With regard to much of people, there is only one Search Engine. Google named is almost synonymous with Web. _ if powerful be position of Google the ‘of S, because it himself put back on Juste approximately each bar tool holder of navigator and the handle around 70% of Internet of USA seek, that no matter who below of thirty it find probably hard to himself remember that it wasn ‘t always of this way.

Before Google, there was true competition on the market of Search Engine. Yahoo, AltaVista, excite, Lycos, WebCrawler, HotBot and INFOSEEK have at one time or another have true aspirations to be a chief of the package, however the majority of these engines were reduced to the trade markets of place, becoming nostalgic memories in the manner that the things were on the Web before 1998. It was the year when the phenomenon of Google really started to take off, changing for always the search for people in manner for online information.

Google moves the posts

When Google took the world by the storm, it was with a brass band without precedent of exaggeration about its tracking technology. The search engines of time were one or the other directory based, like Yahoo, or employed an algorithm of research based on analyzing the contents of page to determine the relevance, like AltaVista. All the two approaches were deeply insufficient, the first because the directories tended to be so unfinished, and the second because so much several of the results were broad mark.

This progress achieved often required surfers to waste the time making of multiple research on various engines to find what they sought. Even then, they very often had the inconvenient direction which they were in way or other absent it, however convinced they were that it must be outside some share there.

The market was more than ready for Google, with its new technology of research based on analyzing the bonds between the sites to determine the relevance with limits of research. The idea of core which supported this approach was that the bonds more entering or more backs which a site had, highest its value perceived by other members of the community of Web and thus the most its row deserved in the results of a search. This, inevitably, always neglected many sites with the strong contents but few bonds of arrival; nevertheless, it was a revelation of the prospect for the researchers who subjectively felt as if Google their spoke directly and their conditions like any front Search Engine included/understood.

Almost during the night, most of the aspect of lottery left research Internet.�Generally, the results are turned over by Google worked. For the first time it was possible to employ the Internet with a reasonable degree of effectiveness. Of a distance it can be difficult to include/understand the impact of this, but when it was the equivalent in line to exchange your Ford for Ferrari.

Ten years above, however, Google faces its own problems. The increasing concern above the exits of intimacy, copyright and censure seizes the titles, but they are used as disguise with a major faintness: the corporatization and the foreseeability crescents of Google of ’search for S result. Several manners the market seems to turn the full circle, arriving behind at a position where even Google ‘results of S do not reflect any more the true needs for its users.

Ironically, they is the direct results of the technology even which transformed research initially. On the playing field primarily of level which was the Web in 1998, Google ‘technology of S were used to reinforce a fundamental democracy, where the contents and its inherent quality used appreciably more the power that the balance or the financial power. But because the companies reinforced their control of the Web, strategy of Google ‘of S.A. started to seem dated, serving the needs for these companies, suppliers of the goods and services, at the expense of what many users really seek. Not everyone which employs the Web tries to buy something, but in the model of Google, the not-consumers become deprived more and more of the civic rights under the weight of marketing.

It is due to a certain number of factors. One is that optimizations of site necessary to obtain a high row of search for Google tend to require specialized knowledge or to cost much money, which supports richer companies whose sites thus tend to being favoured towards the top of the lists. Another is the way in which the quantification of the back bonds as a referee of quality tends to reinforce the top of the already popular sites, creating indeed a barrier which prevents new sites from improving their row. Given these factors, it is easy to see the point to which Google ‘methodology time-radical of row of S is now used to support the quo statute.

Naturally him ’s all to criticize Google very well, but this is an unjustified exercise without being able to offer signicatives alternatives, one or the other in terms of new technologies of research which are less likely influence of corporation, or the alternate engines of research that satisfied more frequently the user’s needs than with corporation.

A technology of improvement of research which had attracted the interest recently is reprocessing of question. This approach, application by sites such as Hakia and Powerset (recently bought by Microsoft), try to subject questions of research to the logical analysis in order to determine the intentions of researcher best.

