July 22, 2003
Selecting Web Sites for “Beyond Google” Resource Discovery
You can read my latest article for the July 21 issue of LLRX.com, Selecting Web Sites for “Beyond Google” Resource Discovery.
What Stock Analysts Say about the Search Business
Understanding the business of web search from the investor's perspective can help searchers better understand their search results. The true business goal of all search engines is to deliver products to eyeballs at the moment of need, through a variety of mechanisms including results placement and keyword buying. I view search engines and commercial consumer search tools as being not in the search business, but in the advertising business, and so do the industry analysts that follow search companies.
Analysts agree that the search business is very hot. In the June 12 2003 report Search Leads Online Advertising Rebound (available through Investext) Richard Fetyko of Kaufman Brothers notes that "search-driven advertising (paid placement and paid inclusion) was just about the only growth area of online advertising for the last two years.... Search-driven advertising now represents over 20% of the total [online advertising expenditures], up from only 4% in 2001." And given that online advertising still represents a very small portion of total advertising sales, analysts agree that there is great potential for substantial growth in search engine advertising in the next couple of years. Safa Rashtachy, an analyst with US Bancorp Piper Jaffrey and author of the weekly Silk Road Weekly, predicted in March 2003's Golden Search (reported in SiteLines on April 24) that "search and advertising companies will show the fastest growth of all sectors [of e-business] over the next 18-24 months, ahead of e-commerce, services and other segments."
The numbers prove the story. Stocks of search advertising companies have made astonishing gains in the last year. AskJeeves moved from a low of under $1 to today's opening price of $15.37, and the rise has been steady, not choppy. Yahoo's value rose from under $9 to today's opening price of $31.28.
Just as advertising influences the editorial content of print magazines, so will advertising ultimately influence the content of search results in search engines. These strong trends suggest that more advertisers will buy web-based ads and spend more money doing it. They will buy keywords for more products and services from search companies like Yahoo!, Google, AskJeeves, and FindWhat (which delivers paid results to second tier players like Dogpile and Metacrawler). Search companies will develop and refine their methods of depositing advertising in front of your eyeballs when you conduct a search.
Without a solid understanding of how to go beyond search engines to find quality resources, the information consumer's awareness of particular brands will narrow and they will remember the brands that they see advertised most often on search engine sites, even if they never click on the ad. Without greater awareness of how search engines deliver ads to users, the presence of search engine advertising will ultimately influence the information seeker's choice of search tool as well as their information buying decisions over time.
July 21, 2003
One-stop shopping for online books
Spotted on Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff I Found on the Net: Addall.com is a meta-bookstore search tool that allows you to price-compare a book across more than 40 online bookstores, including all the major stores and several out-of-print sources.
The search tool is fairly rudimentary (title, author, ISBN, keyword), but good enough if you're searching for a known item. You can limit to those stores that ship to a particular country, and specify a pricing currency for display. A memo option allows you to retain a temporary note of the items/bookstore selected while you keep searching.
July 18, 2003
Walt Crawford on CIPA and web-filtering
In the summer issue of Cites and Insights: Crawford at Large, library digitization expert and all-around-iconoclast Walt Crawford of the Research Libraries Group has published a richly detailed 20-page guide Coping with CIPA: A Censorware Special to help US libraries understand and deal with the requirements for filtering web access in public libraries.
CIPA is the Childrens Information Protection Act, which forbids public libraries to receive federal assistance for Internet access unless they install software to block obscene or pornographic images and to prevent minors from accessing material harmful to them.
Like many library leaders, Crawford doesn't like filtering (his choice of the term censorware is telling) Nevertheless, this important document provides managers with the background of recent US Supreme Court decisions, quotes from several print and web publications, critical notes on software and blacklist solutions, and his own suggestions on possible actions and responses. Crawford is careful to state that this is his very personal though informed opinion, so readers will have to weigh his views with those of others, particularly the recommendations and advice provided through the American Library Association's CIPA Update Page
Recommended Resource: History Guide
Another model meta-site, the History Guide is a cooperative project of 9 German research institutes and library partners. This meta-index connects users to over 3000 scholarly relevant web links in history. Users can browse by region, time period, or general subject area. Virtual Libraries and Source Materials links to reference tools, discussion lists, free electronic journals and other meta-sites. Organizations and Institutions links to institutes, associations, universities and libraries. A my.historyguide is in the works, which will enable some personalization features.
