On spiders and search engines

On the last few days when analyzing the logs of a site I have seen 2 interesting spiders:

First is Google AdSense and authentificates itself as a spider. Usually after it comes Googlebot. What is more curious is that the site didn’t had AdSense

The second authentificates itself as a user and it’s eating a lot of pages. Apparently it’s origin is http://beta.exalead.com/search/C=0/?2u=3. This seem to be a new search engine with some very good features.

• results clustering
• audio/video search
• clean interface apparently ajax based (can anyone figure for wahat are the boxes below the serach box on the main page?Personalization?)
• multiple ways to see the results
• filtering results based on GeoIP(?)

It seems that they started digging from DMOZ like Google. From the amount the pages I have seen on that site they seem prepared to ingest a large amount of data.

While writing this post I found this on their site:

Bred from the prestigious Ecole des Mines in Paris, the founding members of Exalead cut their teeth on the first generation of Web search engines. Since the creation of Exalead in 2000, they have concentrated their efforts on facilitating access to their client’s information bases for all users: Employees, customers, suppliers, and the general public.

It has also been mentioned on Search Engine Watch

You can spot the spiders if you look in visitors after: ng21.exabot.com

Pretty good european job. Waiting for the Desktop Beta

Posted in Google, Search Engines News | 1 Comment »

Yahoo Dance :)

Yahoo just announced on their blog a new update of their index:

This is our second weather report. We will be making changes to the index tonight so you should be seeing more of your pages in the index as well as some fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches.

Let’s play the “Conspiracy Game” and read between the the lines….
We will see this:

It promises to be hot, humid and rainy down on Bourbon Street

If we are playing the game we will see the threat….but we are not paranoid …aren’t we?

Posted in Breaking News, Google, Search Engines News, Yahoo | 1 Comment »

Yahoo aims again at Skype

Check this out :

Xten joins the Yahoo! Messenger arsenal: now what? OK, here’s what by ZDNet’s Russell Shaw — Now this is getting real interesting.Late yesterday, Xten Networks, which makes VoIP-enabled softphones, said that Yahoo! has licenced the Xten eyeBeam software development kit to deliver SIP-based VoIP in Yahoo! Messenger.Yahoo! Messenger director (now that sounds like a fun job) Frazier Miller said that the app will be for PC-to-PC calling.Earlier this week if you remember (or even [...]

Well they seem pretty decided to conquer VoIP market.
The only big mistake they can do now is to make a subscription service from the Pc to Pc calls.
That’s the third aquisition this week…..

Posted in General, Yahoo | No Comments »

Yahoo gets serious with VoIP

Eventhough latest IM product is VoIP enabled the quality is not always the best. To compensate this they made another quick move and:

Barely a month after launching its own VoIP enabled IM beta product, the company snapped up DialPad, a VoIP company that sells PC2PC and PC2Phone services to consumers. “What we saw in DialPad was quick way to add PC2Phone and inbound calls,” says Joanna Stevens, Yahoo’s VP of Corporate Communications. Yahoo will integrate Dialpad’s services with its new IM product.

Source

Advancedippipeline asks themselves:

How long until Microsoft and Google react?

I don’t say anything about Microsoft because they have MSN Messenger. But Google…ahem. Err with what to react? With a Hello?

Posted in Breaking News, General, Google, Yahoo | 1 Comment »

Yahoo Browser?

Everyone has heard the rumors on the Gbrowser but no official comments from Google.

Again Yahoo seems to make a step further further than their competitors:

Yahoo Inc., owner of the most-visited Web site, may consider developing its own Internet browser to help attract more users and advertisers toits Web sites, Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel said.

“You could look to Yahoo to do most everything that makes sense on the Internet going forward,” Semel said Friday in an interview in New York. Developing a browser may make sense “at some point in time,” he said.

Source

Corelate that piece of info with:

However, a Yahoo spokesperson told ZDNet Australia on Tuesday( 16 March 2005) that the company would not launch any new products or services in the future without ensuring that they work on both IE and Firefox.

Source

And with the fact that 3 months later:

Yahoo has quietly updated its Instant Messenger software to be fully compatible with Firefox, almost three months after the company pledged to do so.

Source

And you will see on what Yahoo research labs are working and why they love Foxes…errrrrrr Deers

That proves once again how Yahoo has a good and very clear strategy while Google lacks one

Posted in General, Google, Search Engines News, Yahoo | 2 Comments »

Google cheat sheet

Spotted via Yahoo! News comes Google Cheat Sheet.

This reference document is part of a site that seems to be a good presentation of how Google works. Recomended for novice and adavanced users

I’ll use it for sure on my next presentation of search engines

Posted in General, Google, Search Engines News | No Comments »

Google’s Value

After its shares hit an all-time high on the New York markets on Tuesday, Google is now worth $80bn (£44bn).

Link

Hmmmm a litlle weird but expected

Posted in General, Google | No Comments »

Fear of search engines?

Barry has an article called Search Engine Guidelines Scare Webmasters that reffers to a thread at Search Engine Watch. I won’t discuss the thread here but the ideea behind.

Since when clean webmasters should fear “search engines” (read Google)? Between webmasters and search engines is a reciprocal relationship. They give us traffic and we give them content. It’s a win/win situation. But when search engines start making dictatorial rules (do this, do that, don’t dare to do that) webmasters should remember that one way or another, more or less, they have a public they can place their influence on and they could promote a much friendlier search engine.

No one has the right to tell webmasters with good “intent” what to do.

Google was promoted by webmasters and they should keep that in their minds

Posted in General, Google, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

2 more Google Sitemaps plugins for Word Press

Google Sitemap Generator v2 (hehehe already v2 )

Features:

• Full WordPress Plugin Support (just copy it in your plugin directory and activate it)
• Administration UI (Customize setting like change frequency from your WordPress Admin Center)
• Creates a static xml file called sitemap.xml in your blog directory
• Gets automatic rebuilt if you edit/write/publish a post
• EDIT:Includes Homepage, Posts, Static Pages, Categories and Archives

A mix of existing ones

Features:

• include posts, pages and category pages
• be configured as to what is included, the frequency and the priority
• gzip everything automatically
• generate only if necessary: It uses a backup file if there are no recent changes, and otherwise generates a new backup.

No time to test now gtg to Alex. But I bet the the second is the best It includes static pages. Hmmmm Word Press community was pretty fast on this. Guess who’s blogs will score better

Posted in General, Google, Search Engine Optimization | 6 Comments »

So you want to make a directory?

A good article points out some good rules to make your fresh directory score better in Google

There are no big discoveries in it but a good roadmap for those who want to start one

Posted in General, Google, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines News, Yahoo | No Comments »