Lycos Changes

LookSmart results are now on Lycos, as announced in July. Trying to figure out which results are from which database at Lycos is now rather confusing. It appears that ads come from a combination of Overture and Lycos' own AdBuyer. The first 2-4 numbered "sponsored link" listings are from Overture. The rest of the first six numbered listings are from Lycos' own AdBuyer program. On the right margin in colored boxes are four more AdBuyer ads.

The Web Results section may contain hits from three different databases. For common queries, the first listing is a collection of Lycos Network content, which may contain links to special partners (advertisers). Then, for about 50,000 keywords, there are ten listings from LookSmart. These are called "commercial listings" and are basically ads. Then after that come the results from the FAST Web search database.

Also, the advanced search seems to be broken today. I could not get any results from it. When that is fixed, it may go directly to the FAST results without all the other links.

The "Fast Forward" function has been renamed "Sidesearch," and Lycos has released "Sidesearch" as a separate "Search Comparison Tool." Like the toolbars all the other search engines are now offering, Sidesearch installs in IE 5.01 or higher on computers running Windows 98 or higher. What it does is run a Lycos search in the left sidebar when you search at another search engine like Google. It's an interesting way to try to move users to Lycos, but it has to be installed first.

The Lycos review has been updated.