History of World,
Regional Search Engines, and Directories
Computers have become a way of life for people around the
world. They are used to research term papers, check weather
forecasts, track military progress, exchange ideas (blogs
and chat) and to find the cheapest price on items etc. It
is no surprise that as the computer age takes hold computer
usage has increased. The number of websites that are being
developed on the World Wide Web is growing at an ever increasing
exponential amount. And because we live in a quick-fix society,
with limited time on our hands, we need something to make
surfing the web a lot easier, something that will sort out
all this influx of information into a logical order.
Hence the wonder of search engines, which have transformed the
meaning of search and has made our jobs easier. This paper
focuses on search engine case studies around the world. Different
search engine regions selected for research in this paper
were: American, European, Canadian, Australian and the UK.
American Search Engines
Introduction
As of January 1, 2004 the estimated human population of the
United States of America was 292,287,428 and there were 164,100,000
computers (1). An estimated 90,000,000 households have access
to internet (2). With this many people surfing the web, curiosity
might cause one to wonder about the search engines being used
in America. Two of the most popular and well known search
engines in America are Google and Yahoo. Although most people
have a preference to one or the other search engine it is
difficult to say one is truly better than the other as the
quality of search is similar. According to some users, Google
is the most powerful search engine in the world (3). However,
others users argue that between the two search engines, "There
is an imperceptible difference in the quality and relevancy
of results." (3).
History of Google
Google, www.google.com,
was created by two Stanford University students. The original
name was BackRub but by 1998 the name had been changed to
Google and it became a private company (4). A Googol is (10100),
the word Google was created as a variation (5). Some argue
that Google is the top search engine in the world and indeed
it has become so popular that it is now known as a verb (5).
General Information
Google has grown from indexing 25,000,000 pages in November
of 1998 to 4,285,199,774 pages in of June 2004 (6). Google
is a crawler based search engine, meaning that the search
engine sends out crawlers which automatically visit sites,
follow links and create indexes which are then searchable
(7). Google is currently in a legal battle with the court
systems to keep its name out of the dictionary (5). Google
was the first major search engine to index non-HTML web content
allowing PDF files to be accessed (8). Google also offers
services such as "cached" links that allows a user to view
older versions of pages. Other features include spell check,
dictionary definitions, integration of stock quotes, street
maps, and telephone numbers (4).
Google Homepage
The home page offers a user many convenient features. Google
has an easy to use tool bar that users can download onto their
personal computers (3). If a user wants to search specifically
for pictures the "Images" button will give them access to
the entire web but only those results containing images will
show up. The "Groups" button allows users to participate in
discussions that are taking place on Usenet newsgroups. The
"News" button will provide headline news stories and you can
have news alerts on specific subjects sent directly to your
email.
"Froogle" is a simple, easy way for a user to search for
a bargain or even a specific item online. The "more" link
provides access to human-compiled information from the "Directory",
allows a user to get travel information or even simply use
a calculator. The "Advanced Search" will allow a user to limit
a search to PDFs or .edu search results. "Preferences" allows
customization of Google services. "Language Tools" will translate
any website or article into an understandable language. If
you're curious about Advertising, Business Solutions or about
Google, click below the search box on one of the links. The
"I'm Feeling Lucky" button will take a user directly to the
first page result of their search and not show any other pages.
Google lists its sponsored links separately from its general
search results.
History of Yahoo
Yahoo, www.yahoo.com, was created in 1994 (4). Most people
are familiar with the phrase, "Do You Yahoo?" created as a
Yahoo advertising slogan.
General Information
In 2004 Yahoo is believed to be indexing about 3 billion
pages (9). Yahoo is the oldest directory, "relying on human
editors to organize web sites into categories" however, Yahoo
decided to make a giant shift towards crawler based listings
in October of 2002 (4). Yahoo previously relied on Google
for search results but in February of 2004 Yahoo created its
own search technology (4). "It is important to note the new
search engine is for web results only. Image search is still
powered by Google, and News search is a combination of Yahoo's
own editorial and technological resources." (10). Yahoo has
many of the same features Google provides such as "cashed"
links, spell check, dictionary, yellow pages, and mapping
programs. Yahoo also provides email services for free as long
as the user doesn't mind sharing the page with advertisements.
In fact, Yahoo's knowledge and experience from the email services
are believed to be helpful in providing Yahoo with a deeper
understanding of spam and an ability to keep it out of their
web page index (10).
Yahoo Homepage
Yahoo's home page is cluttered compared to the simple format
of Google. Yahoo has the typical advanced search options and
preferences allowing for customization of features. To the
right of the search box is a pull tab that allows a user to
limit their search to the web, images, yellow pages, news,
or product information. A user can look up movie times, send
yahoo greetings, search for a house, or find travel information,
just to name a few things. Yahoo's website directory has sites
organized by subjects such as, education, science, health,
and government. Towards the bottom of the page is a list of
local Yahoo's. Who knew that there was a Yahoo Singapore let
alone a Yahoo Catalan. Like Google, Yahoo lists its sponsored
links separately from its general search results.
