Search engine news & opinion by John Bolduan

BuyLightFixtures.com - An example of our shopping cart setup and optimization.

2006-03-05T06:52:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while you run across a web site that has many of the desirable aspects you might look for in design and simplicity. These days there seems to be so much clutter on most sites without thought to what's really trying to be done. BuyLightFixtures.com is a Minnesota lighting company and has one of those sites which has the simple attitude when people are looking to buy light bulbs or light fixtures. We like this site for how it makes navigation easy with good images and fast load times. Would this be the best way for a search engine to find and spider a site? Does the navigation make a difference when it comes to getting the information found by spiders and in-turn being found by searchers? Most of the time the answer is yes, but it should be interesting to see how this plays out with this particular web site.

Google has started an IM thing, why bother?

2005-08-30T06:34:00.000-05:00

Google has done something I don't get, started an instant messaging service. Why would they even bother to do such a thing? They made thier way in the world of search, why go back to the old portal concept like Yahoo or MSN? Is it really that important in the overall scheme of things to have exactly what everyone else has? I don't think so. Companies do line extension at thier own peril into areas they have no business in. I'm not saying the Google IM idea is bad, but it brings into question the management style of doing everything just because you can. That's the problem with most technology companies, because of high innovation being the standard, they think they must do everything they can possibly do. Yahoo, MSN and AOL all have good instant messaging not to mention ICQ. In this very mature area of IM, it's late to be jumping in. This won't be a success for Google because it isn't what people have come to know Google for which is great search results. It's too bad too because it was getting to look like they could never make a bad move, but what do you know, Google is showing itself to be truly "human".

Web results for online companies, RealWebMarketing.com

Search engine clutter, no kidding!

2005-08-29T05:56:00.000-05:00

This recent article talks about the problem of search engine clutter and what some people are doing about it. There are simple ways to alleviate the problem of tons of results for certain things you type in. The article talks about PreviewSeek.com which sounds like a search aggregator or like a meta search engine. These aren't anything new, but they offer some solutions, but it's not complete. Some of the best things I've seen are the search engines that do clustering of reults into logical groups. This is the only thing that makes good sense right now, knowing the group or category your results belong in will give you more concentrated choices. If you're interested in this, try Clusty.com, I found it to be one of the most helpful search engines to find something beyond what I may have been searching for, and faster.

Search engine results really aren't clutter, they are the results. Which is what I've said all along that search results will become a commodity with companies dressing it them up to suit thier needs. This trend will continue, but no one will kill the major producer of commodity search results, Google. I wish they would stop talking like this, it's dumb.

Getting real results for web site marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Google continues to dominate, but does it matter?

2005-08-26T05:32:00.000-05:00

Recent information shows that Google continues to te the search engine market by 2 to 1 over nearest rival, Yahoo. But does it matter who is on top of the search engine game. Well, it matters to Google when they can command a premium for paid ads, and I imagine Yahoo looks at it the same. Apart from that, does it matter to the average searcher? I would put to you that it doesn't. It's all about relevant results and I'm sure that most searchers don't care so much about the entity as whether they find what they're looking for. The future could be stolen from Google if the results were just more relevant or easier to use. I don't think people are so loyal to a search engine as much as they are loyal to what they want to find. Whoever can provide those results will be the winner in the future. Although it's harder to capture mindshare after the inital phase of search engine exuberance, it might still be possible to take a siginificant share of the market if the idea is better. It's always been that way no matter what the product or service.

It's real marketing results from RealWebMarketing.com

Answers.com to be eventually incorporated into the Opera browser.

2005-08-23T06:23:00.000-05:00

This might be a trend for the future as browsers of various types become more common, partnerships with search engines. In this case, Answers.com will be the search engine of choice for Opera's web portal. In case you don't know, Answers.com is the offshoot idea of the people who brought you GuruNet, a very fine tool for searching deeper into all kinds of content. This knid of arrangement is not unlike A9.com incorporating Google into search but creating a whole new experience. This is where the search engine becomes a commodity and people dress it up for thier user base enhancing the customer or user experience.

Opera is a great browser and you have to give them credit. They had a business of selling browsers when everyone else was giving them away. They understood what people wanted and what they didn't want and created a whole loyal section of Internet customers.

MSN making some gains in search...

2005-08-23T06:14:00.000-05:00

According to this article, MSn is making some gains in the search engine arena. It's good to see even if you're not a big fan of Microsoft. The increase of competition means that better results and ideas will come out of the whole search engine competition. As I've stated before, one should never count out the Redmond monster when it comes to ting a market. I'm sure that Google and Yahoo haven't. If you take a look at the results page for MSN, you find some great results that are in some ways more relevant than either Google or Yahoo.

