your content as well.

In other words: It will not only index the content of web sites, blogs, books and magazines; it also wants index the content of your emails, letters, memos and spreadsheets.

This is, of course, Microsoft’s turf. Microsoft has another virtual monopoly: the world of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

From Gmail to Google Docs

Google started out with developing the free Google Mail service. Then it gradually expanded on this service adding an RSS reader, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation package and — soon — a complete content management service called Google Wave.

The main difference between Microsoft Office and Google Docs is that Google Docs stores data online (in the cloud), while Microsoft Office stores your files on your computer.

Well, there is another difference: Microsoft Office is much better and has many more features than Google Docs. This has, of course, led many to argue that Google Docs can never become a real threat to Microsoft Office.

This is where they are wrong.

Again, remember that Google operates with long term plans — very long term. It is patiently waiting for the moment where Internet connection speeds get fast enough and the price of online storage gets cheap enough to let people stay online all the time.

Some of us are already there. The rest of the world will be there within a short period of time.

All Google has to do is to continue to improve Google Docs, and make sure that users can make use of the Microsoft file formats. Then it shouldn’t be too difficult to lure these users over to the bright side (or the dark side, dependent on your point of view). And Google Docs is free while Microsoft Office is not.

The reason Google developed the Chrome browser was not to kill Firefox or the other alternatives to Microsoft Explorer. The reason was that they wanted to make a browser technology that could be used of running programs or software on servers in “the cloud”.

In this way Google can encourage the development of browser technologies that are safe and stable and that will work on any operating system, being that Windows, Linux or MacOS.

The point is to make Windows superfluous. If you are doing everything inside the browser, you do not need the expensive and bloated Windows software. You can use Google Docs in Chrome.

Then Google will get all the eyeballs it need to deliver ads, and what’s more: it will manage to do what Microsoft failed to do: use the OS to lead users to the search engine.

Chrome is the Windows killer

The Chrome OS for netbooks is a natural continuation of this strategy. Netbooks are cheap laptops you can use to access the web. They do not have the capacity to run big, bloated, software. You do what you have to do online.

Given that none of the free Linux packages out there deliver the same user friendly experience in an operating system that Firefox has provided in the world of browsers, it makes sense for Google to make an open source OS that is free, easy to use and that leads users to Google services.

If others make use of this technology to develop better alternatives, that’s good too. These variations of the Google Chrome OS will also be perfect for using Google Docs.

It will take time for Chrome to weaken Windows

Both companies and users have too much invested in Windows and Microsoft Office to make it die any time soon. Windows will be around for ten years or so as well.

But Google has proven that it has the money and the time needed to be patient. If Microsoft continues to hold on to the old software-in-a-box paradigm, Google will probably win. If Microsoft moves Office into the clouds, who knows what will happen.

Google World Domination

If the idea of Microsoft world domination worried you, it is probably time to spend some sleepless nights worrying about Google.

Or you may, of course, lean back, enjoy the ride and wait for Google to slip up. People always do, eventually.

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

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Webmaster World PubCon

The Webmaster World “pub conference” stated out as a simplistic meeting of people over some beers in a pub in London in 2001.

Since then the show has turned into something much bigger, with a huge annual search engine marketing conference and expo in Las Vegas.

This July 24, however, PubCon is back at the Cittie of York pub in London for an informal afternoon.

The next big event is in Las Vegas November 10 to 13.

Search Engine Strategies
on August 10 to 14.

The next Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo is in San Jose in California

Europeans may want to take part in the Berlin conference on November 24 to 25.

SMX Search Marketing Expo

SMX is all over the world this year. Just look at this itinerary:

• Singapore July 2 to 3
• SMX São Paulo 2009, Brasil, August 4
• New York City - October 5-7
• Stockholm, Sweden, 12 & 13 October, 2009
• México November 11

SMX is, like PubCon and SES, a great place for networking and keeping up to date on the latest in search engine and social media marketing.

PPC Summit

The PPC Summit focuses on pay-per-click text ads and search engine advertising.