European Search Engines
Introduction
There are 44 nations in the European region. These countries
are home to 567,095,995 people, 9.33% of the world's population
(11). Each of these countries has at least one regional public
search engine. Some of them have several (12). Booz-Allen
& Hamilton, one of the United States' older and more respected
consulting firms conducted a study which pointed out that
"?22% of European households have access to the Internet"
and in 2004 it is expected that, "Western Europe should have
more than 215,000,000 users on the Internet on at least a
quarterly basis (13)."
The countries of Europe have been involved in a long and
complex process of European integration. The EU was formed
1 November 1993 and is a union of 25 independent states (Appendix
1) (14). As one of its objectives; the EU has taken on the
challenge of integrating member states and surrounding countries
to provide them with stable Internet and E-commerce development
and growth (15). Alltheweb and Ezilon are two of the many
search engine companies that are seeking to capitalize on
the opportunity provided by the EU integration.
History of Alltheweb
Fast Search and Transfer (Fast) ASA started business operations
in 1997 in Oslo, Norway. In June 2001 they went public. Fast
is an outgrowth of academic research and development from
the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (16). Fast
Search and Transfer launched Alltheweb in May 1999 and gave
it the brand name of "Fast" until 2001, when the site was
redesigned under the "Alltheweb" brand. Alltheweb, www.alltheweb.com,
then became a public search engine and technology showcase
for the Fast Search Company (17). In February of 2003, Overture
announced they would purchase Alltheweb from Fast. The acquisition,
coupled with their previous announcement to purchase the AltaVista
Company, helped Overture to bolster their leadership in commercial
search and aligned the company to create the most comprehensive
search capability on the Internet (18). Yahoo! Corporation
bought Overture on October 7, 2003 to fortify itself for an
eventual showdown with Google and Microsoft (19).
General Information
Alltheweb now has all of the indexing power of Google. Through
the acquisition process, Alltheweb has increased its prowess
to become a leader in the search engine community throughout
Europe (19). Its employees strive to help Yahoo provide the
best public search engine not just in Europe, but the world.
Alltheweb Homepage
Pulling up the Alltheweb homepage (20) the user is provided
with a simple and easy to navigate site. Alltheweb homepage
contains five tabs: web, news, pictures, video and audio.
However, the user has to search for a specific topic to find
information in these categories rather than information being
available for them on the site. All "sponsored links" are
viewed to the right of the page where they are available if
desired. Only after glancing through all of the paid links
does the viewer come to the most relevant search returns.
On completion of a search for a topic the user is provided
with an option to "Refine your search" which provides further
subcategories on the topic. Other features offered on Alltheweb
are the ability to filter potential offensive content, restrict
the number of results per page, highlight search terms, change
text size, and the ability to open search results in a new
window. You can select up to 8 preferred languages from a
list of 36.
History of Ezilon
Ezilon.com search engine was founded to allow individuals
and companies around the world to access information easily,
particularly by the EU community. (21) The Ezilon homepage
states that Ezilon.com is a European Union International Search
Engine and Directory. (22)
General Information
Ezilon search engine provides a searchable directory for
European websites ranging from Europe travel links, business,
hotels, news and classified ads and most especially links
from the Western European countries. They also accept listings
for non EU websites, but they must have contents of interest
to the EU or general Europe. (23)
Ezilon Homepage
Ezilon homepage has immediately accessible information on
it. Unlike other websites which present "Sponsored links"
Ezilon provides "Sponsored matches" prior to the search results.
Ezilon's "Sponsored matches" can be viewed to the right of
the page.
Ezilon specializes, through the guidance of the EU, in pooling
and distributing information for the advancement of a united
Europe. Other convenient features available to users are:
popular links, weather forecast and headline news. Various
categories are available for search e.g., art, science, business,
technology etc. Users have an option to search the EU, UK
or the World. In addition to all above mentioned features
free email is provided to members of Ezilon.
Canadian Search Engines
Introduction
As of July 1, 2004 estimated population of Canada is 32,247,874
with 16,19,000 internet users (24). Canada today stands at
the number 7 position among countries with internet users
(25). There are 13 provinces and territories in Canada and
the usage of search engines varies by these provinces and
territories (26). This section will focus on only two of the
top five most commonly used Canadian Search Engines: AltaVista
Canada and AOL Canada (27). The following sections will provide
a brief history, general information and information about
the homepages of these two search engines.
