March 2004 Archive

Venerable AltaVista Dies

After last week's news of the demise of AlltheWeb, I suppose I should not be too surprised that the same has now happened at AltaVista. But it is a real loss. The AltaVista Web database has been replaced with a version of the Yahoo! Search database. In addition to the change in the underlying database, there have been many search feature changes:

• Truncation gone
• NEAR operator gone
• Other proximity searching gone
• Case sensitive searching gone
• Field searches gone: anchor, applet, image, text, like
• Region limit gone

On the plus side, there are now more file type limits. But the results are basically the same as at AlltheWeb, and both of those seem to only be a subset of the Yahoo! Search database which finds more results on some searches.

So it there any reason to keep using AltaVista? Probably not for the Web database, but the Video and MP3/Audio databases are not yet available at Yahoo! Search and may be worth a visit.

Yahoo! Drops Google Image Database

Sometime recently, Yahoo! has dropped the Google image database and is using their own, which is basically the one that has been available at AltaVista and AlltheWeb for the past few months. Yahoo! UK is still showing pictures from Google's image database, but I'm guessing that the new Yahoo! image database will slowly be rolled out to all the other Yahoo!s soon.

Google Demotes Directory in New Look

After experimenting for several months, Google has launched its new look today. While the appearance is not too different, one significant change is the removal of the Directory tab and the addition of the Froogle shopping tab. Google's directory is still available, but it is much more difficult to get to. Froogle is still in beta, but now it is being emphasized much more. Other changes include the removal of the "tab" look (which makes the links to other Google databases a bit less obvious), the removal of the color background on the side ads, making less of the ads clickable, and putting the search query, definition, and count on the right of the header bar. Google News now includes some thumbshot images in the search results (something AltaVista had done a few years ago).

Two other new Google Labs initiatives are the Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts. The Personalized Web Search lets users choose certain preference and then use a slider to re-rank their results based on those preferences (but not one at a time). The Web Alerts offer email alerts about new search results. These are run either once per day or once per week.

Number Searching at Google

With all the cosmetic changes and bad news this week, I am pleased to see some new and potentially very useful syntax from Google. The number range search lets you search for a range of numbers, say for any number between 5 and 11. It even searches for numbers with and without commas and includes decimals such as 7.23. The number range command consists of a smaller number, two periods, and larger number which can be used in conjunction with another search word, as in score 5..11. Adding a dollar sign invokes the price range search which actually searches for the dollar sign, (although it does not yet recognize the pound (£), Yen (¥), or Euro (€) characters) as in good books $5..11. See the new number searching section of my Google review for more details.

AlltheWeb Database Dies! (But Lives at Lycos)

The AlltheWeb site is still up and looks quite similar, but Yahoo! has changed the underlying database and removed many of the great advanced features that helped make AlltheWeb such a great search engine. The advanced search page has lost the following options:

• FTP database is gone
• Field searches (drop down) for 'in the URL,' 'in the host name,' and 'in the link to URL'
• Boolean operators must now be in UPPER CASE (and NOT replaces andnot)
• Afrikaans, Basque, Byelorussian, Faeroese, Frisian, Galician, Indonesian, Latin, Malay, Serbian, Swahili, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Welsh language limits but gained Farsi
• Media type inclusions
• IP range limit
• Flash indexing and limit
• Size limit

In addition, we have lost access to the indexing of the full text of large Web pages and PDF files. Yahoo!'s database stops indexing at 500KB. While not unexpected, this is a major loss for many searchers. This will likely be a progressive roll-out, so some users may not see the change quite yet.

One small bit of good news is that for the moment at least, Lycos continues to provide access to the old AlltheWeb database (the FAST Web Search database). How much longer this will continue is unknown, and Lycos lacks most of the options on their advanced search form that AlltheWeb offered, but at least the database is still accessible a bit longer.

Google Print Adds Magazines

The beta Google Print project has added some magazine articles to the book extracts it has had previously. I am not sure when they first started adding these, but I have not seen them before today. It looks like it includes some short full text articles from several Reed Business Information publications such as Electronic News, Test & Measurement World, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. The title of each of these is preceded by [MAGAZINE] instead of [BOOK]. Try a search such as site:print.google.com magazine to see some more.

Compared to any of the major full-text databases from Gale, Ebsco, ProQuest, or Factiva (and often available at public and academic libraries), this is a very small collection of articles. Like most of the Google Print records, few searchers are likely to even come across these. Even the free (and significantly smaller) FindArticles.com and MagPortal databases are better than this, but it will depend upon how much Google expands their collection (and whether they offer a separate interface to just these articles and book extracts).

HotBot Drops FAST (AlltheWeb/Lycos)

Gary Price noticed that HotBot has dropped one of its databases. Originally labeled FAST and then changed to Lycos, the underlying database was basically the same as the one at AlltheWeb. It is interesting that HotBot, which is owned by Lycos, dropped the database that still powers Lycos. This is likely connected with Yahoo! talking about abandoning the AlltheWeb database, which is a real shame.

Google Pushes Local Search

Why is Google launching its Local Search out from Google Labs and integrating it with general search results? Ad revenue opportunities certainly must have played a part in the decision. While their press release focuses on how it helps users find more local information, the ad revenue possibilities have been pushing many local search efforts. With the launch, if a search includes a U.S. location term (like a ZIP code or the name of a town or city) in addition to some other search term. The Local results will display near the top (in a similar location to news headlines) on a search like springfield books. Or go direct to the Local Search to see just local results. Personally, I still find the paper (or even electronic) yellow pages much more useful and comprehensive. There have been many attempts at local search in the past (Northern Light having one of the more interesting implementations), so we will have to see how popular (profitable?) Google's will turn out to be.

Yahoo! Search Review Added

Although I've had a review of Yahoo! as a directory for several years, now that Yahoo! has launched its own search engine, I've made a first attempt at a review of its search features. Since it is fairly new, I expect to see the features change over the next few months, but at least I have something up that seems accurate as of today. A few notes about the current version of Yahoo! Search and items highlighted in the review:

• The Yahoo! databases appears to primarily be an Inktomi-like database, but there are significant differences from other Inktomi-based search engines like MSN Search and HotBot.
• Both cached copies of pages and HTML versions of PDF and other file types are available
• Only the first 500 KB of a document are indexed, which is better than Google’s 101KB but still short of full document indexing that has been available at AlltheWeb
• Full Boolean searching using AND, OR, NOT, and parentheses for nesting seems to work
• Field searches are available with intitle: inurl, site:, link:, hostname:, and url:
• The new search engine database is available on the main Yahoo! site and directly at search.yahoo.com.

Ask Jeeves Expands

Ask Jeeves has announced that it will be purchasing Interactive Search Holdings, a company which includes a variety of search sites : MyWay, MySearch, My Web Search, iWon, and Excite. At this point, these site all currently use either Google results or results from several search engines. Once the purchase is completed, it sounds likely that they will be switched to Ask Jeeves/Teoma search results. The press releases mentions that this will double Ask Jeeves' market reach.