October 2001 Archive

AltaVista Listing Enhancements

AltaVista announces the launch of their new listing enhancements. These cost money but do not change ranking. They include logos, descriptive icons, custom tag lines, and text links. Like enhanced yellow page listings, they provide more information for some of the displayed results. The custom tag lines can be updated by the Web site owner. The text links can offer several links from within the description of the site, pointing to major section. Try a search on oatmeal or commercial real estate in australia for examples.

Wayback Machine Debuts

The Internet Archive launches their Wayback Machine at web.archive.org. The Wayback Machine provides access to Web pages the way the used to look, and how they looked on particular dates when the Internet Archive visited them. This is like the Google cache on steroids, since it contains not only text but images from the past as well. And rather than just archiving one version of the page, it contains multiple versions. The entire archive is not keyword searchable. Instead, access is by URL and then by date.

Google Goes to Tabs

Google has changed its design to incorporate a new tabbed interface. Its four databases (Web, images, Usenet news groups, and the Open Directory) are listed as separate tabs on the main search page and on subsequent pages as well. In addition, they have added a new “Language Tools” search option next to the advanced search link which gives choices on 66 interface language, 26 language limits, and links to regional versions of Google.

BullsEye 3.0 Released

Intelliseek announces the release of BullsEye 3.0 New features include SurfSaver integration, report formats including XML, and a new government agent.

CompletePlanet Expands

CompletePlanet, BrightPlanet’s directory of Invisible Web databases and search engines, announced that it now has nearly tripled its listings to almost 90,000. These resources are organized by subject using more than 7,000 terms.

New Fast Search CEO

Fast announces that Dr. John M. Lervik is their new CEO along with several other management changes.