History of AltaVista Canada
AltaVista, which means "a view from above," was inspired
by the creation of big ideas from a team of experts with fascination
for keeping track of information (28). During the spring of
1995, scientists at Digital Equipment Corporation's Research
lab in Palo Alto, CA, devised a way to store every word of
every HTML page on the internet in a fast searchable index
(28). This led to AltaVista's development of the first searchable,
full text database on the World Wide Web (28). Compaq became
the owner of AltaVista after it purchased Digital in 1998.
AltaVista was later spun off into a private company, controlled
by CMGI. Overture, purchased the AltaVista in April 2003,
eventually Overture became part of Yahoo which led to the
ownership transfer of AltaVista to Yahoo (29). AltaVista Canada
was launched in January of 1998. Over 1,500,000 unique users
visited the site and traffic to the site grew by over 300%
within the first year of its launch. AltaVista Canada was
a result of an agreement between TELUS advertising Services
and Compaq Computer Corp.'s AltaVista Search Service (30).
General Information
AltaVista was the first to deliver internet's first Web Index
in 1995. It was also the first in offering multilingual search
capabilities on the internet and to launch image, audio and
video search capabilities. It has been awarded 61 search-related
patents, more than any other internet search company (28).
AltaVista is great for international sites. It will find sites
not only in English on a topic, but in just about every language
imaginable. In case the user isn't bilingual, Alta Vista also
includes a very handy translation tool (31).
AltaVista Canada Homepage
The homepage of AltaVista offers users various convenient
and easy to use features. The homepage houses Canadian web
index of more than 14,000,000 pages. It allows you to search
worldwide or within Canada. For the convenience of its users,
AltaVista Canada provides a feature to select a language in
which to present the results of its search. AltaVista provides
a toolbar which is free, customizable and gives the user the
research tools to perform searches and translations from their
own browser anywhere on the web. Popup blocker feature on
the toolbar gets rid of annoying pop-ups. The "Web search"
searches within all AltaVista indexes, including the best
image search on the web. The homepage also provides specific
features that help you narrow your search for only images,
music files, videos, news and directory based on specific
topic. "Advanced search" option provides different features
for search options e.g., phrase, keywords, date, file type,
location and sites per page option.
History of AOL Canada
AOL Canada Inc. is a leading interactive service company
focused on enhancing Canadians online user experience. The
company is a strategic alliance between American Online, Inc.,
a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner and RBC Royal Bank,
the personal and commercial banking division of RBC Financial,
one of North America's leading diversified financial services
companies. This alliance took place on July, 1999. The company
operates three interactive online services tailored to the
Canadian marketplace, AOL English and French services, CompuServe
and Netscape Online as well as several leading Internet brands
including AOL.CA, AOL Canada Search, AOL Instant Messenger
(AIM), Netscape.ca and MapQuest (32).
General Information
Members of AOL Canada Inc. have an added advantage. In addition
to regular Web access, clients may choose to surf inside of
the AOL environment, which is only available to AOL Canada
Inc. members. Inside the AOL environment, members receive
a great deal of Canadian content that has been streamlined
to meet their needs. Surfing on the World Wide Web can sometimes
be overwhelming and frustrating due to the excessive amount
of information available. AOL Canada Inc. has chosen the most
popular channels and listed them on the Channel Menu, each
channel offering an abundant amount of information provided
by AOL Canada Inc. and their partners on that particular topic
(33).
Homepage of AOL Canada
AOL Canada's homepage presents a variety of features to make
search and web surfing easier for its users. Some features
presented on its main page are: a sign in for AOL instant
messenger, mail, parental control, reminders and calendar
etc. It has a section for "Shopping online" which gives its
users an option to choose the specific item they are shopping
for. "Web channels" feature gives users a chance to search
the web for careers, auto, entertainment, health news, sports
etc. It also contains a section for yellow and white pages
search. Users can search for people or places in this section.
AOL Canada search, which is powered by Google, gives users
a chance to search by topic or key words. The "Advanced search"
feature only has options for words and phrases rather than
file type or specific sites e.g. .edu or .org. Search results
include "Sponsored links" and matching sites. It also has
a "devices" tab where AOL offers Palm Organizers. Other information
included on the homepage is company information, news, pricing
plans, employment and contact information.
Australian Search Engine
Introduction
Although the internet is globally accessible, the majority
of its users reside in the more developed nations where computer
usage is most common. Australia has a high percentage of computer
usage which resulted in increased usage of the internet and
development of search engines. The Australian population is
currently 20,141,793 (34) with 10,600,000 (35) computer users.
Of which 9,240,000 (24) have internet access.
History of Web Wombat
As computers were being integrated into Australian businesses
and homes, companies, such as Web Wombat, began to develop
search engines to make information more accessible to Australians
and the world. As the internet grew and more pages began to
be indexed, Web Wombat turned its focus inward on Australia
(36). This strategy proved to be very successful as evident
by the fact that today Web Wombat's spiders crawl the web
for new sites to add to its already vast cache of 100,000,000
web sites, making it Australia's leading search engine (37).