When it comes to search, the battle is only beginning. Look for many changes over the next year and a breakout of a smaller search engine as well. There's still a lot of room for growth and slicing up a piece of the searching public for your entity. What I found interesting in the article is the number of toolbar searches and how well Yahoo does. Yahoo has something Google doesn't, a base of loyal people that go beyond search and live in Yahoo's many offerings.

It's real for web marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

MS Word to blog, the Google intrusion into the desktop...

2005-08-18T07:07:00.000-05:00

It was bound to happen that Google will be a more pervasive entity on our desktops in the coming future. They've got a Word add-in which can publish Word documents directly to a blog. This along with the other things they're doing are making them more ubiquitous than ever, such as GoogleEarth. It's an interesting contest between these two companies as to which will take away space from the other's traditional territory. No one knows for sure yet, but Google seems to have an advantage because of it's agility, not being bogged down by some of the other things that Microsoft must do and support in the OS.

Search was just the beginning of all this change in the software industry, now there are any number of ways that this could morph. In the next few years we won't even recognize search the way we do today, it will be different. We will looks back on these days and think how primitive all this was. But who will be the major players? No one knows anything right now, as things are still in thier infancy believe it or not.

Real marketing for the web, RealWebMarketing.com

Yahoo boasts of more pages indexed.

2005-08-14T08:45:00.000-05:00

Recently, Yahoo has been claiming another jump in search engine indexing. This has about the same effect as McDonald's signs had years ago. I remember that the signs would show 1 billion served and then it would go up again and again. Wow, we all thought, that really is something. But really it wasn't anything, just a cusrious fact which had nothing to do with the quality of their food, service or anything. It was just a number. It's the same with Yahoo or any other search engine, it's not the number of pages indexed, it's the quality of the algorithm itself that matters. Are you getting relevant search results or not? Is your business seeing results on the web? No one really cares about these numbers, because out of context they are meaningless. Let's just face the fact that these search spiders are very busy and they go through a lot of pages!

Real answers for web marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

Everybody's into paid ads including MSN and AskJeeves.

2005-08-05T06:28:00.000-05:00

It seems as though everybody these days is going to have their own paid advertising. There's nothing to stop the juggernaut of revenue which each search engine believes is the only way to make a dollar. I remember early on, something like 12 years ago, some of the search engines had a very all truistic attitude about search. Of course, that was at the time when people in education still ruled many aspects of Internet life. The question isn't whether paid ads are good or not, that's up for the consumer to decide. The question is when everyone has something like this how much has it devalued everything? I would guess that this is going to cause some searchers to be a little jaded always having to deal with ads not unlike having to do with banners or pop-ups. I imagine there will come a day when people will decide to work with the search engine based on whether they have ads are not. That will also create some opportunities for other kinds of exposure without advertising. It's a little like billboards along the roadway, you see them but you don't really see them. In some ways it's subliminal, but how effective are billboards to a mass audience. I know that search engines have a targeted advertising situation which is better but that's not what I'm questioning. Is the sheer numbers of advertising opportunities going to dilute the results of those already listing. To this I would say, yes.

Now MSN and Ask Jeeves are going to be diving into this whole realm of pay per click advertising, which may be a good thing. I hope it drives down the cost of the whole system of paid advertising. I would guess with increased competition that this is what will happen eventually although not right away.

Blinkx, a simple mouseover for results, but nice.

2005-07-24T17:28:00.000-05:00

I recently just went to the Blinkx search engine site and did a search and I was pleased with what I found. I saw that they had good search results, but they had an interesting way of displaying them. What they do is give you the first page of search engine results plus five other pages numerically listed at the top. As you mouse over any of those numbers one through five, it shows the results from each of those pages in a flash. I know it's really not a big deal, but it makes looking through the first five pages of the search much, much easier. That's something I like. These days most search engines are just one page and then you have to go to each individual page, this is much more efficient. By just mousing over the numbers you get a quick result. How nice is that? They also have good search results that are very relevant and that search engine is one of the ones to watch for the future. All search engines eventually will have a better navigation of the first several pages I would guess. Just like meta search engines have multiple results from many different places, this also gives you quick results. I think that's what people really want in the future in their search engine results along with clustering of different search ideas related to what you're looking for. It's interesting to see what other entities are coming up with to make search easier. When you look at Google or Yahoo or even MSN, you don't get that kind of simplicity. I imagine that will change for them as well in the future when they see people are looking for a simpler and quicker result.

