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Home Powersearch Metasearch People Search Directory Newsfinder Radio Search Tutorial Bookstore Resources Newsletter |
The Pandia Post Newsletter No. 6
No. 6, December 2000 The Pandia Post is the newsletter of the Pandia Search Central, your online guide to Internet searching. EDITORIALThe New Pandia Newsfinder makes headlinesRegular visitors to the Pandia Search Central will know that we have had a section for news searching for quite some time now. Pandia News included a list of online resources for current affairs and news hunting as well as a news search engine. Some of our visitors disliked the fact that it was organised in frames, though, others that the search engine -- which used the NewsHub database -- was too weak. So we brought out some paper and pencils and designed a brand new news site called the Pandia Newsfinder. No frames this time, only a clean and easy to read lay out including the main headlines of the day, a directory with various news topic categories, links to the best search sites on the Web and a powerful metasearch engine that fetches news headlines and summaries from some of the best news sites on the Web, including BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo, The Washington Post and Moreover. And yes, the old NewsHub database is also included. The search engine is based on technology delivered by the American company Anaconda.net. In short time the Newsfinder has become one of the most popular sections of our site. USA Today gave a "News junkie alert", stating that "Pandia serves up a search engine that spits back headlines, summaries and links to articles from some of the best news sites on the Net." The Newsfinder is now one of USA Todays Hot Sites. The highly respected Scout Report commented that "all will benefit from having this nice cross-section of news resources accessible from a single point." We couldn't agree more.
The Pandia Award readers's pollAlthough many of us tend to complain about cumbersome search engines with inaccurate results and lack of essential search features, there are search engine engineers and planners out there that do their best to develop good tools for Internet searching. We would like to reward some of these people by announcing the Pandia Award for best search site early next year. However, we do need your help. We kindly ask you to spend one minute on our reader's poll. Consider each of the sites listed and give them one to five points (five signifying a high quality site). You should take the following factors into consideration: The quality of the search engine/directory, the precense of features for advanced searching, lay-out and accessibility, help and guidance and whatever you think is important in a high quality search portal. Focus on the search aspect, not portal bonuses like free email and horoscopes. Moreover, if you have any other comments or opinions regarding the state of today's search sites, please send us a mail. You are the users of these services. If you are not satisfied with the services these sites provide, they have failed, regardless of the number of fancy algorithms and shiny graphics. Give your vote at This is the last issue of Pandia Post this year. We wish you a peaceful holiday and happy new year! Best regards, Per and Susanne Koch SEARCH TIPSGoogle field searchingOur regular readers know that we like the Google search engine. It has a huge database, and an uncanny ability to find relevant sites. It has, however, lousy tools for advanced searching and does not support true Boolean queries (like AND and OR). Things are improving though, especially in the area of field searching. As the Goalgetter tutorial will tell you, field searching allows you to search for stings of text in particular parts of a webpage, the title field or the Web address (URL). Tara Calishain's excellent ResearchBuzz newsletter reports that Google has added title and URL syntax: To find a text string present in the title field of a webpage, write: allintitle: as in allintitle:Michelangelo However, this query cannot be combined with a search for text in the webpage itself. Please note that the title field is not signifying the main headline of a page, but the text you can see in the window bar over the browser window. Although most Web surfers are not aware of this text, it is actually one of the most important parts of webpage seen from a search engine optimization point of view. The search engines put great weight on this text when deciding how to arrange the search results. If your query words are present in the title, the site is more likely to get a high position. Most Web masters and HTML coders know this. Hence doing a preliminary search using the allintitle-tag may bring out some highly relevant webpages. To look for parts of a Web adress you use allinurl:† Google will then give you all the pages that includes this text string in its URL. You may restrict the search by subtracting certain domains, e.g. like this: allinurl:pandia -net This search will leave out all websites having a net-domain. There are other restricting operators as well, for instance the site-operator that will limit your search to a specific site. You could for instance search for information about Google on the Pandia site by entering: google site:www.pandia.com However, if the site has its own internal search feature (like Pandia), do try that one first. Google does attempt to cover all pages of all the sites it finds. It is not always complete or fully up to date, though. The link-operator will tell you which of the sites in the Google index that contain links to a specific site. The query link:www.pandia.com reveals that Search Engine Watch and many other sites has links to Pandia. That's nice! (If you have a site, make sure that you also include a link to Pandia. It boosts our popularity ranking and thereby our position in Google results. That means more visitors to Pandia and a more secure future for our site.)
