My Green Corner

“Search Engine” and “Web Directory” are two different search concepts. Normally, the users tend to use search engines by typing in keywords into a search box. It is a quick and easy way to locate any specific information on the internet. Although these two terms reflect the similar connotations but they differ from each other significantly.

‘Search engines indices’ are built up by robots or crawlers while the ‘Web Directories’ build up their indices through human editors. There exists a mix where search engines and directories contain both a computer-generated index and a human generated index. Such types of ‘mixed-indices-configuration’ are known as the “hybrids”.

“Search Engine” and “Web Directory” are two different identities related to the search services available to the Web community. Many times both these terms have been understood as reflecting the same meaning and this becomes confusing.

Understanding ‘Search Engines’ becomes easier with some popular names like ‘Google’, ‘Inktomi’, ‘AltaVista’, and ‘AlltheWeb’. These are forms of search engines. These search engines write programs known as robots, crawlers, and spiders that have the three major functions. The first function is to locate web pages. Second function is to read the contents of the web pages and the third major function is to report its findings back to the search engine’s indices or databases.

Normally the search engines plan to update their index either on a bi-monthly or monthly basis. When web searchers use a search engine to locate web sites that are relevant to the keyword search, they are actually searching the search engine’s index. A search engine with a larger and more up-to-date index therefore is a better representation of the information available within the website realm and it gives out the most relevant and most recent search results.

‘Web Directories” on the other hand, can be best understood with a visualization of popular names including ‘Yahoo!’, ‘dmoz.org’ (Open Directory Project), and ‘Gimpsy’. These all are forms of ‘web directories’. These web-directories use human editors to review different websites that are submitted for submission to the directory. Directories, unlike search engines, use a hierarchical tree structure to organize their database.

Another common differentiating factor is that a directory tends to list websites with specific reference to the root directory of a site or homepage whereas a search engine will list web pages in reference to the individual pages of a website. Because of their dependency on the manual processes of adding sites to a directory, the web directories normally require to supplement their search results with a search engine partner to increase the relevancy of the produced search results.

Working of the web directories does not involve all those complexities like algorithms, robots, search spiders, and crawlers and this makes them comparatively simpler in operation. Search engines, on the other hand, have to be understood properly regarding their working mechanisms.

Search engines necessarily have their own confidential algorithms that determine which Web pages are to be shown first. The algorithms assign weights to certain components or variables that it finds within a page. Some specific search engines consider the text within the title of the page as determinants. Title of a page becomes important to search engines in such search environments and the search engine gives it a higher weight. There are three major reasons. Firstly, it is displayed on the top of the menu bar in the search browser. Secondly, the title is displayed in the search engine results page and thirdly the title is displayed in the search browser bookmarks when this particular page is added as the “favorites” or “bookmarks”.

The particular weights priorities enable the search engine’s algorithms to synchronize and show one Web page over another, determining the page ranks. The specific variables and the suggested weights assigned to those variables are for a separate article. If a webmaster intends to promote his website and want users to find his site, it must be ensured by the webmaster that a search engine spider makes an access to his site and read the respective code. Once this is ensured a webmaster should proceed to make efforts in ensuring that content is written in contextual manner and contains targeted keyword specific language.

Search engines and Web directories have different technology and business practice bases. “Search Engines” use complex algorithms to facilitate the end user to find and locate the answer they are seeking out of a particular search operation. On a different note, the “Web Directories” use a hierarchical tree-like structure to navigate the end user to the information of interest. Both are valid methods to search and both have their pros and cons. They both however have the same basic objective, to help the end user locate a site of interest.

“Web Directories” require a browsing through their hierarchical structure instead of the searched structure. Humans assign titles and descriptions that might not be within the source code of the page. Web directories may also have a submission fee for adding a particular website to a particular category classification on it. The submission fee is to cover the costs of having the human editors review the site. Most directories will only add a new site if it has unique content that is presented in a professional manner by a legitimate company. However, the number of web directories with no submission fee or subscription fee is growing as a new concept.

Google is planning for the addition of a new technology to its top popular ‘AdSense Program’ sometime during the month of February this year. This technology will facilitate detecting “Domain Kitting”, a common practice among many of the domain marketers and domain registrants. Internet experts across the world have expressed their concern over the practice that is causing problems in many ways.

Numerous Internet marketers and domain registrants are making huge profits in the domain registration space business presently. This tremendous potential of this business has attracted many of the miss-users who find it as a good ‘get rich quick’ idea.

