For the latest news, resources and information on search engine submission, please visit our home page.

19 July 2002

Had Infoseek surived the dot-com shakeout, it would have been eight years old today.

Google and Ask Jeeves sign a three year deal worth $100M. Google will supply paid advertising to AskJeeves.

Dinner with Sergey. Red Herring interviews Googles mastermind Sergey Brin. Doesn't Larry Page get dinner invites?

And finally today, the diary of a porn video store clerk.

Actually, that's the final post for two weeks. We're off snowboarding in New Zealand and beach-ing in Australia. When we come back, no doubt Google will have fallen, Looksmart will rule the world and MSN will have implemented all FTC recommendations. Or something.

More on Web search engines.

18 July 2002

SEMList.com is a directory of search engine marketing firms. This directory is promoted by internet.com, the owners of the Danny Sullivan's influential SearchEngineWatch.com.

Amazon.com "do-a-Google" and open their site up to SOAP/XML.

Useful site documenting the relative popularity of French search engines (thanks to David Degrelle for the tip)

FAST launches customized search skinning tool called alchemist. This tool allows you to specify your own .css style sheet for the FAST search engine. Nice one.

And finally today, the land of the free and home of the brave plans to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies.

17 July 2002

1do3.com is a "shortal": a portal based around searching. The shortal provides a human-refined set of search answers. "Instead of presenting you with thousands of links from all over the world, it takes you, in three clicks or less, to a shortlist of useful websites most likely to meet your needs." (Thanks To Ralph Tegtmeier for the tip)

Susanne Koch examines the death of search engine optimization and the birth of search engine marketing.

Interesting article on Google. In particular, the notion of "recency" to highlight new sites that haven't yet built up link popularity.

And finally today, how asteroids could trigger a nuclear war.

More info on higher search engine placement.

16 July 2002

The FTC recommendation that search engines should make a clear distinction between advertising and editorial content is getting a wave of press. We note that most of these articles have yet to take a close look at MSN, and we think they should. Have MSN made an attempt to separate advertising from editorial content? Is there any editorial content?

MSN provides results from various search engines and directories. The results are labeled"Featured Sites", "Sponsored Sites", "Directory Sites" and "Web Pages". The results are derived from Overture (paid listings), Looksmart (pay per click, pay for listing) and Inktomi (pay for inclusion). Are any of these results clearly marked as paid advertising? Visit www.msn.com and you be the judge.

Slimeware Gator told by judge to "stop it".

We've been included on the minimalist web project list of "beautiful sites". Made our day :)

And finally today, never mess with a feisty hor's d'oeuvre.

15 July 2002

The volunteer web directory, DMOZ, now indexes 3.5 million sites and has over 50,000 editors (Thanks to Brett Tabke of Webmasterworld for the tip)

The minimalist web project lists sites that choose minimalism as their design directive.

John Pilger argues that 'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist ... America itself.

And finally today, take the nerd test. We scored 36% and lost points for using a Windows machine.