The next two venues are in Los Angeles September 23 - 24 and Chicago November 4 - 5.

photo credit SMX: Scott Clark

photo credit SES: CircumerroStock

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• Google Rules Mobile Search — for Now, Report Says

  Popular search engine Google not only dominates the web game but has taken to lead the mobile search domain globally as well, a report from Web browser company Opera said recently. (PCWorld June 27 2009)

• Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out

  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. (Wired June 22 2009)

• More real-time search startups join the fray

  Real-time search allows users to find out what’s happening now on any topic, unlike traditional search engines, which bring up the most authoritative results over time as judged by page links. (The Industy Standard June 26 2009)

• Study Suggests People Prefer Bing’s Design To Google’s, But Still Won’t Switch

  Prior to the test, all the subjects used Google as their main search engine. Following the test, 4 out of the 12, or one third, said that overall they preferred Bing. (TechCrunch June 25 2009)

• Can Someone Please Tell Us How You Determine What’s A ‘Legal’ Search Engine From An ‘Illegal’ One?

  I’ve had a lot of trouble with courts around the globe pinning blame on search engines for what they find, using a questionable interpretation of the law for “contributory” infringement or “inducing” infringement. (techdirt June 26 2009)

• Dump Google? Bing is more user-friendly

  Bing, the search engine from Microsoft, has a better design than Google, a usability study from Catalyst Group has found. (ComputerWeekly June 26 2009)

• How to Turn Your PowerPoint Presentation into a Video for More Exposure

  You have some great video content to promote and generate additional leads! (SE Journal June 26 2009)

• Google News Now with New Author Search Feature!

  Use advanced search option on Google News. (PageTraffic June 24 2009)

• Bing Gains Major Paid Search Share in Two Weeks

  According to Efficient Frontier’s latest analysis, Bing’s share of paid clicks increased to 13% from 8% prior to its launch two weeks ago. (SE Journal June 24 2009)

• Kayak to Bing: Stop Copying Us! - Update

  Kayak, the popular multi-airline airfare search engine, thinks Microsoft Bing’s new travel search engine looks so much like its own that it’s confusing Kayak users. (Wired June 24 2009)

• Moving up in natural search

  The Google Grants blog offers a course in search engine optimization (June 24 2009)

• China Blocks Google, YouTube This Week, Could It Become Permanent

  Given China has its own internal search engines and the government has strict control, Google has acknowledged it is censoring search results in the country. (SE Watch June 27 2009)

• Michael Jackson’s Death: An Inside Look At How Google, Yahoo, & Bing Handled An Extraordinary Day In Search

  The rush of traffic was so severe that Google initially thought it was under attack. (SE Land June 27 2009)

• You Know You Work In Search When You…

  …have more logins than you do pairs of socks. Chelsea Blacker’s Top 40 (Marketing Pilgrim June 26 2009)

• 9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design

  Creating a website design that is appealing, while also search engine friendly, is one of the hardest parts about SEO web design. (Marketing Pilgrim June 26 2009)

• Once Touted As A Google Killer, Cuil May Deal With Search King

  Cuil is talking to Google about a text ad deal (Yahoo Finance June 23 2009)

• Is Bing a viable competitor to Google - a 1st month review

  Since the 10.8 percent UK peak on the 3rd, traffic to Bing has declined quite considerably (SearchCowboys June 23 2009)

• Google hands Bing a pagerank 9

  The pagerank lift for Bing is remarkable. Not only is the leap from a PR2 to a PR9 pretty high, it’s also remarkable that a site which might be Googles biggest competitor in the next coming years gets such a high PR from their main rivals. (SearchCowboys

• Exclusive: Yahoo Working on Major Brand Overhaul (Pretty Please, No More Yodeling!)

  The new branding of Yahoo, said several people close to the situation, might be built around the latest relaunch of its main homepage design. (BoomTown June 24 2009)

• Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Site

  The inclusion of Wikipedia articles among the thousands of publications used by Google News began as an experiment that was seen by a small percentage of users (NYT June 21 2009)

• Want Your Google News To Show Up in Google Finance?

  You need to include the full ticker name, prefixed by the name of its stock exchange. (SE Roundtable June 2009)

• Book Seer suggests books to read.

  Nice resource - simple, easy and quick to use. Great to have easy to hand at the public library enquiry desk when the question is asked. (P Bradley June 23 2009)

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CHORUS has been a European Coordination Action which aims at creating the conditions of mutual information and cross fertilisation between the European projects dealing with Multimedia Content Search Engines. National and international initiatives have also been included.

The conference was accompanied and animated by a stand exhibition of 11 research projects participating in the CHORUS cluster and two external research projects (all in the domain of multi media search engines). The complete list of projects can be found at the end of this report or on the Conference Web site.

All Powerpoint presentations from the conference are available, as well as video of of the talks.

