SiteLines - Ideas About Web Searching

More Consolidation - IAC buys AskJeeves

Just when you thought web search property consolidation was slowing down, here comes the huge IAC conglomerate buying up Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion. In the March 21 press release, IAC CEO Barry Diller makes the suggestion that the answer-machine funcationality of Ask Jeeves is perfectly positioned "to become one of the great brands on the Internet and beyond, and by beyond we mean in wireless, in the search for anything on any device." The press release further commits to "making Ask Jeeves the search engine with the best local search, content and merchant information on the Web " (Translation: stuff that makes advertisers want to pay for keyword placement.)

IAC is a large, publicly held media conglomerate that includes sites such as Lendingtree.com, dating site Match.com, Hotels.com, Expedia, Evite, and CitySearch, among others.

What does this mean for search engine Teoma (www.teoma.com), the best serious-search component of Ask Jeeves? Probably more commercial/paid content, with improved quick-search commands to find popular, basic information (sports, brands, maps, phone numbers, and other easy-to-find facts at a glance). I'll be watching.

Searchengineshowdown.com adds new search engine and more reviews

Of all the lists of search engines and features, I've come to rely on librarian Greg Notess' Searchengineshowdown.com as my best-bet source of trusted information and reviews of the spidered search engines. Last week, Greg posted several new articles and reviews of search engines to the site, bringing it up to date. Exalead, a relatively new, if smaller, search engine, with a bag of cool features, has been added to the list of search engines, together with a preliminary review. Greg has also reviewed the new MSN Search and has updated readers on new features in Yahoo, Gigablast and Google.

Tutorials Directory

Need help with essential software and office programs? Take a look at Tutorials.com, a helpful collection of links to tutorials related to computer operating systems, web design, Macromedia products, MS Office, graphics and programming.

Some New Sites for Kids

A few new and interesting sites for school-age children, spotted in recent issues of the Scout Report for Science and Technology

KidPsych a website that offers some fun activities for kids 1-9 and their parents to try online. The activities help develop children's skills in hand-eye coordination, cognitive thinking skills, deductive reasoning, and creative problem solving, among other concepts. Each game has a link to information about the activity objectives, providing parents some understanding of child development and cognitive thinking. (Scout Report)

PSRC: Physical Sciences Resource Center
Developed by the American Association of Physics Teachers, "the Physical Sciences Resource Center (PSRC) is a web-based databank that provides K-20 teachers links to a wide range of teaching and learning resources in the physical sciences." Users can search the numerous resources by topics, type, or keyword. With each entry, the website provides a description, information on the author, subjects covered, level, intended users, resource types, possible costs, and other useful facts. Interested individuals can register at the website in order to store their search preferences, join discussion forums, submit materials, and store resources. (Scout Report)

Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Technology Network
The Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Technology Network (SETNET), created by the British Department of Trade and Industry, "seeks to stimulate the interests of young people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and in pursuing careers related to these subjects." Local networks partner with educational organizations, professional associations, research institutes, industry, government departments, and charities to "deliver high quality STEM activities and experiences to schools and young people." The website provides information on the group's program and publications documenting the program's effectiveness, as well as some external publications on issues relating to STEM education in the United Kingdom (UK). The links section, where SETNET has posted a database of "schemes and resources," is most likely to interest teachers beyond the U.K. Visitors can search the database or browse the list of lesson ideas, each of which includes links to online resources for developing, planning and communicating ideas, working with equipment, tools, evaluating processes and products, as well as useful materials and components, and resources for understanding of materials and components. (Scout Report)

Links from commercial search engines to PUBMED citations

The staff at the National Library of Medicine added a great little feature for searchers who click on PubMed links found in a search engine like Google or Yahoo. Now, if you click on a link to a PubMed citation from a search engine, you will see your search terms entered in the PubMed query box and a notation indicating what that search would retrieve in PubMed along with a link to the retrieval. This is a great way to encourage searchers to conduct a supplementary search in PubMed, and possibly even introduce them to a tool that they might not already be aware of.

View the press release (which has some good illustrations) at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ma05/ma05_google.html

Of course, the lingering issue remains just how likely users are to find any PubMed citations. As I wrote earlier this year in Just Because It's Indexed Doesn't Mean You'll Find It, Pubmed's content often doesn't rank high enough in search engine results to be noticed by searchers using common terms.

Lycos search results now come from Ask Jeeves

In it's March 2 press release Lycos announced that Ask Jeeves technology will now deliver its search results. Of course, that doesn't make Lycos a better search engine, just another rebranded version of something else.

Results include the usual sponsored results at the top of the list, but readers should note that the "pure" search results, which derive mainly from Ask Jeeves-owned Teoma search engine, also include paid placement and paid inclusion. The paid results are Looksmart's editorial and paid results as well as those from Lycos' Legacy Inclusion program.

Why is So Much New Google Stuff in "Beta"?

In his February 11 posting in Searchenginewatch's blog, Gary Price considered why so many of Google's innovations can be labelled "beta" for up to 5 years.

Rather than concluding that "beta" means nothing to Google, Price suggests that keeping new initiatives in beta has positive marketing value for the company. "Having the term beta attached to many of their services for extended periods of time has marketing and pr value. Huh? By using just a single word Google can tell users, the press, and anyone else who is interested, that of course problems with a service might and will likely exist. Why? Because it's just a beta release. It's a simple, clean (at least up to this point), and easy way to deflect or soften negative attention that a service might receive. More brilliant marketing from Google."

New York Times buys About.com

You may have heard that the NY Times purchased information portal site About.com last month. About.com was once a great information portal, which had for over a year been included as a top search tool in Search Portfolio. In exchange for some fairly intrusive ads, users were treated to good quality consumer-focused information on a variety of subjects. But over time, About.com seemed to lose its focus - many topical sites were dropped, and for the remainder, too much real estate was devoted to ads and not enough to hand-picked information links from its specialized guides. Then they got weblog fever and the new look and feel of guide pages mixed people up even more.

There is much hope that the NYT can revive About.com. Andrew Goodman of Traffick offered up a wish list (!) in his "Great or Ho-Hum? A Wish List for NYT's About.com" including some pleas for improved quality and quality controls.