Looking for real web results, look no further than RealWebMarketing.com

Clusty asks, why cluster?

2005-07-22T07:11:00.000-05:00

Some of the search engine results that you'll find in the future will reflect something called clustering. Clusty is a search engine that does just that and it's a really good search engine. It clusters results in groups and makes the search a more organized thing. It's also more natural for how we look at things in the world, we tend to put things into groups or categories even in our minds. We don't list things in our heads like some search engines do, we tend to categorize things in our life. If we didn't do that, we would have a harder time making sense of our world as if that wasn't difficult already! So this page that Clusty offers this explanation of why search engine clustering is a good thing. You might want to try to search engine for a while, it's good and it does make it easier to find what you're looking for.

Web marketing for real results, RealWebMarketing.com

Yahoo changes in the algorithm.

2005-07-22T07:06:00.000-05:00

I've seen some articles on some postings that Yahoo is changing its search algorithm. This is obviously good for some people and bad for others depending on which side of the change you are on. My opinion is that it doesn't matter that much as long as the changes reflect better relevancy. Each search engine is in the the change business right now as they are trying to get a leg up on competition. They make changes to the algorithm because they believe that they will get some more relevancy and screen out some of the bad things that happen when people try to manipulate rankings. They will all make changes on a regular basis in order to combat that kind of behavior. I'm not talking about people that do legitimate web site upgrading, I'm talking about people that spam search engines. So Yahoo like all the other search engines, will change things from time to time in order to keep their content fresh and relevant. Google does it too, so does MSN and some of the lesser search engines, although you don't hear much news about those because there's not as much riding on it. It's interesting to watch the changes and see how things are affected. Yahoo will continue to be an aggressive search engine in its quest to get more market share away from Google. It's an intense competition and there seems to be no end in sight. In fact, the search engine battle is still in its infancy and these companies are fighting for what will happen over the next 20 years.
Real results for the web, RealWebMarketing.com

Google and privacy concerns

2005-07-18T12:12:00.000-05:00

If you ever wonder about privacy concerns on the Internet, this article will get you wondering even more. With so much information about people being available online, you know that somebody, someday he is going to get their hand into the cookie jar and then there's going to be problems. There is no way to know how far privacy violations are going to go, but it's good to take certain steps yourself in order to maintain privacy. You shouldn't be giving out personal information or documents that contain personal information that you don't want others to see. Because these days they are going to be spidered by search engines if they're posted it in one form or another. Unfortunately, we seem to be in the infancy of all this information gathering and there isn't many great tools in place to protect us. Of course you can use things like encryption programs and the like, but you have to keep track of all your personal information much more closely. It's like anything of value that you have. You wouldn't put your wallet or your credit card numbers online would you? If you wouldn't, then it only makes sense to care for your personal information as well.

Real marketing for the web, RealWebMarketing.com

Grokker is a good clustering search tool.

2005-07-05T08:41:00.000-05:00

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, Grokker is a nice tool to visually see the results from your searches. If clusters the search results as some of the other search engines have started to do. If you've ever gone to Clusty.com, you will see a similar type of result. What I like about the Grokker tool is that it's very easy to drill down into the results you want and presents them in a nice way. It gives a lot of flexibility with the results to see what you want to see. When you drill down to the ultimate result you want, you will see a sidebar page which will give you that web site in a thumbnail version which you can click on to go to it. It's a helpful tool which will give people the option to see things in that context of groupings rather than just raw listings. I think this is a trend for the future to cluster results into logical groups. Right now, when people are searching the lists are endless and a little bit confusing. By clustering them together, people can get the information they need in a specific area which will give them more of the results that they would want. Before, all you could do was go through pages and pages of results, but now you can get clustered results and that should give better direction to people doing a search.

RealWebMarketing gets you better online results.

No control over video content at Google?

2005-07-04T10:52:00.000-05:00

It looks as though the Google video search has yielded some copyright violations. Evidently there's been many movies and TV shows that should not be there that have been uploaded. It looks as though some of those have been removed. But the question remains, how is Google going to police this so copyright violations don't occur again? This is the big problem with all sorts of material that is going to be coming online including video, copyrighted text, you name it. Because searches so effective, people will be demanding this kind of thing in the future. So the need for digital property rights is going to be on the increase. Along with security, this will be one of the necessities in the future. Microsoft has gone a long way with digital rights management but there needs to be more done to make sure that this can't be done. I don't know how anybody's going to get this done because people can make video into almost any format that would not be trackable. Will they just have to come down on people with legal action? Is that the only way to get this done? Meanwhile, video on the Internet will continue to be a problem as long as there are people willing to pirate content. It's nobody's fault, and it's certainly not Google's, it's just the low state of people's morals.