‘Domain kiting’ is extremely common and popular among the domain registrants across the globe. It is a practice to play with the standard five-day grace period at the beginning of the registration of an ICANN-regulated domain. This five-day grace period actually helps the registrants who mistyped domain names they acquired from being stuck with the wrong domain. Basic intention of this facility is to protect the interests of the genuine domain registrants.

The miss-utilization of the beneficial ‘Domain Kitting’ facility is growing at a much faster speed among the people who want to earn money by playing below the margin lines. Registrants repeatedly delete a domain name during the grace period and re-register it without ever paying for it. They perform this ‘registration-deletion-registration ‘operations many times during the grace period of five days. Repeating this again and again in order to make profits and generate good money from the number of advertisement hits the successful domains get, has now become an epidemic almost. It is becoming an irritant for all those who have genuine business interests and want to have a fair website for conducting their business operations.

Such types of successful domains become capable of generating considerable amount of online advertising revenue. The reason behind this revenue generation is simple. All such type of successful domains actually remains active in all the search engines, such as Google for a period of five days at least. This ‘five-day life of a particular domain helps the registrants to makes millions from partners that taste domains with ‘AdSense for Domains’. Expert domainers and registrants who have sufficient expertise in all these popular techniques know the nuts and bolts of this game.

This game of ‘Domain Kitting” spoils the chances of fair deal and transparency for the genuine business owners. The honest registrants who intend to make use of a particular domain name for the legitimate business reasons do not get the desired domain names because these are already tied up with the ‘kitting’. Such a situation not only affects the genuine business interests of many of the business owners but also affects the concurrent business interests of the advertisers, search engines, and lastly the viewers. Imagine the millions of dollars that goes as shear waste as it does not serve the basic purpose of advertising. It never serves the reader or the viewer because it never reaches to them. All advertisements are lost in between on such types of ‘five-dayer- domains’ and the add-revenue drops in wrong pockets. This type of “Kitting” is therefore completely unethical from the fair business point of view.

According to an announcement made by Google, on February 11 this year, the company will install a system for preventing registrants from making ad-revenue from kitted domains using ‘AdSense’ for Domains. Google however, will not disclose the details of this new addition. The exact reasons of not disclosing the details are however not available but it seems that Google intends to maintain a definite level of secrecy in the interests of itself and the domain registrants across the world. This secrecy would perhaps save the system from cyber criminals including hackers.

Google claims that it has always discouraged the practice of ‘Domain Kitting’. “If we determine that a domain is being kited, we will not allow Google ads to appear on the site”, said the official spokesperson of Google. The company anticipates that such a policy in place would make positive impacts both on the users as well as the domain purchasers around the globe. It is clear from this stand of Google that it is taking care of the business interests of its advertisers also.

Quashing the ‘kitting’ business has some business interests of Google involved. There might be some lawsuits filed in near future against the vendors who enable the ‘Domain Kitting’. The company’s objectives regarding this infringement of genuine domain registrant’s interests, if obstructed by any person or vendor by the means of breaching the code of conduct would land up in legal battle.

One should not misunderstand the two related concepts here. Domain Kitting ‘as a matter of fact is quite different from the ‘Domain Tasting’, though seems to be similar. “Tasting” is actually a facility given to a prospective purchaser to ‘taste’ the domain for five days and then buy the domain, according to Danny Sullivan.

Google has clarified that it is not targeting the “Domain Tasting.” But the industry specialists observe that the new system from Google will definitely affect the ‘tasting’ also. The tasters who are earning huge profits and think that this is a perfectly legitimate business process will also create a backlash for Google, many experts feel.

It is going to be the beginning of a new phase in domain business sector. It will also be worthwhile to watch the turns and rounds that the Google and the ill-motive domain game players would be going through in times to come.

People have become almost immune with most of the conventional websites that are present on the internet today. They all look alike. An element of surprise may hit anyone’s eyes and prompt saying “Wow, This is unbelievable!”. This would help any webmaster cutting through the clutter and make people generate “word of mouth” and say “You need to see this, it is incredible indeed”. Among the big shifts that you can select for your unique website would be shifting the website-marketing from a “riding-shotgun” approach to a well planned strategically designed surprise oriented campaign.

An interesting ‘surprise twist’ has recently been offered by ‘Disney’ with its “The Year of a Million Dreams”. This brilliant twist says,” imagine walking through one of the ‘Walt Disney Theme Parks’ when a cast member taps you on the shoulder to offer you a dream come true. Right now, over a million extra-special dreams, some thought impossible, are being randomly awarded to people just like you”.