The conference was attended by more than 120 people from a wide range of professional backgrounds, covering private and public research institutes (various universities, INRIA, IFAAR, IDIAP, CERTH, Fraunhofer), industry (Nokia, Yahoo, Exalead, Thomson), public bodies (The European Commission, German Ministry of Economy) and national initiatives such as THESEUS and QUAERO.

photo credit: david.nikonvscanon

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There used to be a time when a number one position in the search engines was considered the highway to online marketing heaven. More people used to click on the three top positions than all the others combined.

Mixing different types of results

Lately things have become slightly more complicated.

Google’s Universal Search mixes results from various databases, including regular web pages, news sites, image and video listings and blog posts.

Bing sorts results into several topic sections, encouraging searchers to scan the whole of the first search engine result page before clicking.

This means that more of the first page of results become valuable marketing property.

That doesn’t change the old saying, though: Being on page 1 for a popular search query will bring you a lot of traffic.

Personalization

Then there is the case of personalization: All search engines will give a different mix of search results to people in different geographical locations.

The search results at google.co.uk are not the same as the one found by an American searching google.com.

Search engines will even use your IP address to serve you search results tailored to your city, county or state.

If you have activated personalized search in Google, Google will also take your personal search history into account.

This means that two persons sitting in the same room may, in extreme cases, get different search results.

Search engine intelligence

That being said: There continues to be a large amount of overlap between the various versions of search engine results, especially for sites and services with a global appeal.

This means that it still makes sense to keep track of your general search engine popularity to get a feeling for how well your search engine optimization strategies are working.

Given that your local search results may vary from the ones of someone at the other site of the world, it actually makes sense to use data generated from one destination. In this way you get comparable data that can be used to measure the success of your search engine strategy over time.

KPMRS

KRMRS is an acronym for Keyword Positioning Monitoring Positioning Reporting Service. It is a new free search engine positioning tracking service that lets you compare your rankings for selected keyword phrases on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Unlike some web search analytics tools, they keep it very simple. Enter the query and the url of your site and click go and you get your position for the major search engines.

If you sign up for the free subscription you will be asked to list your most important queries. KPMRS then gives you a result page that lists your positions for all these keyword phrases.

You can sign up for email alerts telling you when your position has changed or one of your competitors have outranked you. You will also get a weekly report. (Go to “Settings” to select or deselect these services).

What you get

If you subscribe KPMRS will give you several options for each site:

• Keyword analysis
  (search engine rankings for your selected queries)
• Page Rank
  (the Google page rank indicator for the home page of your site)
• Alexa ranking
  (data from the users of the Alexa toolbar, although this one didn’t seem to work when we tested it)
• Track back links
  (gives the number of pages linking back to your site. We are not sure where they get this number. The figure for pandia.com was very low, even lower than the one reported by Google. Google only reports a fraction of back-links. Yahoo gives a much more correct figure.)
• Social activity
  (probably a measure of visibility in social web sites. This function is under construction).

KPMRS does to a certain extent take geographical variation into account as it lets you search one of two data sets: US or UK search engines. The US version gave the results we asked for. The UK version reported N/A for all keyword phrases and search engines.

A lot of potential

We like the simplicity of this service and we think it has a lot of potential. It may be especially useful for those that do not have the time or skills needed to sift through all the data generated by more complex web analytics tools.

We have a few suggestions for improvement, though:

• If there are missing data, as the ones for the UK and Alexa in our test, give an error message that makes sense to the user, like: “data will be available within 24 hours” or something similar.
• Tell how the back-link number is generated, or better: give us both Google and Yahoo data.
• Make the ranking results click-able: If you click on the Google rank for a particular query, KPMRS should open the relevant Google search results in a new page or frame.
• Avoid warnings like: “NOTE - Best viewed in Firefox and Internet Explorer!” It should work for all the most important browsers, including Safari and Opera.
• Add links to a FAQ page that explains to newbies what Page Rank or an Alexa ranking entail.

Click here to take KPMRS for a spin!

photo credit: Mariano Kamp

• China to Google: No porn, or else

  Google has acknowledged that the Chinese government asked it to disable a search feature with the goal of censoring pornography (Cnet June 19 2009)

• Google’s censorship struggles continue in China

  On June 4, 2009, Google.cn blocked all searches for “Tiananmen Square,” even ones not related to the massacre that took place on that date in 1989. (Cnet June 16 2009)

• Google Street View Imagery Leads to Arrest

  Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google’s online photo map service (Blogoscoped June 19 2009)

• Google Goes Rainbow For Gay-Related Searches

  Google is once again flying rainbow colors to support gay pride celebrations (SE Land June 19 2009)

• Google’s Matt Cutts on PageRank sculpting

  Probably the most popular way to envision PageRank is as a flow that happens between documents across outlinks. (June 15 2009)

• Does Lycos want to get back in the game?

