Notable news and announcements from the web search world during the past month.
Warning: The links and descriptions below are from official press releases, and may contain marketing hyperbole, claims or euphemisms not necessarily endorsed by Search Engine Watch.
August 7
Singingfish Report Ranks Top 10 Searches for Online Audio / Video During July
What do Beyoncé, The Incredible Hulk and Lance Armstrong all have in common? They’re among the most-popular online icons of Summer 2003 according to the latest Singingfish Streaming Media Report released today. The report is based on a statistical sampling of the approximately 40 million monthly queries submitted by users of the Singingfish search engine.
August 11
Overture Services Inc. announced today that it will launch its paid placement search service in Australia by the end of this year. The paid search market in Australia is projected to grow at an annual compounded rate of 86 percent to approximately A$63.8 million (or approximately U.S. $41 million) by 2005, according to a 2002 Jupiter Research report.
August 13
Google Adds New Features To Search Toolbar
Free browser utility enables users to search from any page on the web; new features include pop-up blocker, auto web form filler, blogger button and calculator.
Quigo Launches AdSonar Contextual Advertising Platform
AdSonar enables online publishers and licensees to serve contextually targeted advertising. Along with contextual solutions built “in-house”, Overture has licensed Quigo’s AdSonar, and will combine their solution with AdSonar’s capabilities.
August 18
AltaVista Launches New Toolbar
AltaVista, a business of Overture Services, Inc. today introduced the AltaVista Toolbar, a free, customizable search tool that offers more than 20 time saving, easy-to-use features.
August 19
Clustering of Search Results Increases Click-Through Rates
Web searchers click 30%-100% more on paid listings when presented with search results using real-time clustering technology. This conclusion is the result of ‘before and after’ trials at several web search sites that include paid listings. These measurements were done by Vivmsimo, a provider of award-winning software for clustering search results, and two of its search engine customers.
August 21
Inktomi Paid Inclusion Selected by Ziff Davis Media, Travelocity, Buy.com and Switchboard
Inktomi also recently launched the Inktomi Search Marketing Center. SMC is a robust search marketing tracking and reporting system that offers advertisers a higher level of campaign management to quickly and easily generate performance reports or create customized reports for analyzing click and URL data and managing Inktomi search marketing campaigns more effectively.
Overture Launches Worlds Largest Search Index
Overture Services, Inc. today announced the launch of the worlds largest search index of approximately 3.2 billion documents. The index was developed by the former Web search unit of Fast Search and Transfer (FAST), which Overture acquired in April.
August 25
Lycos Launches new InSite Search Engine Submission Interface
Terra Lycos today announced the redesign of its InSite Search Engine Marketing site. The new presentation eliminates the confusion surrounding search engine optimization and paid inclusion, focusing on educating both Web site owners and advertisers to better understand and manage their search engine marketing campaigns.
Switchboard Launches LocalClicks Advertising Service
The LocalClicks service ties transactional links to yellow pages results, linking consumers directly from yellow pages business listings to extended business information, business services, and products available for online purchase.
August 27
Lycos Launches International Models Site
Terra Lycos today announced the launch of Lycos Models, an international models site, with free access to original, international content, giving users unique access to supermodels not generally available to U.S. audiences.