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| The Axandra newsletter archive - 29 July 2003 |
| Welcome to a new issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.
This week, we're giving you a summary about the acquisitions that changed the search engine industry in the past six months.
In addition, there are several news stories and articles that help you to keep up with the ever changing search engine world.
Table of contents:
We hope that you enjoy this issue and that it helps you to get more out of your web site. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Best regards,
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| 1. Facts of the week: The new state of search |
| This year is a very exciting year in the business world of search engines. Overture buys AltaVista, then it buys AllTheWeb, then Yahoo buys Overture, then Yahoo buys Inktomi, then it buys Overture... can you keep up with the changes?
Here's a quick chart of this year's mergers and acquisitions:
January 2, 2003:
Yahoo buys Inktomi, a leading provider of OEM web search and paid inclusion services.
February 17, 2003:
The Spanish telecommunication company Telephonica buys the search engine Lycos. Google buys Pyra, blog technology developers and the largest blog community.
February 19, 2003:
Overture buys AltaVista, the oldest surviving search engine and still a strong brand name.
February 26, 2003:
Overture buys another search engine, AllTheWeb, which offers the second largest search database.
June 24, 2003:
The United States-based FindWhat merged with the European-based Espotting, both providing pay per click search results to other search engines.
July 2, 2003:
Microsoft announces the development of its own search engine spider program.
July 15, 2003:
Yahoo buys Overture, including the assets of AltaVista and AllTheWeb.
So there are only four major search companies left:
- Google, the most visited search engine with the largest number of indexed web sites.
- Yahoo, which is now in control of all search services, from algorithmic (AllTheWeb, AltaVista) to paid search (Overture) to paid inclusion (Inktomi).
- FindWhat/Espotting. As they only offer pay per click services, they are likely to be purchased by another company.
- Microsoft (search.msn.com), which is currently developing ts own search engine crawler. Industry watchers anticipate a major purchase from Microsoft in the near future. Possible candidates are Ask Jeeves & Teoma, FindWhat/Espotting or LookSmart.
What does this mean to you?
The search business world is changing rapidly and you have to keep track of the changes to make sure that your site remains listed in all important search engines. Visitors from search engines are an important and very targeted source of traffic.
This newsletter keeps you up-to-date on the latest changes, mergers and acquisitions and it informs you about the latest tips on how to improve your rankings.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
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| 2. Search engine news of the week |
Overture, Knight Ridder ink search pact
"Overture Services announced [...] that it struck a one- year exclusive deal with Knight Ridder Digital to provide both algorithmic and paid search services. [...]
Knight Ridder Digital, which encompasses 32 Web sites for newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and San Jose Mercury News, will use Overture's algorithmic search [...] The Web search results page will also include up to seven paid search results from Overture's network of 95,000 advertisers."
Sympatico.ca selects Overture as search provider
"Overture Services [...] announced an exclusive, two-year agreement to provide its full suite of search products to the English version of Sympatico.ca, a leading Canadian Internet portal owned and operated by Bell Canada."
Google adds a new interface to its AdWords program
"Based on direct feedback from our advertisers, we've improved the Google AdWords account interface. [...] Among the many changes, you'll enjoy: account-wide search functionality, personalized reports, faster campaign loading [...]"
Google, Weather.com ink content-ad deal
"Google and Weather.com announced [...] a deal that puts the search giant's contextual advertising links on Weather.com searches."
MSN stays wed to Overture, for now
"Microsoft's MSN Web portal will maintain its relationship with paid search partner Overture Services while it explores long-term alternatives, a top executive has reaffirmed."
AllTheWeb now lets you search Excel and PowerPoint files
"It appears that AllTheWeb is now providing access to Excel and Powerpoint material. You can limit to these formats by using filetype:excel and filetype:powerpoint. ATW already provides access to Adobe Acrobat, MS Word, and Macromedia Flash material."
Search engine newslets
Steve Berkowitz has been named president of Ask Jeeves. "PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has verified that the MSN network of Internet services now attracts 350 million unique worldwide users per month. [...] The 350 million users milestone represents a 17 percent increase since September 2002.", says Microsoft in this press release.
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US Bandwidth Report
"As of June 2003, most users in the US connect to the Internet using dial-up modems of 56Kbps or less. 51.4% use 56Kbps modems, 9% use 28/33.3Kbps, and 2.9% use 14.4Kbps modems. In total, 63.3% of home users in the US connect to the Internet at 56Kbps or less."
"Patently, idea can pay off"
"Even with the economy slow, patents remain a kind of secondary currency. Yahoo's chief executive, Terry Semel, said this month that Overture's 60-plus patents were a chief reason behind his decision to acquire the pay-for- placement search engine company for $1.6 billion."
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
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If you want to obtain high search engine rankings, we highly recommend these three web site promotion tools:
- Link Popularity Check. This freeware application tells you the link popularity score for your web site and those of your competitors. It's freeware, so download it now.
- ARELIS: It's the de-facto standard in link popularity building tools. It automatically finds possible link partners for you, it creates link pages in the design of your web site and it's indispensable in managing your reciprocal links campaigns. You can download a trial version here.
- IBP: The Internet Business Promoter (IBP) program keeps what its name promises. Besides keyword density and search engine ranking tools, it offers the unique Top 10 Analyzer tool. This tool allows you to analyze the top 10 ranked web sites on any search engine and to compare them with your own web site. It provides specific advice on how to get a top 10 ranking for your web site, for any keyword and search engine. You can download the free Lite edition here.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
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