Homepage of Web Wombat
Web Wombat indexes and stores a tremendous amount of information
and the way in which they chose to present it is slightly
different than other search engines. The lay out of Web Wombat's
home page is initially dominated by advertisements. To the
left of the home page there is a box titled "Premium links"
which are not organized in any specific order. An example
of this is the fact that, of the twenty one listings within
the box, there are three separate links to car rental sites,
two to hotels, and miscellaneous links to things such as online
dating. This information would be more useful to consumers
if it were categorized in some fashion within a directory
or if it were displayed to the side of a related search. Under
the "Premium links" box is the "Daily resources box" which
provides links ranging from links to world newspapers to Grumpy's
humor. At the top of the page there are a number of headings
ranging from careers and education to auctions.
The interesting thing is that when you click on auctions
it takes you directly to ebay.com.au. However, the careers
and education tab is far more objective. This link provides
a menu on the left with a variety of helpful links and then
articles with links in the center of the page. The "Search"
field is displayed in the center of the page however; it is
not very prominent once barraged by ads, premium links and
advertisements. The "Advanced search" has an interesting feature
which enables people to search by "nice to have words", "must
have words", "nice to have phrase", and the ability to eliminate
certain words. This feature becomes very convenient when a
user wishes to narrow the results to a desired city under
"nice to have words". By focusing the search in such a way,
the information delivered is made more relevant without eliminating
too many possible matches. Another nice feature is that "Advanced
search" enables people to specifically search all Australian
pages, Australian government sites, or Australian educational
pages.
UK Search Engines
Introduction
The population of UK as of July 2004 is 60,270,708 with 25,000,000
internet users (24). There are approximately 40 top Search
engines in the UK; some of them are familiar to the United
Stated such as Google, Yahoo and Overture. These search engines
are custom suited to have optional searches, whether regional
searches within the UK or on the Entire World Wide Web. Some
search engines within the UK are more specialized; where you
have to pay a subscription to use that particular search engine,
for example UK Plus and UK Index. And some search engines
like Great British Pages, only search for British websites
(39). Being a developed country, it is not surprising that
the UK has a large number of search engines. The following
section of the paper is focused on UK originated search engines.
History of Excite
Excite was originally formed in 1993 by five Stanford university
graduates who called their search engine Architext. This was
further developed by students attending Stanford and in 1994
Excite Inc. came about and was launched in 1995. Excite only
acquired a web crawler in November 1996 and over the years
they added features and software and the option of search
on the World Wide Web. Regional search engines such as Excite
UK were added to their search engine. Excite has an index
of 250,000,000 pages and multimedia items in 2000 and about
19,000,000 monthly users (40).
General Information
Using a specific UK search engine such as Excite UK can be
beneficial. Excite UK will limit your search geographically
and the users results will come out in a smaller scale providing
more relevant results (41). If a user in the UK wants to find
out about local news or check the stock of UK companies a
regional search engine will provide more relevant information.
Excite Homepage
Features of Excite UK are different compared to the usual
"dot com" American search engines. The Excite UK search engine
homepage has the search box in a prominent position at the
top of the page with options located below to search the World
Wide Web or only UK sites. In this respect it is a dual search
engine (UK and World Wide Web) (40, 42). Excite UK has a General
User Interface (GUI) which is very busy, meaning that it has
a lot of information on its homepage ranging from UK news
headlines and images, UK stocks, UK online shopping, UK stores,
standard horoscopes, local weather, a directory, and various
other services targeted for people living in the UK (42).
The Excite homepage is also customizable, in that you are
able to change the color of the homepage (skins) according
to your favorite color or to the colors of your favorite football
team. Besides just searching the web on Excite, you can search
using "Categories" for images, videos, mp3s, news, and people.
The excite UK homepage also has a currency calculator under
the "Tools" section. Excite UK displays minimum advertising.
When a user clicks on the "More" button different subcategories
within a search can be selected (43).
Conclusion
Search engines have become an integral part of internet use
for the average computer user. As more information becomes
accessible on the internet, the need for credible search engines
increases. As Professor Krishnamurthy stated in class, the
amount of content available on the internet has grown exponentially
in recent years and as it grows people's search cost will
increase unless search technology improves (38). Throughout
the world, internet users are provided with various search
engines that offer different features depending on their user
needs. The fulfillment of these needs result in the success
of search engines around the world.
If you are thinking of buying an
SEO software application, here are some programs that actually
work as advertised and the reason why they are recommended
by FreeSEOTutorials.com
Seo
Elite: New Seo Software! The Grand Daddy
Of All Seo Software! Get A Top 5 Google Ranking In Under
30 Days!
www.SEOElite.com |
| |
| |
Still haven't found what you're looking for?
Search below to find what you need:
|
