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12 July 2002

Yahoo extend deal with Google until September. Google supply secondary search results to Yahoo.

AskJeeves announce a new pay for inclusion product. We thought they already had one?

We received an e-mail yesterday from a fellow countryman, Gary at nzbase. Nzbase is another fine weblog about search engines. Must be catching...

Running with the bull. (No, it's not a link to Microsoft!)

Ludicrous web "design" courtesy of BT "Connected Earth". Usability? Communication? Ease of use? Compatibility? Nah, what the punters really want is silly spinning things. All yours for one million pounds.

And finally today, Bush digs shallow in order to restore faith in capitalism.

11 July 2002

Looksmart backpedal, slightly. It appears that existing listings will now be included in the index until December 2003. Apparently this change in heart has come about because they've been "listening to their customers".

Speaking of lawyers, continuing astonishment from the web community regarding the Danish court decision regarding the illegality of deep links.

Actually, the web community should be overjoyed. The only sites truly stupid enough to refuse deep links will be those owned by megacorp, inc. Seeing that banning links is the metaphorical equvilent of moving your office from the high street and placing it in a disused field, the switched-on, linked-up web community stand to inherit masses of ex-megacorp traffic. Hurrah.

Neat little tool that helps you find the latest entries in Google and AltaVista without having to use the complicated date range syntax.

And finally today, which animal are you?

10 July 2002

Looks like there was a major outage on the Internet yesterday, leaving thousands of sites inaccessible. The Internet Traffic Report, a site that monitors Internet traffic volumes, shows a sharp drop off 5.00pm MST. Is this related to WorldCom troubles?

Danish court proves it's not just the record companies that don't understand the Internet. Clueless ruling against deep linking will surely result in librarians becoming public enemy #1.

Not much search engine news today, so we turn our attention to more important matters. Like scrollbar racing.

Web uber-designer Jeffrey Zeldman explores the "myth of ugly". Great usability does not mean you must create an ugly web site. Now who can he possibly be talking about?

And finally today, Rotten.com updates the sign language vocabulary.

9 July 2002

The Traffick Portal is an excellent resource for search engine marketing related articles. Nice work.

Looking at the newsfeed today, we're reminded of the problem we have with newsfeeds. The newsfeeds often include near identical stories from different sites, often for days on end. That's ok though - it's nice to be kept informed. We'd just wish the machines would get a little smarter and stop imitating blog hacks ;)

In the not-really-all-that-surprising department, E-bay buys PayPal. It has been reported that E-bay makes up 60% of all Pay-Pal transactions.

The bumbling record companies try to kill off yet another lucrative marketing channel. Our prediction: The source of Net Radio broadcasts will become untraceable and channels will multiply like mad rabbits.

And finally today, a project for those bored with their mouse.

8 July 2002

Job sites sue meta-search engines.

Journalists are starting to take a closer look at search engine practices. The Observer has an interesting article on the "objectivity" of search engines and whether pay-for-placement is distorting the pure model of the web. The writer suggests a publicly funded search engine should be considered.

We're not sure there ever was a pure search model. Search engine optimization techniques can alter results in favor of certain web sites. This is certainly a more subtle form of search marketing, but marketing nonetheless. This situation won't change with a publicly funded model. There is certainly more room for clear separation of paid content and search engine editorializing based on ranking criteria.

Want to see inside Google?

The Internet music debacle. Superb article on the sorry state of music industry "wisdom".

And finally today, study shows beer builds strong bones.