This is the last issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter before Christmas. It has been a great year! We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your support and suggestions.

We'd like to wish you and yours the very best of the Holiday Season and we look forward to supplying search engine ranking facts to you again in 2004.

In the news: Google launches a book search service and adds five languages to AdSense, search engine Vivisimo launches a new search bar for clustered search results and the BBC discusses the quality of Google's search results.

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.

"Google has begun trialing a search tool that enables individuals to search text within 60,000 book titles, following Amazon's launch of a 'search inside the book' feature in October.

The trial is part of Google's ongoing mission to boost its search features under increasing competition."

Google's AdSense adds five languages

"Google will expand its contextual paid listings program to Web sites published in five foreign languages, the company said Friday.

The search company said its AdSense program, which serves targeted text listings on Web sites, would add Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese. Previously, AdSense was available only in English."

LookSmart introduces its customers to keywords

"Facing a dire situation as the expiration of its paid inclusion contract with MSN approaches, paid search player LookSmart will begin distributing its paid inclusion customers' listings through its bid-for-placement distribution network."

Kanoodle debuts set-and-forget search terms

"With AutoScheduler, advertisers can set search terms to automatically go live or dead at specific times, with no need for manual adjustment. Businesses that don't ship internationally, for example, could choose to turn off their search terms between midnight and 5 a.m., when customers are unlikely to shop online."

Vivisimo launches MiniBar

"Vivisimo [...] today announced the immediate availability of a free browser utility, the MiniBar, that lets users view clustered search results from any web page."

"In my opinion, Google today is far from the great search engine it was in those far-off days, yet I still use it.

Even knowing that it indexes only a small proportion of the web using a technique that too often gives precedence to pages that lack authority or coherence, that it is skewed by multiple blog links and can be manipulated by unscrupulous advertisers, doesn't stop me typing search terms into my toolbar and feasting on the results. [...]

It may be slightly early for resolutions, but I am going to make one anyway. 2004 will be the year I break my addiction to Google and improve the quality of my searching. I owe it to myself."

Google unleashed

"The world's biggest, best-loved search engine owes its success to supreme technology and a simple rule: Don't be evil. Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business."

Some see Google Dutch auction in 2004

"With no initial public offerings on the calendar for the rest of the year, talk has turned to 2004 and increasing speculation over an anticipated Google offering. [...]

When the Internet search engine company finally does go public, perhaps sometime in the first half of next year, some are suggesting the expected $16 billion offering might be made in a 'Dutch auction,' as opposed to the traditional Wall Street route through investment bank underwriters."

Internet maps raise fears about abuse

"Internet mapping services are powerful and simple: Type a phone number into Google or other sites for a map with door-to-door directions. Finding someone has never been easier.

Now those resources are provoking a backlash. People worried about stalkers or worse are striking their particulars from phone and Internet listings."

Where the Net is heading in 2004

"Everyone guns for Google, [...] your cable company is your phone company, [...] the international digital divide shrinks."

"ARELIS is a top notch link exchange manager. No need to pay for service, manage and customize just the way you like it. I tried the free version, and not long after moved to the full business version. My webmaster life has gotten much easier ever since."
Derek Arnold, BullMarketer.com

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