March 2002 Archive

Google News Date Sort

The new beta Google News Search can now sort by date. However, it still defaults to a relevance sort first.

Yahoo! Does PDFs & Cool

Yahoo! has several changes today. First, it has begun adding PDF and other non-HTML file format documents to both its directory and its Google-powered "Web Pages" search results. In both cases, the other file formats are identified with a (PDF) designation after the title. The Google results are the same kind of hits that might show up at Google, but the Yahoo! directory entries are new. See K-12 Curriculum, Tajikistan maps, and Cabbage for examples.

Yahoo! also announced the return of the cool sunglasses to identify editors' top picks. I hadn't even noticed that they were gone. See an example in Amusement Parks.

News Database at Google

Google announces the launch of its news headlines database in beta version. It covers only about 100 English-language Web-based news sources. It also clusters related stories from different publications under one headlines.

LookSmart to Buy WiseNut

LookSmart announces its intent to buy the new search engine WiseNut. The press release notes that they will be integrating the WiseNut technology over the next few quarters, but what that means for LookSmart and WiseNut remains to be seen.

New Stats & Google Analysis

Several new additions to the Search Engine Statistics section. I have updated my Relative Size Showdown and the Total Size Estimate analyses with data from March 4-6, 2002. Using 25 search terms, and verifying the actual number of hits available for the largest search engines, Google has maintained a solid first place, followed by WiseNut and then AllTheWeb . I also updated the Database Change Over Time page which compares the same searches run on the search engines at various times. In addition, I have posted two new pages on Google: the Google Database Components which compares the components of the Google Web database based on the statistics analysis and one on Google's Unindexed URLs which has an explanation and example of Google's barely-indexed URLs. Google Review also updated.

Google Does Microsoft

Google has introduced another specialty search page: a Microsoft related sites search. It is also linked on the bottom of their advanced search page.

FirstGov To Go To FAST

GCN reports in an article that FirstGov has awarded the FirstGov search engine contract to AT&T using Fast's technology. It also says that the new search engine will be live by April 1.

Site Updates

Several minor updates on the site. The Search Engine Feature Chart and Search Engines by Feature Page have additional information on AltaVista proximity and truncation and AllTheWeb's size and date limits. The AltaVista Review, AllTheWeb Review were also updated. Also noted the 101K limitation on Google's full text indexing and updated some URLs in the Google Review.

AltaVista Advanced Sorts Again

After being gone since Dated Mar 5, 2002 in AltaVista - [#permalink]