Search engines: news and updates


All sorts of stuff going on at AltaVista. The big question about how Yahoo will utilize the Overture technology (AV and ATW) and programming talent is to be determined. Nevertheless, it's good to see the AV team continuing to improve their product. ‘Changes and other happenings at AltaVista.’ Gary Price. July 30, Resource Shelf. http://www.resourceshelf.com/archives/2003_07_01_resourceshelf_archive.html/

AltaVista was using Moreover to stock their news search engine until late June, when they switched over to AlltheWeb's crawler. They have added more sources (they have about 4,000) and have a total of about 9.5 million unique articles in their archives. ‘AltaVista News makes some changes.’ Tara Clashain, ResearchBuzz, July 30 http://www.researchbuzz.com/news/2003/jul24jul3003.shtml#altavistanews

The growing roster of non-English language European content available through the Dialog(r)NewsRoom online service empowers global tracking of local and regional news and analysis. Dialog NewsRoom, launched in 2002, is a comprehensive collection of current news reports from around the world, offering access to over 7,500 sources. Press release, July 29, www.dialog.com

The Norwegian search engine Fast is becoming one of the big players in the Internet search world. Fast will soon power all the Lycos search sites. Fast has also announced changes to its own version of the search engine. AlltheWeb.com will be completely refreshed every nine to twelve days, and the regular index will include more than 70 million multimedia files. ‘Life in the Fast lane.’ July 24, Pandia. http://www.pandia.com/sw-2001/43-fast.html

The original paper describing Google, "a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext," written by co-founders Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page and presented at the Seventh International World Wide Web Conference. http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/com1921.htm

Google's Toolbar 2.0 is the first publicly available software that incorporates the technology Google gained when it acquired Blogger creator Pyra in February. The new features of Google's Toolbar 2.0 include Popup Blocker, which stops pop-up ads, and AutoFill, which automatically fills out Web forms with information stored locally on a user's computer. ‘Google tweaks toolbar to block pop-ups.’ Lisa Bowman. CNET news, June 26. http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1021508.html?tag=fd_top

Google unveiled refinements to technology for searching daily news. The new service, called Advanced News Search, allows visitors to scour headlines by date, location, exact phrases or publication. http://news.google.com/advanced_news_search

LexisNexis has agreed to buy the public records businesses of Dolan Media Co., a provider of U.S. electronic public records information, including bankruptcies, civil judgments, federal and state tax liens, and eviction notices. Press release, June 26. http://www.lexisnexis.com/about/releases/0593.asp

Lycos UK has redesigned its entire website as part of a new strategy to remove itself from the shrinking portal sector, aiming for an imaginary 'model' customer named Nicole29. ‘The new Lycos: Nicole?’ Susie Harwood. NetImperative, July 18,http://www.netimperative.com/cmn/viewdoc.jsp?cat=news&docid=BEP1_News_0000055201

Lycos is rolling out a new utility that automatically displays Lycos search results in a side panel next to search results from Google, Yahoo or most of the other major services. ‘Lycos offers second opinion search results.’ Chris Sherman. SearchEngineWatch, July 21. http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2236241

Microsoft Corp. is beefing up its MSN search engine to go head-to-head with Google Inc., but at the same time, it says it has no immediate plans to cancel its agreement for paid search listings with Overture Services Inc., which was recently bought by MSN rival Yahoo Inc. ‘Microsoft aims at Google, stays friendly with Yahoo.’ Joris Evers. July 29, Computerworld. http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/ebusiness/story/0,10801,83524,00.html?SKC=ebusiness-83524

Our hypothesis is that users are frequently dissatisfied with their search experience because user queries are often ambiguous while the available corpus of information available to be searched is huge and of variable quality. The Smarter beta attempts to solve this problem by identifying probable user intent for popular queries, and then listing high-quality human edited web listings for these user intents. http://www.smarter.com/

There is a new search engine in town. The child's name is wotbot www.wotbot.com and the search engine is currently in alpha testing mode. There is a UK and a US version of the site, both with a simplistic and easy to use interface. ‘The new wotbot search engine.’ Aug 3. Pandia http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/26-wotbot.html

Yahoo has fortified its news service in recent weeks, offering both increased depth and powerful search tools that make it a compelling choice for finding online news. Yahoo News is now incorporating more than 3,500 sources from Moreover's public metabase of near real-time news content. This is in addition to the full-text coverage provided by dozens of providers, and a wide range of editorially selected coverage. ‘A closer look at Yahoo! News.’ Chris Sherman, July 30, http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2239521