  Lycos wants to re-launch their search services pretty fast (Search Cowboys June 17 2009)

• Google Fires Back At Bing, Launches “Explore Google Search”

  A new Explore Google Search page. (SE Land Jun 17 2009)

• Google News Hit By Spammers

  Articles redirect to affiliate pages (SE Roundtable June 17 2009)

• Microsoft tackles Richmond trio for ‘click fraud’

  Three Richmond residents have been sued by software giant Microsoft for “perpetrating a massive ‘click fraud’ scheme.” (Richmond Review June 17 2009)

• Google Germany to Erase Internal Unblurred Street View Data On Request

  Google Inc. is willing to concede to German demands the company erase photos for its panoramic mapping service (Google Blogoscoped June 18 2009)

• Microsoft’s Search Engine Optimization Advice for Bing

  Microsoft recently published a PDF about Search Engine Optimization called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. (SE Land Jun 18 2009)

• Bing Maps: A revealing discussion on Ch. 9

  The Bing Maps for Enterprise, previously known as Virtual Earth, is a team of some 600, with 260 developers (Liveside.net June 18 2009)

• Google adds Flash indexing with external resource loading

  This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file—whether it’s text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.—we can index this external content too (Google Webmaster Central June 18 2009)

• Google Joins Twitter in Iran Election Buzz : Adds Persian Farsi Translation

  Google has added Persian (Farsi) translation to their Google Translate tool. (SE Journal June 19 2009)

• Google Flipper Is About To Jump Out Of The Water

  The project is a visual way to read Google News, or to flip through it, as it were. (TechCrunch june 18 2009)

• It Ain’t Over ’til the Fat Lady Bings

  Bing kicked off with a bang on June 1, doubling the number of unique visitors MSN/Windows Live received on the previous day and nearly overtaking Yahoo! Search for the No. 2 spot. (Nielsen Online June 16 2009)

• Google Trilogy Now Available

  Infonortics Ltd., a publisher in the United Kingdom, has announced “The Google Trilogy”. Stephen E. Arnold’s three monographs (June 17 2009)

• Scoopler: Social media engine

  It pulls live updates from Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious ‘and more’ (P Bradley June 16 2009)

• What Intel Can Teach Google About the Cloud

  Internet bandwidth grows at an annual rate of 50 percent, compared with compute capacity, which grows at 60 percent, meaning that over a 10-year time period, computer power grows 100X, but bandwidth grows at 57X. (Gigaom June 14 2009)

• Topsy Lets You Mix Real Time in Your Search

  An indexer of data from the living social Web, which includes things like blogs, twitter Digg, etc. (ResearchBuzz June 20 2009)

• Google Preps Product Ads, Shows Us “What’s Here?” on Google Maps

  Google product ads will feature product specific information directly in the ad such as price and product image (Google Watch June 20 2009)

• Google Squared - great idea, but…

  In practice, once the excited searcher deviates from the carefully chosen examples Google offers things fall to pieces very quickly. (P Bradley June 20 2009)

• Hunch - a decision search engine that works

  “. I dutifully answered the questions (didn’t take long, no more than a couple of minutes) and then Hunch told me that it knew enough about me to start being helpful.” (P Bradley June 19 2009)

• Iranian Election Scandal Forces Facebook, Google to Translate Persian

  Google and Facebook have set the blogosphere afire with breathy promises of adding the Persian language, Farsi, to their list of translation services. (Google Watch June 18 2009)

• New Features on Google Books

  Google adds embedding, thumbnail view and makes it easier to see exactly where your search term appears within the book (Inside Google Book Search June 18 2009)

• Secrets of a nimble giant - Brin on Google

  How does a company with 20,000 staff manage to keep innovating? (Guardian June 17 2009)

• Steve Ballmer admits Microsoft’s biggest mistake

  “I would probably say I would start sooner on search” (TG Daily June 18 2009)

photo credit: phauly

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Those who have followed Ask.com AKA Ask Jeeves since 1996, know that it started out as a natural language query search engine. The idea was that you should be able to enter a regular question in the search box and get a sensible reply in return.

Originally: a human powered Q and A directory

Given that computers are pretty stupid beasts at best, Ask Jeeves used human manpower to generate a database for the most common questions and answers.