Just what I wanted, to see the roofs of buildings.

2005-06-29T08:57:00.000-05:00

If any of you have tried the new Google Earth software, you know that it's pretty cool and can zoom in on specific areas in satellite photography. It's really well done and it's just another part of the puzzle that Google is added and it's free. This is what they bought when they purchased Keyhole. I think for certain kinds of people who are interested in geography, city planning or any other kind of information, then this is a good way to look at things the way the government has looked at things for many years.
The main thing that this software does is let you look at the roofs of buildings, very tiny renderings of roofs of buildings. For those of us who are interested in roofs, this is a boon for you. I can just imagine now roofing contractors trying to figure out who needs new roofs in an area and how many illegal immigrants it's going to take to finish the job. And we have Google to thank for this. In some ways I think it lessens our privacy once again and might give information to people who shouldn't have the information in the first place. But just think for a moment, if we can get this level of detail for free online, just imagine what our government and other governments can do when they photograph via satellite. I would imagine that my little pool in my backyard can be photographed from space and they can look and see how many kids are actually playing it. Although I have nothing to hide in my little pool from the government, I feel that it's a little too intrusive.

Still it is an interesting piece of software that Google has put out and it's something that you might want to try. I'm sure there are many good uses in business and personally for this and I'm going to look at this a little bit closer to see if that's the case.

Web marketing for the real world, RealWebMarketing.com

Microsoft's Ballmer vows MSN relevancy equal to Google.

2005-06-28T08:16:00.000-05:00

I heard that Steve Ballmer of Microsoft has been saying lately that MSN will soon have relevancy that is equal with Google. The way Google's been messing around with their algorithm lately, that may be true. When Microsoft says something like this it means they're serious about taking first place in this product category. I don't think it's so much of a question of whether they're going to be relevant as Google, but rather that they are going to be as pervasive. It's really not about the relevancy as no search engine can have identical relevancy. They all have a different flavor of algorithm, and as long as they do there will be choices for consumers on relevancy. What MSN needs to do is to continue to promote the brand MSN superior to other offerings. Of course that's going to be difficult because Google and Yahoo are probably ahead of MSN in the minds of people. How does one change mindshare? You really don't, all you can do is to be consistent with what you have, relevant and wait for the other guys to blink. MSN is in third place right now and third-place isn't the place you want to be. It can be done with money I suppose and Microsoft has a lot of money. But with the Internet the way it is these days, how people feel about a search engine is as important as the relevancy. There's a certain brand loyalty that can't be bought with dollars unless an algorithm changes so much that it destroys relevant search results. Sometimes people in the search industry wonder about Google and how they've changed their algorithm so many times. But it's their search engine and they can do whatever they want to do with it and that's the same with MSN. They can do whatever they want and no one should count out Microsoft's ability to influence the marketplace. It should be interesting to see what they put forth as more relevant in the future. The thing that will probably turn things around for Microsoft more than anything else will be when the next version of the operating system as a complete integration in search. Then most people will not feel the need to go outside of their desktop operating environment, but we'll see if Mr. Ballmer is right.

It's real marketing for the web, RealWebMarketing.com

A video channel from Google.

2005-06-28T07:58:00.000-05:00

As this article states, Google has a video channel that they've released. I'm not sure why everybody thinks video is this important that someone would put out what is probably a subpar thing. I say thing as I don't know what else to call it. There have been a lot of videos submitted to Google that might be interesting or even educational, but there isn't much context to it. I think sometime search engines behave like a societal group vomit. The indiscriminate posting of almost anything has desensitized us and sometimes lowering the bar for what we will accept. I'm not saying that it's not a good thing to have video searchable online, quite the contrary. But I know that many things will be submitted that are just more chewing gum for the eyes. What bothers me most in the 21st century is that we become a people that aren't very analytical or discriminating in what they consume. Obviously video is one of those things that is still in its infancy but if we don't demand much, we won't get much in the future. By that I mean content, quality content.
Search engines are all about bringing more to a desktop computer without regard to what it is. I wish people were more demanding on what kind of services that they would like to see. But for right now companies like Google and Yahoo will simply put up whatever they need to put up to stay ahead of the competition. Many times it doesn't reflect goodness or a higher standard. That's always been the problem with any kind of medium that transmits information, what will it be used for. And I asked the same question that Francis Schaeffer asked, "how then should we live?" Of course he was talking about in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, how should we live? Now I know I've come a long way from talking about somebody offering video that is searchable and gone all the way to what kind of society we want to have. But I think this is symptomatic of where we are as a people right now. We seem to consume things without really knowing or examining the consequences of it.