Hakia, which is described like semantic Search Engine, claims that this leads to the significant improvements above Google. Where Google tends to return the most popular results, Hakia indicates that its technology together with concept improves quality of the results, reducing the wasted time of research and the use of fallacious information. According to Hakia, popularity and quality are not the same thing: the quality of a result of a search is determined by the credibility of the source, the innovation of the material and its relevance with the question. Hakia applied a certain number of specific improvements which they claim lead to the improvements of these sectors, including:

* Categorization

It is the subdivision and the posting of the shorts - often stem - questions in the form classified by category to help the researcher to distinguish from various interpretations of research.

* Parallelism

This device allows some limiting in the question of research of being dynamically replaced by others which have the same significance in order to increase the regulated result. Hakia provide example treatment replacement feast in health question to allow overall representative of results being obtained.

* Generalization

A typical question of Search Engine contains the general limits which so treated literally limit the whole of result artificially. Hakia ‘function of generalization of S will give the results, for example, which contain the names of the specific manufacturers of car in answer to a question which contains the word car.

Hakia also made improvements to the manner that their results of a search are presented in order to facilitate it so that users identify the suitable material. Those include the use of the description, the posting of the prolonged extracts of the texts, and a so-called mode of dialogue in which Hakia will be addressed to you directly to specify good answers. This ties inside with Hakia ‘philosophy of S which later on, tracking technology must entirely embrace the interaction of user. According to this sight, research will reach only the realization when it fully approves something of the questions of natural language of approach and of the conversations prolonged between the researcher and the Search Engine. Thereafter, indicates the Web site of Hakia, people would like with the transmitter-receiver and ahead with a Search Engine pretending to be Mr. Spock.

Of seizure is another sector in which improvements were applied to the models of research to improve the experiment of user. Google itself took certain measurements towards evolving/moving of its firmly roots based by text to embrace media such as the video music and it. However, integration without seam of various media in a simple research remains a dream distant for the traditional engines from research of which the principal interfaces of research tend to be occupied strictly in the words. Searchmash is a site which started to turn over this convention. A search for Searchmash for example of Coldplay, will indicate results of the texts in the principal window with the image, blog, video and the results of Wikipedia below drop to the bottom of the menus in a block of the right-sided of the screen.

the offer of Ask.com a primarily similar presentation, music however of offer detects instead of the video. This categorization is brilliantly useful, particularly with younger and newer users for whom the Web is in oneself an experiment of rich person-media. It can help to eliminate wide research from the results of the texts to establish after if they contain the images or the vid�os you ‘about really, time saving and by increasing the experiment of user.

Always improve, Searchmash allows you to listen to vid�os of its own site right while clicking on its nail of the inch, while ask allows you to make the same thing with ways of music. Because the rich media dominates more and more the Web, this kind of integration can only adapt to users ‘the research based by text better than traditional of the needs.

Anyhow sophisticated the technology which leads them, Google and all other traditional engines of research suffer from the same fundamental limitation - they find only information for you when you type a question in the interface. In other words, you must say to them what you want and when you want it. Seek the agents such as Copernic make an attempt interesting to turn over this paradigm and to bring a greater effectiveness to the process of research by seeking information on a continuous basis.

The concept is rather simple: if simple makes of it that, like all the great ideas, you wonder why nobody thought of him front. Primarily you known as with the agent of Copernic by what you ‘about interested - let ’s say new books concerning architecture. The agent will then scour 90 engines different of research, detecting new results of a search and paying again to you with whole of recapitulated and assembled results, like your own personal Web crawler. He ’s to you to select what with the follow-up, but theoretically with this could save you hours to sweep the Web yourself, seeking the similar data. There is a whole industry devoted to seek reports/ratios of media on celebrities and the companies these car benefit already of the technology of this kind. Copernic makes it available to the regular user.

Time is always never held on the Web, and it is right like truth of tracking technology that anything else. No company, not even Google, can be allowed to rest on its bay-trees in an environment where the always increasing numbers of users must filter by always increasing volumes of data to find what they have need. The old model to type the mysterious cords of research in few boxes of the texts probably always has mileage in him, but the days of this approach are almost certainly numbered.

If it ’s created by Google or someone else, the field is large open for the next application of search for killer. The industry of research seems together to undergo a fragmentation, with a range of the engines specialized and new of technologies providing the possibilities which adapt to the many ways in which the people different seek information, and to the broad variety of information that they seek. This fragmentation could bring with it an erosion of Google ‘of normal assistance of core of S while they disperse among a series of new players.