In that way the search engine was more like a human edited directory than an automatically generated search engine.

Adding keyword search

They did add results generated by a regular search engine, though, and in 2001 they acquired the Teoma search engine, switching the focus over to more traditional keyword searching.

Now, however, Ask seems to revive its old belief in natural language queries.

Back to basics

This week Ask.com unveiled its proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for consumers in the United States and United Kingdom.

This time, however, they are not using their own editors to match questions and web pages. Instead they crawl and index questions and answers from different sources across the web.

Ask then makes use of a so-called semantic search technology (a technology that analyzes the meaning of sentences) to cluster, rephrase and determine the relevance of answers.

The result is, according to Ask, “a Q&A database that is fine-tuned to give consumers the best answer, the first time, every time through streamlined, localized, concise results to their questions.”

It should be noted that this “answer farm” was originally launched last year but that this year’s versions has tripled the number of Q and A’s.

The answers are mixed in with more regular search results in Ask’s default web search option.

Searchers asks Ask questions

Ask refers to research by comScore which apparently shows that consumers enter search queries on Ask.com in the form of a question three times more than on any other major search engine.

Ask’s reputation of being a natural language search engine apparently lingers on, and the company has decided to take advantage of that

You can limit your search to the 300 million Q&A pairings database by clicking on the “Lots of Answers” link on the homepage of Ask.com or AskJeeves.co.uk

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How it works

On PickySite you can start your own personal group, or corporate blog and share information, links, and photos. You can also start conversations around posts, or show that you like someone’s article by posting comments or voting on the post. The most interesting or important articles will make it to the homepage of PickySite.

Most of the users of PickySite are Web professionals. Consequently, the website could prove to present valuable resource. Currently, blogs cover 35 topics, such as:

• Web design
• Web development
• SEO
• Pay per click
• Social media
• Link building
• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing
• Web analytics
• Hosting
• Site audit
• Video SEO

Sink or swim?

If PickySite manages to gather sufficient users, it will provide opportunities to share your ideas and knowledge, find partners and develop your relationships. It might aslo provide companies with a way to grow their brand, build their reputation, market the products, and interact with clients.

However, PickySite is targeting a very competitive niche. Webmaster World has provided first class news sharing and discussions for Web professionals for more than decade. Search Engine Land has a thriving community for SEO professionals called Sphinn.

PickySite has a wider target group and this might attract the DIY crowd who do their own web design, SEO and affiliate marketing. At the moment of writing, though, the 76 members do not make for a bustling community.

Here’s a list of search engine and SEO discussion forums and social networks.

photo credit: luc legay

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Ahmed Hossain, CIO of Yauba, tells Pandia: “Our traffic from Iran has jumped 300% over the past several days, as many of them are using the Yauba Search Engine and the anonymity proxy filter to access blocked sites and get news from foreign sources.”

Search and privacy

After pressure from the EU commission, Google last September reduced the period the search engine stores personal data in its logs from 18 to 9 months.

The metasearch engine Ixquick used to store IP addresses for 48 hours. Now they don’t store IP addresses at all.

Hossain explains that Yauba goes even further: “We are the only search engine that offers 3 levels of privacy protection for our users:

• We use no cookies
• We do not store any of our users’ search (or any other personally identifiable) information
• We provide our users the ability to visit third party sites with the same level of privacy protection”

More information about Yauba.
Reporters Without Borders on repression in Iran.

photo credit: .faramarz

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NextBio provides a platform that enables life science researchers to search, discover, and share knowledge within public and proprietary data. Information from NextBio will now be used to enrich the content of ScienceDirect.

“Combining the depth of our search and discovery capabilities, and our unique content with the breath of the ScienceDirect platform will create new opportunities for Life Science, Health Science and Chemistry researchers to quickly gain access to the most current and comprehensive insight in their field,” says Saeid Akhtari, co-founder, president and chief executive officer, of NextBio.

The new enhancement will become available on ScienceDirect and accessible by subscribed users in summer 2009.

Science Direct

Elsevier’s ScienceDirect contains over a quarter of the world’s full text scientific, technical and medical peer-reviewed articles. The full-text collection covers titles from the important scientific literature including The Lancet, Cell and Tetrahedron.

ScienceDirect covers over 2,500 journals published by Elsevier and dynamic linking to journals from approximately 2,000 scientific, technical and medical publishers through CrossRef. These are interlinked with major online reference works and handbooks.

photo credit: Mario Caruso

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