With search engines it's all about more and now and it looks it's going to stay that way for while unfortunately. I do like other search entities like GuruNet which gives you more quality information and general searching too. At least in this situation you have a choice. Never before has so much information been available and that's a good thing, but there's no limits to what we might access except for what we personally will not tolerate. I wish the Internet had certain levels of quality, but unfortunately that's not going to happen and we need to make personal choices of what is acceptable. Google offering videos online is fine, but once again it brings up that we are a society now of regurgitating everything for everyone and now nothing is really special.

Real marketing for online effectiveness, RealWebMarketing.com

MSN has a local search option.

2005-06-22T12:45:00.000-05:00

Following in the footsteps of many other search engines MSN gives you an option for local search as well. I've tried it and I got to say that it's one of the best local searches I've seen. When you click on the local search tab and put in your search term, you get many results that are local to your area without having to put in your zip code. It gives you a listing of the results which in many cases is local business and then there's a map to the side which gives you the location of each one. One of the nice features about this is when you mouse over the results, you'll see the tabs on the map change in color denoting which one is which.
There's no doubt that local search is becoming a great tool for companies who want to expand their local business. Of course, it's important to get business from all over the country but many companies have certain kinds of business that is best serving local people. I think this is a lot better than some of the Yellow Pages sites that you see. Many of them aren't as sophisticated as this new MSN tool. It's an impressive thing and Microsoft continues to build up its search engine capabilities so that it can compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo. This is why you never want to count Microsoft out. They have great resources, great technology, wonderful marketing and the ability to change the marketplace to suit themselves from the operating system. It's not that Google is quaking in its boots, I don't think they are, but MSN continues to come up edging closer to the main leaders.

Marketing for the real web, RealWebMarketing.com

Security will always be an issue...

2005-06-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

There's probably never been a time where people are more aware of security issues than ever before. And people have a lot of reason to be concerned if they don't take good steps to secure themselves. That's why I'm concerned about search engines and how intrusive all this is become with things like desktop search and the like. There's so much of our individual information that's out there and we need to be sure that we know what the risks are. I know it's not directly related to search engines, but it's all part of a bigger picture of security that people are trying to get their arms around. Software giants like Microsoft are working hard at the security issue but at the same time provide tools that make privacy harder to come by. With all the sophistication on both sides, this issue will never go away.

I've highlighted this article that talks about security and it seems that many people think there are some hurdles to get over in the future. It's hard to separate all these different components of computing as they are so much interrelated and are becoming more so in the future.

Marketing for the real web world, RealWebMarketing.com

Desktop search, is this hot?

2005-05-17T06:42:00.000-05:00

I recently saw an article on desktop search and I began to wonder, is this something that's still a hot item? With all the negative press the desktop search got, is it still something that people will want to get involved with? My first inclination would be that many people found that it was too intrusive into private information. I'm sure that many businesses liked it as they could check upon employees very easily. To be able to search on your hard drive should be something that gives you a simple ability to find a file. It shouldn't be an all-encompassing big Brother that is looking over your shoulder. And looking at it from a distance now, I can see that that is the problem. Many people who are involved in technology don't see the big picture. They only see the wonderful things that a technology can do, without regard to the ramifications of it. It's the same thing with people who want to clone animals or even people. I find that kind of technology totally repugnant. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you always should. Now I'm not saying that desktop search is on the same level as a cloning as a moral issue, but it does bring up the question of how much technology is too much. I saw a recent TV news show regarding a grocery store here locally that is allowing you to put your fingerprint as a wallet when used in their store. What you do is put your finger on this pad and it reads it and verifies who you are and becomes kind of a digital wallet. Although this could be convenient, it brings up questions as to what we are doing with technology. I believe we're slowly going down a road that we may regret later, where big Brother is always watching. The Bible talks about in Revelation, the mark of the beast and so on. We seem to be in a headlong rush for technology to do all sorts of neat things for us and some of that is okay, but some of it we need to take a hard look at and decide whether it is good for us are not. I believe it's the same way with desktop search, it outlines in a small way the question of technology and how we should be using it.