Surprise web-marketing need to follow generally the golden oldie “giveaway” thumb-rule. We are observing that many of the web-marketers are shifting their attention to this thumb rule, though slowly. Giving away of ‘eBooks’ is one such helpful tool that certainly attracts people. One more innovative concept has slipped in these days. Some of the popular websites and many of the blog marketers also have started giving away “concept papers” and “white papers” to their viewers and customers for no cost. These kinds of free offers are becoming very popular among the websites that are focused on information sharing concepts. Subject and field specific websites are also adopting these new techniques in order to enhance their reach to the common readers. Recently we are observing a sudden rush in the news specific websites also. These kinds of giveaways are actually ‘knowledge enhancers’ and many people love to have them.

A simple surprise element on any website has very high chances of kicking away the annoyance of a viewer on an average. It helps him forgetting and forgiving the wasteful clicks .An element of surprise will always keep a website alive and fresh as it would attract many new and come back visitors to have a feel of the surprise.

Website marketing has full potential if combined with surprises. It’s the key to great entertainment. Surprise fuels great marketing, creates innovative opportunities and generates revenue. Website generally thrives on updating of its contents regularly and the advertisements pushing in the revenues. There exists a large gap in creative conceptualization and marketing of a website. This large gap contains immense potential for creating multiple opportunities with creativity. Montreal entrepreneur Andy Nullman, an authority on surprise marketing says,” small businesses have a great chance to make a difference in their marketplace by using the power of surprise to delight and astound their customers”.

Internet marketers and website marketers need to remember always the golden guiding principle, “little things make a huge difference”. In this world where people tell their friends and believe what their own friends tell them. It is the “word of mouth” that drives sales up to great extent and “not ads for the umpteenth surprise sale that is not a surprise at all”, according to Rogers Wirelesses’ initiative “Share  the Joy”.

Website marketers must also understand how to start with surprise marketing. Think what you did last month and try exploring new ideas in order to see if you can do something different. “Ask you, what we could do that we never dared to do?” says Andy Nullman. He further advises, “Marketing is about a relationship, and like all relationships, you have to keep it fresh”.

Surprise web-marketing is not a massive investment proposal in itself. Its cost effectiveness is also a surprising fact. Internet marketers are always leveraged with tactics. If one tactic does not click, try another one. Create one more buzz .After all the website marketers are their own masters. They can opt for more risks and do not require permissions for that. The risks involved in such type of ‘surprise oriented website marketing’ are comparatively very light and a webmaster practically has nothing to loose much. A contest, for instance, may cost a few dollars more to the webmaster but the amount of website traffic that would be generated with such contests would be almost unimaginable. Surprise web-marketing thus proved to be a cost-effective technique to enhance the web traffic, page rankings, revenue, and of course the popularity among the viewers.

Surprise web-marketing will definitely add new tools to the existing approaches with low cost, high speed, flexibility and other components. Success depends much on the use of maneuver, surprise, and speed to find an opportunity. It is more like the fighter pilots who understand the importance of “getting inside” in a dogfight by turning and maneuvering quicker than the enemy to fix their guns on the enemy plane well before it comes to know the intentions. This clearly means that such type of web-marketing means knocks with fast and unpredictable tactics giving out surprises. Business with surprises is thus no less than the fighter’s war.

IBM recently  introduced “OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES)”, a  semantic search engine exclusively for companies that are interested to extend their employees more advanced tools for searching their e-mails stored in ‘IBM’s Lotus Notes’.

This new innovative concept of email search takes search beyond keywords by being able to make associations between the underlying concepts of words often used in ‘corporate e-mails’. IBM also intends to offer customers technology that can help them retrieve useful information hidden in e-mail databases.

“IBM’s OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES)” is a result of the collaborative research conducted by the ‘IBM Research Labs’ in Almaden, California, in Haifa, Israel, and in Delhi, India.

The facility works with simplicity in search. For instance, if a person is looking for a colleague’s phone number, then he would type “Paul phone” in the query box. The search in turn would give results for Paul’s phone number. It becomes possible because the system is smart enough to make the association that the person is looking for Paul’s number, and not just any phone number in an e-mail with the word “Paul” in it.

IBM designers created an index of keywords found in corporate e-mail, and then linked it with another index of associated concepts and relationships. Shiv Vaithyanathan, manager of unstructured information mining at” IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, USA” ,says, “ when a query is submitted, the system first matches the words with those in the keyword index, and then delivers results based on the associations”. Specialists at IBM have also added rules to help the system determine what information is most likely being sought.

