The Axandra newsletter archive - 2 September 2003

Welcome to a new issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter. This summer is the summer of search engine toolbars. For this reason, we're giving you a complete overview of all major search engine toolbars. In the news: Google drops KaZaA, adds supplemental results and inadvertently spreads a virus. Table of contents: Facts of the week Search engine news of the week Articles of the week Recommended resources Previous articles 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, 1. Facts of the week: Complete overview of major search engine toolbars Many search engines now offer web browser toolbars so that you can instantly use their search engines whenever you have your browser window open. The search engine toolbars search the World Wide Web but they also offer additional useful features, for example there are pop-up window blockers, dictionary and stock quote lookup tools, translation features and much more. The most popular toolbar is the Google toolbar. However, other search engine toolbars offer features which the Google toolbar doesn't, for example searching for mobile phone ringtones, getting movie showtimes or searching the Yellow Pages. If you want, you can install several search engine toolbars at once in order to combine their features and to search different search engines. Make sure that you carefully read the terms and conditions of the toolbars because some of them record your surfing behavior. Here's a complete list of the currently available major search engine toolbars: Alexa toolbar Searches the Google search engine. Tools: pop-up window blocker, dictionary, thesaurus, news search, stock quotes Web page features: searches the currently displayed web page; displays traffic information, contact information and user reviews for the current web site; displays related links for the current web site; emails web page to a friend; shows archived versions of the current web page so that you can see how the web site looked like years ago Requires Internet Explorer 5.0+ Download AltaVista toolbar Searches the AltaVista search engine. Tools: pop-up window blocker, news search, image search, multimedia search, dictionary, weather, area code search, zip code search, currency exchange, conversion tool, global time Web page features: searches the current web page, searches the current web site, highlights search terms on the web page Special: The AltaVista toolbar is available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Requires Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Internet Explorer 5.0+ Download Ask Jeeves toolbar Searches the Ask Jeeves search engine and the Ask Jeeves Kids search engine. Tools: news search, dictionary lookup, stock quotes, weather, events search, USA map Web page features: zooms the current web page, highlights search terms on the web page, emails web page to a friend Requires Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Internet Explorer 5.0+ Download Dogpile toolbar Meta-searches 13 search engines, including Google, AllTheWeb, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, Overture and Teoma. Tools: image search, news search, shopping search, multimedia search, file search, Yellow Pages, White Pages, weather, maps, stock quotes, public records, horoscopes, dictionary, thesaurus, acronym finder Web page features: highlights search terms on the web page, emails web page to a friend Requires Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Internet Explorer 5.01+ Download Google toolbar Searches the Google search engine, the Google directory and lets you restrict searches to pages located in a specific country. Tools: pop-up window blocker, news search, image search, quickly fills in forms, adds links to a Blogger.com weblog, newsgroup search, dictionary, displays the Google PageRank score Web page features: highlights search terms on the web page, shows a cached version of the web page, finds similar pages, displays pages that link to the current page and searches within the pages of the current web site Requires Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, IE 5.0+ (the pop-up window blocker requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or later) Download HotBot deskbar Searches Google, HotBot, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Ebay, Amazon, Tucows and more than 200 other web sites. Unlike the other search engine toolbars, the HotBot deskbar installs into the Windows task bar. Tools: dictionary, thesaurus, weather, maps, stock quotes, calculator Requires Windows (no other requirements specified) Download Lycos.de toolbar Searches the Lycos.de search engine. Allows you to create your own MyLycos page with individual contents. Special: It's only available in German. Requires Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Internet Explorer 5.5+ Download Mini Jeeves toolbar (UK) Searches the Ask Jeeves UK search engine and provides quick access to the Ask Jeeves shopping channel and the travel channel. Tools: dictionary, thesaurus, finds mobil phone ringtones and icons Web page features: highlights search terms on the web page, emails web page to a friend Requires Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Internet Explorer 5.0+ Download Teoma search bar Searches the Teoma search engine Tools: dictionary Web page features: highlights search terms on the web