November 2000 Archive

Showdown Updates (Full iWon Review)

The iWon Review has been expanded and fully updated. The search engine chart and search engines by feature page have been updated with the addition of iWon. The search engine chart was also modified to include a separate column for default Boolean operation. The search engines by feature page was also updated to include entries for word stemming and single character truncation.

No more front truncation

Front or beginning truncation that was available at HotBot, NBCi, Anzwers, and iWon no longer works. As far as I can tell, none of the major search engine support beginning truncation any longer (and it was never a publicly announced feature). The search engines by feature page and the reviews for HotBot and NBCi were updated.

iWon Simple adds "More from"

At some point recently, the simple search results on iWon added a "More results from [site]" notation after those hits that Previously, iWon's simple search would only give one hit per site with no ability to see any other pages from that site which also matched the search terms. Unfortunately, like on HotBot, every single results has the "More results from [site]" notation at the end, even if there is only one page that matches the search criteria. The advanced search continues to give unclustered results.

AltaVista to add GoTo Listings

AltaVista and GoTo announce a partnership. GoTo is the best-known pay for placement search engine. The GoTo pay for placement results will appear later this month and will be listed separately from the regular AltaVista results under a heading of "Sponsored Listings."

AltaVista Gets Four More Search Patents

AltaVista announces winning four more search-related patents, bringing its total patent portfolio for to 38. The four new patents cover:
    1. duplicated detection and removal
    2. relevancy ranking
    3. data structures for searching and indexing
    4. spidering techniques

Boolean Searching on Google Explanation

A new Boolean Searching on Google page has been added here which attempts to explain how to use Google's new OR operator to perform specific Boolean functions. This seems to be changeable, so please drop me an email if you discover that Google has changed how it processes any of these suggestions.

Pay to Submit at Inktomi

Inktomi has started a new service: "Inktomi Search/Submit," which is a pay for submission program where Web sites pay by the page to have their pages indexed by Inktomi. The program is being run by Position Technologies, Inc., a search engine optimization firm. Free submission to the Inktomi database continues to be available via Inktomi partners. For more details, see the following:

• Inktomi's announcement
  
• Postition Technologies' Page
• Forum discussion at Web Master World
• Danny Sullivan's coverage (should have a fuller update tomorrow)

What will the long term implications of this be? Will other search engines follow suit? And what about non-profit, educational, individual, hobby, and government Web sites? This should be an interesting process to watch, and to watch closely.

Showdown Updates

Several site updates today including the Directory Showdown, with size figures; a fully updated Yahoo! Review including information on its automatic truncation for search terms with five or more characters; LookSmart Review with updated numbers; Open Directory Review with updated numbers; revision of the Snap Review to reflect its new name of NBCi; and updated links on the Reviews Page.