IBM made this software available for “Lotus Notes”. This smart ‘email search tool’ eliminates the frustration many of us feel when irrelevant search results are returned for a simple text or keyword search. It has inbuilt common search concepts, such as dates, times and phone numbers. It also has some additional search parameters, such as meeting requests or specific locations. These parameters may be defined and used on the fly without any programming expertise. Such user-defined concepts can be shared between individuals and used to build a more personalized search system.

“With gigabytes of e-mail storage readily available to nearly everyone, e-mail has evolved from a simple communication tool into a personal database where we retain vast amounts of valuable information,” said Douglas Wilson, Chief Technology Officer of Lotus. He adds further, “We continue to deliver better tools to speed and improve personal mailbox search, and ‘OmniFind Personal Email Search’ illustrates how IBM’s advanced technology delivers the ability to quickly and easily access the precise information we need, exactly when we need it”.

This software is based on the “Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA)”, an open source software framework that helps organizations build new analysis technologies to realize more value from their unstructured information by discovering relationships, identifying patterns, and predicting outcomes. Originally developed by IBM, UIMA is now an open source project at the “Apache Software Foundation (ASF)”. UIMA is used extensively in enabling text analysis, extraction and concept search capabilities in other parts of the ‘IBM OmniFind enterprise search portfolio’, including ‘OmniFind Enterprise Edition’, ‘OmniFind Analytics Edition’, and ‘OmniFind Yahoo! Edition’.

This new and creative search based system has  enabled the IBM specialists to have developed technology that runs on top of the framework for quickly extracting words and concepts from electronic documents, comparing them to the indexes and delivering results based on algorithms developed by the scientists.

IBM Researchers have empowered this software with advanced algorithms that can interpret incomplete queries and find information such as phone numbers, people, meetings, presentations, documents, images and more.Several major corporate companies including ‘Google’, ‘Microsoft’, and ‘Yahoo’, are also developing more advanced search algorithms in order to deliver better answers to queries.

Shiv Vaithyanathan accepts that semantic search becomes less effective as the universe of possible concepts and relationships associated with words grows, which is why it would be difficult to implement, for example, in a huge, general purpose Web mail system.

Targeting a corporate e-mail system gives researchers a narrower set of possibilities in determining the kind of associations the system should make of words. In addition, IBM has made it possible for developers to expand the “OmniFind Indexes”.

The “IBM OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES) “plug-in is available at “alphaWorks”. It is an online community that gives the outside world a unique peek into the work underway in IBM labs by highlighting the company’s most cutting-edge work and providing it at no cost.  As on today, more than 90 of the ‘Fortune 100 Companies’ are making use of “alphaWorks” technologies. The company at the same time hopes that the feedback it gets from developers will help to improve the technology by finding its shortcomings. “Finding out the things we should do is precisely why we’re putting it out there,” said Shiv Vaithyanathan.

We are on the edge of an ending year now. Few more days and we shall bid goodbye 2007 with a happy note. It is time when everyone takes a little time out and looks back on what was accomplished and what was not. Days after days, weeks after weeks, and months after months, it is the time to make lists. You will observe that almost everyone is busy making lists, lists of successes, lists of failures, lists of accomplishments, lists of tasks that could not be completed, lists of progresses made, and lists of all that we can think of.

In business world also, this is the time to check and judge various aspects and make lists. Holiday season is on the cards now. It is time that companies are looking for easy publicity. Journalists are waiting eagerly for the announcements of lists. It is basically time to announce lists and let the world know of what happened during all those previous months.

Realm of the internet is no different either. Search companies are also companies making businesses after all. It is time for the search engine experts to know how search was performed during the whole year. What people wanted this year most, how they performed their searches on the internet, what companies offered to the customers, which companies survived with most business volumes and numerous such questions will be answered this fortnight.

‘Search on the internet’ is on the agenda for this week. Search companies will be putting out their lists containing numerous data and analyses. But the most wanted information would be “the top searches of the year 2007”. Microsoft however, will not be bringing out its list of top searches at this time for reasons unknown.

Top Searches at Google

Google, the most popular search platform announced its “2007 End of Year Zeitgeist” on December4, 2007. This ‘Zeitgeist of the year 2007’ included the most popular and the fastest-rising global search terms that people searched on “Google.com”. Google went deep in to the ocean of searches, search queries, and various other related aspects in order to capture what people preferred this year. Google has made its hilarious efforts public now and is available at “http://www.google.com/zeitgeist”.