PANDIA SEARCH WORLDGoogle toolbarGoogle has released the Google Toolbar, a browser plug-in enables Internet users to search for information with Google's search engine from the browser window itself. Google Toolbar features include:
"Google bends over backwards to make the user understand what's going on," says Google spokesman David Krane. "We're looking at data en masse, not going record by record. It's very much the 50,000-foot view, rather than searching for personal information." Krane notes that Google is taking extra care not to collect URLs that include information about the visitor. Moreover, it is also possible to turn off these features. The Google Toolbar is available free of charge for users of Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT, and version 5.0 or higher of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The latest trend: Paid search resultsGoTo is the must successful pay-per-click search engine on the Net. Pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-performance search engines allows advertisers to buy a position in the search results of a certain query. If you visit the GoTo PPC search engine and search for "search engine promotion", you will get the following No. 1 result: Web Search Positioning
at iProspect.com It is actually the iProspect company that has chosen the key word and written the description you read here, and they are paying GoTo 1 dollar and 81 cents every time someone clicks on their listing. It should be said that not all listings are that expensive; for less popular search queries customers can be expected to pay as little as one cent. GoTo has some 32,000 advertisers. You will find GoTo results on thousands of search sites. If you, for instance, do the same search on AOL.com you will find the following section above the main results:
SPONSORED LINKS These are the top three results from GoTo. And yes, AOL gets its share of the $1.81. On November 16 GoTo.com, Inc. and AltaVista Company announced an 18-month search distribution and advertising referral agreement. GoTo has become the exclusive Pay-For-Performance search provider to AltaVista's users. Among GoTo's other partners are Terra Lycos (with the Lycos and HotBot search sites), CompuServe, EarthLink/MindSpring, Microsoft, InfoSpace/Go2Net, Search.com, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Searchalot.com, Findaroo.com, Mindpsring/Earthlink, Mamma.com, NBCi.com, Cnet and Metacrawler -- some of these being metasearch engines. Search Engine Watch reports that 60 per cent of the top fifteen search engines have a prominent paid links program. The system is controversial. Some experts claim that the system will undermine the public's confidence in search results. If you can buy yourself to the top, how can you trust the relevance of the listing? Anyone who have used search engines for a while has learned to mistrust hit relevance regardless of whether there are paid results or not. Still, this scepticism must be taken seriously. GoTo claims that the search results are relevant, as all listings are controlled by a human being. We have tested the system, and can confirm that this is the case. GoTo will check to see whether the site description accurately describes the content of the site. Hence from a searchers point of view paid listings might be just as relevant as traditional listings. This is especially true as regards commercial services, i.e. when you are searching for a particular product or service. On the other hand, the system does make it more difficult to get a good listing for non-commercial sites that are not willing or able to pay the fees. Giving prominence to paid results will also add noise to the search engines' attempts at putting the most relevant sites first. The paid results may be relevant, but they will often not be the most relevant ones. Google, who has implemented its own pay-per-click system, has therefore chosen to put the paid results in a separate section of the result page, in separate boxes. In Google's case they clearly stand out as advertisements, which -- of course -- they are. Many observers complain that there are sites that do not distinguish between paid for and regular listings in a clear way. This is not the case for GoTo and AOL, but Ask Jeeves' integration of paid results are not marked as such. It is interesting to note that AltaVista has considered putting the GoTo-results at the top of the result lists. The beta test pages (http://listings.altavista.com/) indicates that these results will be given the same design as the rest of the results, although in a different colour and under a separate green divider. However, at the moment of writing it seems that AltaVista has settled for a solution placing the GoTo results at the bottom of the page. This mean fewer click-troughs and less revenue for AltaVista and GoTo. It could be that they have chosen this kind of display in order to avoid accusations of too blatant commercialism. But it could also be the result of technical testing. In periods they include no GoTo results at all. In other instances they will return no paid results the first time you load a result page. If you revisit the page, however, the green listings will be there. If you select AltaVista in the pull down menu at Netscape's search page, AltaVista will feed you the "green" results first. All this means that searchers must be more aware of the sources of the various result listings. That will not be easy, as search sites more and more often mix results from various sources, whether these are separate search directories (Looksmart in AltaVista's case), popularity based search engines (Direct Hit in HotBot's case), or paid results from GoTo. iWon may actually fetch results from Inktomi, Looksmart, Direct Hit, Fact City, Realnames, and Moreover. Pandia does not include PPC results in the Pandia Plus Directory or the Pandia Newsfinder, but you may find GoTo results in the the Pandia Metasearch engine. These results are marked as such. Note that if GoTo cannot find a paid listing, it will fetch listings from the Inktomi database instead.