He ’s also possible, naturally, that a simple company visionary could supplant Google ‘position of S, quickly becoming very popular and doite to face with the same exits alternatively as Google fights to treat now. That which the future holds, a thing is certain: the manner that you seek the online information is placed again at the change.

Soulbmx website SEM

Traffic/SEM:

· General SEO

· Back links from industry related websites

· Forum activity

· Video sharing sites

· Live internet tv sites

· Human edited directories

· Image sharing

· Social networking

· Press releases

· Wiki’s/factual articles

· New content

· Newsletters

· PPC campaigns for Adwords, Yahoo and MSN

· Classified internet advert campaign

· Ezines and other online media publications

· Papers, magazines and other advertising

· Adsense advertising

· Blogging

· Google tools, Google sites, Google pages

· Online shop to sell associated products (gives presence on Google product search and Ebay shop)

In no particular order, the following recommendations are proven methods of internet marketing which drive traffic to any website.

General SEO:

Meta tags need tweaking page per page, header tags also need looking at with more site associated titles, sub-titles used. More text content should be added, FAQ’s added and the news section should be added to as often as possible to give Google new content to index each time the site is crawled.

Back Links:

Integral part of search engine marketing to enable page rank and to drive traffic from other sites. Reciprocal link campaigns with bike related websites also worth thinking about.

Forum activity:

Forums are great for back links and also to advertise the main site. Perhaps even add a proper forum to the community pages on the Soulbmx.tv site. Forum posts help with getting back links, to advertise competitions etc and also for the general promotion of any website. There are a lot of bike and BMX or sport related forums out there that can be used to increase internet presence in a big way.

Video sharing sites:

The usual suspects like Youtube.com, Yahoo video and Dailymotion.com are great examples. Videos from the main site can be posted using RSS/API feeds or by hand and they assist hugely with increasing internet presence, driving traffic and obtaining good quality back links. Other potential members can also be sourced by searching for their BMX videos on these sites.

Internet TV sites:

Justin.tv and Sopcast.com are good examples where one can start ones own internet TV channel. Live streams can be started to show latest clips or live bike shows, videos can be posted and groups can be started which all help with the widening of Soulbmx.tv internet presence as well as creating something different for existing and potential new members to take part in.

Human edited directories:

These are a must for improving page rank and back links. Dmoz.org is the best example as Google uses it for its directory. Listings can be added on a regular basis to the highly ranked directories.

Image sharing:

Picasaweb, Flickr and also the social networking sites all have image sharing platforms where images can be posted either by hand or with API/RSS feeds. These are great when used correctly with quality, relevant tags as images associated with the main site are then shown in image searches and you will find that people start to use your images more. Copyright issues and permissions need to be thought out carefully!

Social networking:

Social network accounts are a no-brainer! For your particular industry and the fact that you want more members ALL possible social network accounts must be started and built on day by day. Groups, bulletins, images and videos, Blogs and more can be started and friends can be added so that more traffic is driven on a daily basis to the main site.

Press releases:

These are great ways to get back links to the main site and also to advertise absolutely everything about what is happening on the main site. There are thousands of sites which can be used and as long as new PR is wrote and published regularly, they assist well with SEM

Wiki’s and factual articles:

Listings on Wikipedia.com are a good example of helping with driving traffic to an existing site. As long as the articles are factual and don’t blatantly advertise a product or a service then they are mostly accepted. Existing members can be invited to add to the articles or to post their own on the main site and then these articles can be added to the exterior sites.

New content:

As mentioned above, new content is imperative to assist with achieving and sustaining high placements in search engine listings for any website. Members can be encouraged to post Blogs, image, videos via competitions or prize draws and then this new content can be added across the board on all of the sites/posts that Soulbmx.tv maintains. The news section should be added to on a regular basis and every newsletter sent out can also be posted across the board.

Newsletters:

Newsletters should be sent out at least once a month to existing members. They can also be used for attracting new members to the main site by approaching other organizations associated with bikes and BMX’s (shops, clubs and other websites) and inviting them to join/sign up to the main site. Data can be purchased which lists all these relevant organizations and then emails can be sent, snail-mail outs posted and the newsletter content added to the news section on the main site.