Google’s lists of ‘Top Ten Searches (Global)’ include (1) iphone;(2) badoo;(3) facebook;(4) dailymotion;(5) webkinz;(6) youtube;(7) ebuddy;(8) second life;(9) hi5;(10) club penguin. Top Ten Fastest Rising Search Terms in the United Sates are (1) iphone;(2 )webkinz;(3) tmz;(4) transformers;(5) youtube;(6) club penguin;(7) MySpace;(8) heroes;(9) facebook;(10) anna nicole smith.

The Fastest Falling (US) Search Terms’ indicate another interesting trend. There are many more specific search lists that Google has classified for ‘Ringtones’, Music, Movies, and few others. You may have a look at these lists.

Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Google’s search products and user experience noted,”There’s a huge surge in interest in social networking. Three of the top 10 rising terms were for popular social networks (four, if you count YouTube)”. Social networking sites also showed up in lists of top search terms published by other search companies.  

Top searches at Yahoo 

Yahoo is another most popular search platform and its search lists of the year indicate varying and interesting trends. The search results analyses here are on different levels in comparison to Google. Instead of the ‘Rising’ and ‘Falling’ trend, Yahoo adopted ‘Categories’ as its basis for search listings.

“Yahoo’s Top Ten Tech Terms” are (1) YouTube; (2) Wikipedia; (3) Facebook; (4) iTunes; (5) iPod; (6) iPhone; (7) Nintendo Wii; (8) Xbox; (9) Sony PlayStation 3; and )10) Guitar Hero.

Similarly, “Top Ten News Search Terms on Yahoo” are (1)Saddam Hussein ;(2) Iran ;(3) Iraq ;(4) President George W. Bush;(5) Oil and Gas Prices;(6) Barrack Obama;(7) Hillary Rodham Clinton;(8) San Diego Fires;(9) Afghanistan;(10) Virginia Tech .

There are several other categories for “Top Ten Searches on Yahoo” including ‘Top Ten Environmental Searches’, ‘Top Ten Troubled Stars’, ‘Top Ten on Yahoo Kids’, Top Ten on Del.ici.ous’, ‘Top Ten Send Offs’, ‘Top Ten Sports News’,’Top Ten Consumer-Call-Backs’, You can see all those top searches of the year 2007 at “http://buzz.yahoo.com/toptrends2007/”.

Top Searches at Ask.com

Big searches on another extremely popular search engine “Ask.com” demonstrates a different set of people’s preferences during the year 2007. ‘MySpace’ was the biggest one of all here. Surprisingly, ‘Bebo’, ‘Orkut’, and ‘Facebook’ find no place in this top ten lists.  The list includes terms,(1) MySpace;(2) Dictionary;(3) Google;(4) Themes;(5) Area Codes;(6) Cars;(7) Weather;(8) Games;(9) Song Lyrics;(10) Movies.

Ask.com’s ‘Top Ten Television Searches of 2007’ highlight names as (1) Hannah Montana;(2) Family Guy;(3) SpongeBob Square Pants;(4) WWE ;(5) American Idol ;(6) Big Brother ;(7) Gilmore Girls ;(8) South Park ;(9) Charmed ;(10) Grey’s Anatomy.

The ‘Top Ten Searches of Sports Teams’ places’ Boston Red Sox’ on the top of it. On a separate aspect, ‘Jenifer Lopez’ was at the first place in the list of ‘Top Ten Celebrity Search of Pregnant Stars of 2007’. ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘Hilary Clinton’ stood at first and second ranks in the ‘Top Ten Search List of Presidential Candidates of 2007’ at Ask.com.It is also very interesting to note that the ‘Democrats’ searched more on the internet in comparison to the ‘Republicans’. ‘Fred Thompson’ was the only top Republican who was searched more and the reason is perhaps that “he is the most “video-genic” of all the candidates”, says Ask.com.The ‘Omni-favorite’ Disney television channel  series was the top in the Ask.com top television series searches.

Learning Lessons for Bright Future

The ‘search-trends’ of the year 2007 have a different direction to that of the last year’s search preferences. New concepts are evolving and many more new popularity clads would be landing on the surface of the internet in the coming year also. The list certainly will not remain the same when we shall be counting one more year.

Common people, website owners, and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts, all will find these announcements of the top searches lists of popular search engines very useful for their future preferences and plannings.Many of us who are going to enter in to the world of the internet and are thinking to establish websites of their choices and preferences would find these search preferences as the guiding lines.

We would certainly be witnessing upcoming of many more websites based on the search results and people’s preferences in the coming year of 2008.It is therefore the best time to learn our lessons for a bright future.