More about paid entriesThe dominant player on the search site arena, Yahoo, has stopped accepting free submits to the commercial portion of its directory. Sites who want to be entered into the "Shopping and Services" or "Business to Business" categories of the Web directory must now use Yahoo's $199 "Business Express" service. There will still be a free submission option for listings in other areas of the Yahoo.com site or to commercial sections of Yahoo!'s non-US editions, but there is reason to believe that commercial sites will find it hard to get listed without spending some cash. As a matter of fact, it is hard to get listed for anyone in Yahoo! these days. The Looksmart directory, which supplies directory data to AltaVista and others, will also take a fee for registering commercial sites. Paying the fee does not guarantee a listing, but it is clearly easier to get listed in Looksmart than Yahoo! Yahoo! argues that the Business Express fee allows them to dedicate sustained resources to an expansion of the commercial directory and guarantees that any site submitted to these areas will be reviewed and either added or denied within seven business days. The truth is, of course, that Yahoo, like all the other search sites, need revenue in order to thrive. It turns out that banner ads do not bring in the amount of money needed to run a company, and they have to search for other options. This is why Inktomi, the search engine that powers HotBot, iWon and others, have implemented and a new system where website owners may pay the search engine to spider their site at a 48 hours interval. Inktomi and its search partners does not guarantee a good listing. As a matter of fact they underline that these webpages will be ranked according to the same algorithm as all other pages in the index. If the page is accepted in this program, you are guaranteed a listing, however, which is in itself an advantage. Pages that are not visited regularly by Web searchers or that have few links from other websites tend to drop in search results listing, or they may be taken out of the index all together. Hence websites that are willing to pay Inktomi for a secure listing have a better chance of getting a good position. They can also be confident that the search engine lists up to date versions of their pages. Disney's Go have implemented a similar system called "Premium Service", and Alta Vista is expected to follow soon.
Webmasters and others with a special interst in GoTo and paid listings should subscribe to Traffick's monthly mailing list called GoTo-Tips. To sign up for this, readers should send a blank email to goto-tips-subscribe@topica.com. SITESEEINGMapPlanet.comMapPlanet is a geographically organized directory. Like other directories, MapPlanet allows you to search using keywords to find what you want. However, you can also search for what you're looking for using a map of the world. The map is powered by a Java Client that can be used within most Web browsers. There is also an alternative Windows plug in that is supposed to give enhanced performance. We have tested the site on a Macintosh, though, using the Java version. Java is notoriously unstable on Macs, and it is to MapPlanet's credit that the system works as intended. MapPlanet uses a high resolution satellite map of the earth. This map shows information about time zones, countries and at some places even the current weather conditions. You can zoom in on any area of the map. As you zoom in (which can take time), more and more information becomes visible. Towns, islands and mountains appear according to their importance on different levels. From zoom level 7 (roughly 1km per pixel) the view of the world changes. Areas previously represented by single pixels from a greater distance, now appear as hexagonal shapes called cells. These cells can contain information such as text, hyperlinks, an email address or even images. You can claim any cell, as long it has not yet been claimed by someone else. In order to claim a cell, you register to be included in the MapPlanet directory. Once you're registered, you can "stake a claim" to a geographic area known as a cell. You can use the MapPlanet search engine to find geographical locations like towns, lakes, islands or mountains. You can also search through the information that members have added go directly to that person's cell. By combining the two, you can search for specific keywords within a specific geographical area. You can use wild cards (* or ?) in your queries. So, is this a good idea? Well, the technology is certainly impressive. The site illustrate what you can do when you leave the limitations of standard HTML Web coding. However, it is, as one should expect when you combine Java with a modem connection, a bit slow when loading the applets. That may stop some people from using the site repeatedly. The next question should be why you should organise a directory this way. It would certainly make sense if it was a directory devoted to tourism, political statistics or wildlife. You could zoom in to a specific region and find information relevant to that specific area. This is, however, an all encompassing directory, combining everything from personal home pages to corporate websites. It does not always make sense to sort these by geographical location. Pandia has claimed some land near Skøyen in Oslo, Norway, which is where we sit and write this right now. But is this where you would look for information on search engines and