October 2004 Archive

Billion Pictures at Yahoo!

Yahoo! has announced that their image database now has over one billion images. They mention that their database includes pictures from their own media sites including news, movies, TV, travel, and sports. Also, about half the images come from Web pages non in English.

New Engine: Exalead Beta

From France comes a fascinating new search engine known as Exalead. Gary Price has many details in his SEW Blog post. Key search features include truncation, proximity, and some nice sorting of results. This is one to watch.

Google Print Books Changes

Google has changed its Google Print program for books. Formerly, extracts from books were included in regular search results. Today, Google has announce the expansion of its Google Print Program. While it sounds more similar to what Amazon has done for some time with its Search Within a Book capability, the results are now no longer within regular Google listings. Instead, the links are above the regular search results and only show up for certain queries. Try using books about or books about followed by some word or certain titles such as king lear (but not yet hamlet or macbeth). At the top, "Book results for" will show with a four book icon and up to three book links. Click one of these to see how the new interface looks. I find several links that just go to the a message saying a page is not available, but the service is still new and will likely change significantly in the weeks to come. See example of new Google Print posting for more examples.

Yahoo! Gets Personal

Following on the heels of the personalized Ask Jeeves butler, Yahoo! has also introduced My Yahoo! Search beta which lets users save search results (and add annotations), block specific unwanted search results, categorize save searches, and share the saved information with others. It requires free registration or use your existing My Yahoo! or Yahoo! Mail account. See more from their press release.

New MSN Search Preview

Microsoft is offering another Technology Preview of its new search engine. While initial search number estimates look large, clicking through to the second page makes that number drop for the few searches I tried. I would be far more interested if they included more advanced search features.

Gigablast Growth

Gigablast grows yet again, with over 640 million pages claimed as its new size. While it is still significantly smaller than the several billion pages at Google and Yahoo! Search, it is great to see continued growth and activity at this less well-known search engine.

Yahoo! Proximity Searching from Tara

Tara Calishain of ResearchBuzz has created a form for running proximity searches at Yahoo! of up to five word proximity. The YNAPS - Yahoo Non-API Proximity Search form basically combines the wild card word in a phrase capability with multiple OR operations. While not officially supported by Yahoo!, this is a great tool for easy proximity searching with Yahoo! Search. Yahoo! Search Review updated.