page, emails web page to a friend Requires Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Internet Explorer 5.0+ Download Yahoo companion Searches the Yahoo directory. Tools: accesses Yahoo Mail, saves your bookmarks online, news search, image search, Yellow Pages search, address book, maps, dictionary, stock quotes, movie showtimes Web page features: highlight search terms on the web page Requires Internet Explorer 4.0+ Download All toolbars described above (except for the HotBot toolbar) are only available for Internet Explorer browsers. If you use Netscape 7, Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird, you might want to try the un-official Google toolbar. If you use an Apple Macintosh, you might want to try this one. AllTheWeb is the only major search engine that doesn't offer its own toolbar yet. However, AllTheWeb offers various other tools for Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera browsers. Next week, we're going to tell you what this overview has to do with improving the link popularity of your site. Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com 2. Search engine news of the week Sizing up the search competition "[...] Overture last week touted the newly extended index of its subsidiary AlltheWeb as larger than that of Google [...] To answer visitor queries, AlltheWeb mines nearly 3.2 billion unique pages [...] --roughly 68 million more pages than Google listed in its index at that time. But since then [...] Google has quietly leaped ahead again, expanding its database to more than 3.3 billion Web documents." Google quietly adds "supplemental results" "I have suddenly found a few hits that Google labels as 'Supplemental Result' [...] a little more searching turns up an answer on Google's How to Interpret your Search Results help page where it says that 'Google augments results for difficult queries by searching a supplemental collection of more web pages. Results from this index are marked in green as 'Supplemental'." See the "supplemental results" in action. Overture wins injunction against T-Online "Overture Services Inc. said [...] it had won an injunction from a German court forcing T-Online AG to reinstate the Overture search service on its home page, where it had been using Google Inc.'s service." Google roped into RIAA and KaZaA battle "[...] Google [...] has now been roped into the ongoing dispute between RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the makers of the KaZaA peer-to-peer software." Web search content ads seen falling short "Web search companies have hyped their new contextual services as the next big thing in Internet advertising, but early results by online marketers show those new ads may be underperforming expectations." Yahoo dips its toes in the blogging waters "The first blogging service to bear the Yahoo name has been launched by Yahoo Korea Corp. [...] One of the first major moves by a portal or search service to get a slice of the blogging pie came earlier this year when Google Inc. acquired Pyra Labs Inc., the company behind the Blogger Web site." Yahoo syndicates news headlines "Web content providers can easily create and disseminate feeds of data that include, for example, news links, headlines, and summaries. [...] The feeds are free of charge to use for individuals and non-profit organizations for non-commercial use." Search engine newslets "Google inadvertently spread the latest curse of the Internet yesterday, the Sobig.F worm that has been plaguing inboxes for more than a week.": "Web site owners can now share revenue with online advertising service provider ah-ha.com [...] approved sites can syndicate content from ah-ha.com via BannerBoxes, a new pay-per-click advertising solution that allows Web site owners to display ah-ha paid listings." Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com 3. Articles of the week "How Krishna Bharat made news with Google" This is an interesting article about how September 11, 2001 lead to the building of Google's news search. "Google Faces Battle Atop Search Engine Heap" "Still, there are other ways to search the Internet than through Google, something Google's many fans might not appreciate. Some search industry gurus even preach heresy: that Google isn't the field's technology leader anymore." Search Engine Relationship Chart "The search engine relationship chart shows the major search engines and the search engines that power their main, pay per click, web directory and backup search results." Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com 4. Recommended resources How to improve your link popularity Why is ARELIS the de-facto standard of the link popularity building tools? Maybe because it automatically finds possible link partners for you, or maybe because it creates link pages in the design of your web site, and it helps you to write link request emails. In a nutshell, it's simply indispensable to manage your reciprocal links campaigns. More information about ARELIS. Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com 5. Previous articles How to choose the right keywords for your site Nutch - an open source Google rival? Does advertising in PPC search engines really work? How to overcome spam filters in your linking campaign The new state of search View all past issues... Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

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