SiteLines - Ideas About Web Searching

Recommended Resource: Ethnomed

This valuable new link list is a joint project of the University of Washington Health Sciences Library and the Harborview Medical Center's Community House Calls Program. Ethnomed contains information related to health care of selected specific cultural groups. The dozen-plus groups are representative of "recent immigrants to Seattle [homebase of Ethnomed] or the US, many of whom are refugees fleeing war-torn parts of the world." The site includes a cultural profile for each population group, selected clinical topics, and helpful foreign-language patient information handouts. Note that the site is rather underpopulated with links at this time. However, the structure of the site is fully visible and I look forward to seeing more resources linked in the near future. Contributors who wish to create materials for Ethnomed are invited, and the site has instructions and templates for content creation.

Challenges In Web Search Engines

In the November 16 2003 issue of his ResourceShelf.com weblog, Gary Price reminded readers of a few older (2002) but still-valuable articles related to web searching. Click on the ResourceShelf.com post for links to all three articles, but I recommend that serious searchers of search engines pay special attention to Challenges in Web Search Engines. This 2002 paper offers explanations of the problems inherent in search engine database design and ranking systems, and provides the information succinctly, in plain language (well, as plain as this sort of technical explanation can get). The authors cover a variety of issues that can have impact on crawling, ranking, and retrieval of results, including search engine spam, differences between text-based and links-based approaches to ranking, cloaking, doorway pages, addressing conventions, and use and abuse of meta tags. The PDF report is linked from the document's main web page.

Did the Google/Microsoft Talks Actually Happen?

in his column today, Dan Gillmor of Mercury News wonders who floated the news of a Microsoft/Google negotiation that made news everywhere (including here). Gilmor reports that Bill Gates denied any discussions of mergers or acquisitions, and suspects that the culprit may be venture capitalists and other insiders engaging in pre-IPO puffery to inflate initial values.

Visualize Search Engine Relationships

In preparation for an advanced web search session, I came across a fabulous FLASH chart of the major search engine relationships, courtesy of Bruce Clay LLC, an Internet business and marketing consultant. This is a great tool to help learners visualize the relationships between search engines and their content suppliers. Let your mouse hover over a search tool, and watch as the chart highlights the relationships. At the present time, only US search properties are listed, but charts from other regions are promised.

Google's Deskbar and Microsoft's Plans for Browser-free searching

Google Labs recently launched the Google Deskbar a downloadable Windows application that lets you search Google without opening the browser, from any application. If you're thinking about downloading it, you might want to read some of the posts in the Google Deskbar Forum before committing. (Gary Price has also reported that the Deskbar crashed his computer a couple of times, reminding us that this is beta software.)

Why a deskbar when browser-based Google is just a double click away? Charles Arthur, in his November 12 column in the Independent, suggests that this may be a response to Microsoft's plans to embed web search capabilities into it's next operating system, Longhorn -- which would enable Longhorn users to conduct a web search within the operating system, without having to open a browser.

If Microsoft were to enable Google-style functionality inside it's operating system, the convenience factor alone could make the MS search product the default engine of choice, regardless of the likely presence of paid inclusion in the results.

Stress-Free Web Sites

Librarians Index to the Internet added some interesting sites related to coping with holiday stress: (note: descriptions are drawn directly from LII)
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Stress Management: Managing Holiday Travel Stress
Provides basic tips for managing stress while traveling by car and airplane during the holiday season. Includes information on planning before traveling, and advice for parents of young children. Maintained for About.com by "a physician, researcher, and writer with an interest in stress and its effects on the human body."
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Family and Relationships: Get the Facts: Coping with Holiday Stress
Questions and answers about coping with stress and family problems during the holiday season (Halloween through Christmas). By psychologist Dorothy Cantor, a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA).

Rich-Get-Richer with Link Analysis

Google's PageRank, known generically as link analysis, has become the subject of some interesting research which leads many search professionals to conclude that search engines which rely on link analysis will favor the most popular, well-established and best-known web sites in their results.

The rich-get-richer concept of web linking -- whereby a large percentage of web links point to a relatively small number of web pages -- is described in reasonably plain language in Merrick E. Lozano's article "Rich Get Richer - Why Yahoo, DMOZ, Google and PageRank are Important." Lorenzo also touches on ideas like power laws and preferential attachment as they apply to web linking. A good introduction to a complex topic.

Whole Lotta Keyword Buying Goin' On

The Interactive Advertising Bureau produces and makes available regular reports on the state of Internet advertising revenue, and tracks growth (or shrinkage) and overall market trends. The release of Q2 results for 2003 confirms what search property analysts have predicted for more than a year -- that keyword search ad purchases (aka paid placement) would continue to rise very significantly.

Internet ad revenue in the first 6 months of 2003 totalled $3.3 billion, a 10.5% increase from the same period a year earlier. While that is a significant gain, it's not startling -- until you discover that the greatest portion of that rise was due to an increase of keyword buying in search tools. Keyword-buying represented 31% of the total of all Internet ad revenues, compared with 9% during the same period in 2002.

In other words, there's lots more buying of keywords in commercial search tools, with paid placement of results. And, as you might suspect, banner advertising (the stuff that you have trained yourself to deliberately ignore) is declining.

The full report (17 pages, with lots of charts: an easy read) is available at http://iab.net/resources/ad_revenue.asp. Registration (free) is required.

20 Great Google Secrets

Web-maven Tara Calashain, author of the book Google Hacks has written a neat little piece to remind us of how many Google search tools exist under the Google banner. 20 Great Google Secrets provides helpful reminders about search syntax tricks, directory lookup features, spelling features, and more.

Big Changes Coming for Google

OK, things are heating up in the search wars. The big news last week was about Google's plans to issue an initial public offering in February 2004, plus a report today in the New York Times that Microsoft is in discussion with Google to explore a more connected relationship, with murmurs of partnership or merger. Either way, expect big changes, which may not spell good news for searchers.