July 16, 2003
What does Yahoo's purchase of Overture mean for searchers?
No doubt you have heard that Yahoo! has purchased publicly-traded Overture in a cash-plus-shares deal. That may be good for shareholders, but what does this mean for information seekers? The early conclusion is: very little, and not much of it good.
The company's press release is a clue. There's no mention in the release of any search benefit -- the only benefits are related to advertising sales. There is specific mention of expanding Pay-for-Performance search into shopping, travel, and yellow pages properties; integrating contextual advertising (i.e. keyword buying) throughout Yahoo!'s growing network of web properties; and using the leverage that consolidation offers to easily enable Overture's 88,000 advertisers to buy ads in any number of ways.
This step is one in a series of consolidation steps among major search players, and was anticipated for some weeks before the actual announcement. The consolidation leaves three major players in the search game -- Yahoo! (which now will own AltaVista and AlltheWeb, as well as Inktomi, which it bought earlier this year), Google (still privately financed, with no credible rumours on either acquisition or initial public offering), and Microsoft's MSN Search.
While MSN Search isn't a particularly good first-step search engine, there is a huge and very public buzz about a major overhaul of the MSN search tool in order to make it go head-to-head with the other major players. This is an expected Microsoft tactic -- to enter or expand into an area where entrepreneurial key players (e.g. Yahoo!, Google) already hold a place, and with the power of hindsight and extensive market research, establish a new presence in order to almost instantly dominate the market. The strategy has been used successfully with MS Windows (taking on Apple/MacIntosh OS), MS Office (surpassing Wordperfect/Corel) and MS Internet Explorer (surpassing Netscape).
I welcome your comments on this! Please feel free to post your ideas in the Comments section which follows this entry.
July 15, 2003
Recommended Resource: Hitting the Headlines
Just how important is that latest health news report? Do you ever question the reliability of mass media health news reporting? How can you evaluate the evidence behind the news?
Hitting the Headlines may be able to help. Starting in mid-2001 and sponsored by the UK's National Electronic Library for Health, staff from the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination were commissioned by the NELH to assess the reliability of both the journalists' reporting of health stories and the research on which they are based.
CRD staff provide a rapid assessment of the original research behind the news story and evaluate how accurately the journalists have reported the findings of the research. The summaries are produced within 2 days of publication. The site also provides an FAQ and background on the project.
The site is keyword-searchable. This is an excellent companion to Biomedicine and Health in the News, reported in the April 6 issue of SiteLines.
July 06, 2003
"Searching Free Trade Mark Databases on the Web"
Spotted in FreePint no. 139, this is a brief but informative article by Steve Van Dulken, a specialist in trademark and patent searching at the British Library. Van Dulken provides a useful overview of trademarks, discusses some searching challenges presented in trademark research, and provides links to major resources. Read the article here.
July 04, 2003
About.com adopts a Blogging Model
About.com, a commercial portal site of over 400 web topical guides hosted by experts and enthusiasts, has adopted a Moveable-Type blogging model on the front page of each guide. You can see an example of the result here. As a result, the front page of each guide looks slightly less like a tabloid. The blogging model enables each host to easily post news items with dates/times, and permits newsfeed junkies to link their newsreaders to the guide's RSS/XML direct feeds.
The informational impact is principally on the front page of each guide, and little else has changed. Pop-ups, pop-unders, banners, sponsored links, and other creative ways of annoying serious searchers are as plentiful as ever. But each guide benefits from a context-sensitive left-hand sidebar of useful links and resources, which makes About.com a solid choice for selected topics -- mainly hobbies, travel, and small business. That part hasn't changed, which is great.