Search engines differing results presents opportunities.

2005-05-14T13:16:00.000-05:00

This article in Information Week was very interesting regarding how search engines have very different results. Many people who do search marketing have seen in the past that many of the search engines were very much the same in their results. The reason that happened is that they all had similar relationships and some were borrowing results from other search engines. As a result, you didn't have to optimize content for so many different outlets. Now that is begun to change and we as search marketers must look at the many different ways that online marketing has to be approached. Clearly as a result of the differences in search algorithms from the different engines, it means that content in different web sites has to be search friendly on several different levels. No longer can one assume that good content will be pretty much the same across different search engines. That is just not true anymore. There are enough differences now that a web site must create valid content for a number of different avenues in ways they never had to before.
One of the things that the article talks about is meta search engines like Dogpile. As I stated in previous postings in the past, these meta search engines will probably become more important as variant results continue. It only makes sense that one would go to a place where they could get all the variant results on one page. Because there's enough differentiation in the search engine results page, it means that search engines themselves more or less become a commodity which can be repackaged and resold. It's not unlike any other product out there that becomes a commodity. I believe search results are becoming a commodity that people can use to their own advantage. Of course, search engines will always have revenue because of their advertising, but the natural search results will seem to have the various changes from one to another. So advertising could stay the same across many search engines because that has nothing to do with content, but who wants to pay the most for that spot. It doesn't have much to do with content other than someone editing it for general relevancy.

I think it's a positive step for everyone that search engines all have very different results. Who wants to get the same results across different search engines? So that's why the meta search results are going to be more important than ever. To aggregate those varying results into one place will be a powerful tool for the future.

A long break from search comment....

2005-05-14T13:00:00.000-05:00

I've taken a long break from search engine news aggregation and comment. It wasn't something I really planned on, but it was something that I felt I needed to do. Sometimes we need to get a better perspective on what we're talking about, by not talking about it is much. I know that might not make much sense but there are times when we have to regroup and take a new look at how we do things.

Even in the short time that I've taken this break, search engines have changed quite a bit. I don't mean that they changed much in the way they function, but as many people know the results have been changing. The algorithms that we take for granted in search results have been changing and each particular search engine has its own new wrinkles. So I'm going to be writing about it again as I look at each individual search engine and hoping to gain a perspective that I haven't seen before. I think there are times to back away from things in order to see the big picture and I hope that's what I'm bringing here, not just for people who read this blog but also for myself.

More than anything else this commentary should be something that is enjoyable for myself and if it is, it will be enjoyable for others as well. I definitely find search marketing fascinating because every day can be a roll the dice, you never know what you may get or lose with the search engines.

Real results in web marketing, RealWebMarketing.com

AskJeeves getting bought.

2005-03-28T06:40:00.000-06:00

I'm sure you've all heard the news about Ask Jeeves that they're getting bought it really doesn't matter who's buying them. There's always somebody who thinks that they can do a better job at what's been done so far. But the truth is, the search engine will always be down the list. Not because it's bad or has irrelevant results, far from it. The reason is is that they're not on the radar screen of what people generally see as a major search engine. It doesn't matter who owns it, nothing is going to change in that area. It might be helpful as part of another piece of a business , but it will never overtake the likes of MSN, Google or Yahoo.

AutoLink, another way to redirect traffic.

2005-03-09T07:03:00.000-06:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about Google and auto linking which is a way to redirect search engine traffic to other sites. People may be wanting to go to your site at Google, but this feature will give people other alternatives and steer them to other web sites. A lot of people are angry about this because it detracts from their advertising campaign that they have with Google. I personally don't think it makes much difference as people are going to go where they want to. When it all comes down to where people want to go after a search, it's ultimately up to them. It's true that there may be more choices now and I think that's what bothers some people. The world of online advertising is becoming more and more competitive. Business owners and people who care about such things, should relax and understand that they're going to have to be competitive on many different levels to succeed in the future. It seems like whenever there's a new wrinkle in the online world, people get upset about it. There's no reason to really get upset because no matter what you do, you are somewhat at the mercy of search engines. So it makes sense not to be locked into one search engine or another and be stuck with only their results. I think it's good that people speak out about these type of things that search engines do, but it shouldn't distract from the main thrust of what they do online.

When it comes right down to it, there are a lot of cry babies online and nothing anyone does for them is any good. But if you look at it from a distance, most business that got serious online several years ago should be thankful for all the things that search engines have done and not focus on the little irritants that they sometimes provide.

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