directories? Hardly! One idea would be to combine this geographical map of the world with a thematic map based on categories, industries and disciplines. It would make sense to search for Pandia on a continent called Internet and Computing, in a country called Web Navigation and a city named Internet Searching. But then again, MapPlanet is probably first and foremost an interactive map. The directory or "community" is more like an added bonus. You may find a place by searching for its name. It is harder to find locations by clicking and zooming, though, as the maps are not clearly marked with names or text. Although there are not that many sites in the directory, it is slowly filling up. You will find 8 cells taken in Oslo at the moment, and the city is already running out of MapPlanet property. Interestingly enough, there is still some real estate left in New York City, but that won't last for long, as long as anyone can claim a cell without any editorial control. The lack of editorial control will inevitably reduce the general quality of this index. It is certainly fun browsing the map -- and as a map explorer the site is quite useful. Furthermore, we did learn some interesting facts about New York exploring this virtual version of the city. MapPlanet also provides an efficient search engine for geographic places. Registering a site is easy. You are sent a preliminary password by mail. You click on the cell you want to claim and fill in a form, and that's it. The form reveals that MapPlanet has prepared a more diverse set of categories for site sorting. Unfortunately we where unable to find a description of the various category codes, and were therefore unable to give Pandia the right combination.
WebmasterWorld.comThe world of search engine experts are divided in two. On the one hand you have search experts, like journalists, librarians and researchers, who focus on the gentle art of searching the Net. On the other hand you have the search engine optimization experts, webmasters and others, who strive to get their websites a good positioning in the search engine results. The two camps have obviously a lot to learn from each other, as both focus on how search engines work. We do not hesitate to recommend WebmasterWorld even to those of you who are not webmasters, but would like to keep abreast on search engine development. WebmasterWorld is an online discussion board, where webmasters discuss search engine technology, search engine optimization, including esoteric subjects like cloaking and spidering. There are several forums devoted to particular search engines, including Google, AltaVista and Inktomi and special sections focusing on European, Asian and pay-per-click search engines. What makes WebmasterWorld different from some of the other forums on the Net, is the large number of optimization professionals taking part in the discussions. This means that it is a suitable source for up to date information on search engine development. That being said, this is probably not the place for the average Web searcher.
BOOKSConducting Internet ResearchDDC Publishing has published a one day course on Internet research, which also includes a general introduction to Web searching. The book (or a spiral-bound booklet, rather) is clearly intended as course material, and includes useful lesson summaries and test questions. Nevertheless, it also functions well as a stand alone beginner's introduction to Web based research. There are lessons on the basic principles of Internet research, the research process including information validity, how to find people and organizations, what the author calls "subject trees" (e.g. directories like Yahoo!), search engines, and -- best of all -- Boolean logic, operators, proximity functions and truncation. Like most printed search and research manuals, it is not completely up to date. Still, how can it be, given the speed of Internet development? Even though it lacks coverage of relatively new search engines like Google and Fast, the competence provided may be used when using most search sites. The author, Curt Robbins, is an Internet instructor and course developer. He teaches Internet classes, presents seminars, and contributes to panel discussions throughout the United States and Canada.
Advanced Internet ResearchCurt Robbins has also written a follow-up to the Conducting Internet Research book, called Advanced Internet Research. This course explores specialized databases, commercial search engines, metasearch engines, multi search engine interfaces, and Internet discussion groups (Usenet).
FINALLY...Remember our poll for the best search site of the year! Go tohttp://pandia.master.com/texis/master/search/+/form/Favourite+Search+Site.html The Pandia Search Central: http://www.pandia.com/ If you are using newer versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape: Enter "pandia" (without the quotation marks) in the address field and hit Enter. The browser will take you directly to the Pandia Search Central. Do you like Pandia? Click here to recommend it to a friend: The Pandia Post is edited by Per and Susanne Koch, mailto:editor@aviana.com Pandia Post Home Page: http://www.pandia.com/post/ Send suggestions and comments to: editor@aviana.com The Pandia Post is copyright 2000 P&S Koch. All rights reserved. Visit the Pandia Search Central for more information on Internet searching: http://www.pandia.com/ Sign up for our free newsletter today! |
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