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Showdown News Vol. 1 No. 4
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= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = SEARCH ENGINE SHOWDOWN NEWS: The September size, overlap, and dead link analyses are done. Fast remains in the top spot, but it finds fewer results than in August. Northern Light continues to grow and stays in second place. Excite, Northern Light, and Yahoo!'s Inktomi databases all show growth since August while Fast, Google!, HotBot, Snap, Anzwers slip. HotBot shows a dramatic slip from earlier comparisons. The overlap analysis shows a continued lack of duplication between the search engines, at least for pages buried within Web sites. The Inktomi databases have begun to show a higher degree of overlap with each other, although there are still great variations in size among them. The unique hits analysis found that Northern Light, Fast, Infoseek, and AltaVista found the highest numbers of unique records -- those found by none of the other search engines. The dead links analysis was revamped, checking 300 hits from each of eleven search engines. HotBot faired the worst,
followed by Google!, Lycos, and Fast. Northern Light's summer efforts to remove dead links from its database have paid off
as its much better ranking shows.
Speaking of size, both LookSmart and the Open Directory have made some major increases in the size of their directories.
LookSmart now exceeds 1,217,000 records while the Open Directory has pushed past 943,000. The Internet Subject
Directory page and their reviews have been updated accordingly.
Excite now seems to default to an English language search. Search any term on Excite. On the results screen, the language
limits appear. Run the same search just in English and the same results appear. Searching the same query in one of their
other listed languages may find additional hits. As far as I can find, there is no way to search across all languages.
SEARCH ENGINE NEWS: Northern Light had a face lift on Sept. 8 and started a major advertising campaign last week. There are several changes to note beyond the design of the front page and some of their graphics. First of all, the simple search removed the WWW and Special Collection graphics which used to display on the right side of the screen after each hit. It brought back the ability to limit their Simple Search to just Web or Special Collection (or some of its components). The Publication Search and Industry Search are gone, but a Business Search tab is now available. The speed with which their pages load has increased. Also, Northern Light launched a major advertising campaign on September 13. It will include U.S. print, television, and network radio ads. Northern Light now offers an alerts service. An account is required, but accounts can be set up for free without having to provide a credit card number. The alerts run a specified search on the Northern Light database (the user can choose which database) and then sends email to you when the search finds new material. Northern Light now adds their own Wall Street Journal abstracts to their Current News database and their Special
Collection. The abstracts are written by Northern Light staffers and are linked to the online Wall Street Journal, for those
who have the subscription. However, the full-text of the Wall Street Journal is not available on Northern Light. Other
databases now available on Northern Light include market research reports from MarkIntel and Find/SVP along with the
citations and abstracts from the NTIS bibliographic database.
MSN Web Search is finally making the long-ago announced move toward AltaVista and away from Inktomi. It's not fully there yet, but the beta MSN Web Search is using AltaVista as a search engine as well as LookSmart directory categories. A link to Direct Hit results show up in a box on the side. RealNames results may also show up on the top. However, note the following statement on their Help page: "The Featured Sites area highlights sites from MSN.COM and MSN sponsors that match your search words. In some cases, Microsoft accepts payment in exchange for listing sites in this area."
AOL NetFind has dropped the Excite database and now uses Inktomi for its search engine.
Infoseek has implemented RealNames keywords. These are integrated into their search results instead of being available via a separate link. Lycos now offers See More, a free browser enhancement for users of Internet Explorer 4.0 and above. Once enabled from the Lycos See More page, a searcher can just right click on a word or graphic to start a search in Lycos on that item. The search results pop up in a new window.
The dot com directory from Network Solutions is now live. It searches a combination of several databases including the
Network Solutions database of registered .com domains, an infoUSA database of U.S. businesses, and several others.
SEARCH ENGINE ARTICLES Greg R. Notess. "A Multiplicity of Databases on Search Engines." EContent 22(5): online, Oct.-Nov. 1999.
This On the Net column takes a detailed look at the conglomeration of databases being used by the portals and search engines and compares who is using which databases and how that is changing. Greg R. Notess. "On-the-Fly Search Engine Analysis." Online 23(5):63-66, Sept.-Oct. 1999.
Check out this column for some of my quick tricks and techniques for analyzing search engine peculiarities while searching. It includes hints for flexible searching, Boolean analysis, and database identity checks. Greg R. Notess. "Internet Search Engine Update." ONLINE 23(5): 14, Sept.-Oct 1999.
This online version of my update is available before publication of the print version. Danny Sullivan. "Company Name Test." Search Engine Watch. September 3, 1999
This comparison was updated September 3, 1999 and compares the ability of several search engines and directories to find the top five most recognized e-commerce Web sites. Michael J. Miller. "Best Search Sites on the Web." PC Magazine Online. Special Report. September 20, 1999.
This article ranks Yahoo! as the best directory, Northern Light as best for research, and HotBot as the best all purpose search engine. While the front page of the article is dated September 20, 1999, the meat comes from a September 6, 1999 analysis published on the Web then. Talk about a bibliographic nightmare. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
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