PPC (pay per click) campaigns:

This form of internet marketing can be used to great effect to really kick start the main website. Adverts can be run for a limited period to attract new visitors on Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN. Paying for adverts on other sites like Facebook.com or highlighted listings on classified sites are also really worth thinking about as they can really start a major influx of new traffic and new members to the main site.

Classified internet adverts:

This is a tried and trusted method of driving traffic and obtaining back links. There are thousands upon thousands of classified sites out there which allow free posting of adverts on them. Most are geographic targeted but new pages can be added to the main site for each country/geographic area with perhaps a contact person/administrator chosen to deal with new enquiries from the adverts.

Ezines and online media publications:

There are a multitude of online publications out there on the net which would definitely be very glad to hear from Soulbmx.tv. Back links can be obtained and a share of their traffic. Sports Ezines and other similar genre related publications can be chosen and then approached with either a newsletter or personally, which would perhaps ensure a better response.

Papers, magazines and other advertising:

A presence in genre related magazines is always good. It is worth contacting all possible BMX and biking magazines to let them know about Soulbmx.tv and perhaps get some stories running in them about the site. It is also worth budgeting for running small adverts in these sorts of publications with references to the website and other online activites.

Adsense:

Adsense can help to generate revenue to pay for advertising like the above or for the PPC campaigns. The more site visitors, the more potential clicks you could get on the Adsense adverts which advertise other websites on your site. It is easy to set up and quite simple to maintain and also can be added to Blogs and other online activities.

Blogging:

Blogging is again, a no-brainer. It simply has to be done! Blogs can be set up both on the main site and on third party hosting sites and content can be posted regularly by the Soulbmx.tv team as well as members who are interested in guest Blog posts. Blogs are always great back links as they are controlled by the writers and they offer a more personal view of what happens behind the scenes of any company which helps with attracting new members.

Google tools:

Google offer a variety of different tools to assist with indexing a given websites content, driving more traffic and increasing internet presence in general. Some of the tools are being used already but they could do with more time being spent on them to optimize their true performance. Google Maps is being used but there should maybe be a maps section for every country where members are from. Administrators can be chosen from new and existing members and their contact details added to Maps to ensure a wider presence.

Other Google tools include:

• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster tools
• Google sites (was Page Creator)
• Blogger
• Google video
• Adsense and Adwords (as mentioned above)
• Google Maps and local business listings
• Google groups (could be a great addition for your members to post on)
• Orkut (Google’s social network platform)
• Picasa (Photo sharing)
• Google book search partner program (for future paper/online publications from Soulbmx.tv)
• Google Base (for products, reviews, stories and more)

Online shop:

The main site does have a form of a shop at the moment but it’s not very good/user friendly. A new shop should be built, perhaps as a separate entity from the main site which will help with back linking selling product associated with bikes and BMX and also clothing. This could be a fantastic source of revenue and also encourages more traffic as one can obtain a presence on Google product search (Google Base), set up an Ebay store and also advertise individual products with back links to the main site.

Click here to visit IC247 for assistance with your website!

Downturns are actually the best times be marketing as it helps you refine your proposition and provide clarity on your best customer markets. I know a little about this running marketing for an online share broker in New Zealand. We're still growing during one of the worst financial crisis in history.

Aggression is the key to continued growth. If there are less customers or less money around then growth means winning market share quickly. Here are some things that might consider.

1. Concentrate you website on your profit driver

There is usually one key thing that brings you the gold. It's a basic that could be customer acquisition, customer value, distribution, scalability or the inherent capability to sell as many widgets as opportunity allows. When this thing is constrained it holds back all the rest to an inordinate degree - there is no fix - you have to have it.

Our business scales easily, has unlimited supply and national reach. The value of the trade doesn't effect us, and the website is very capable of handing large volumes. For us market share was from customers trading. So we need more customers to continue to grow.

So our website must be an acquisition machine. The things we put on there are about taking as many customers through the pipeline as we can. It becomes less so about product, news etc and more the application process.

2. Stop the hurt

Businesses forget that when they are hurting, the customer base is hurting to providing a catalyst for change. They can leave you or come to you. Your choice. Increased lead generation by understanding and offering a solution to their pain.

3. Short tail your offer

During a growth period most businesses evolve their offer by adding or bundling products and services, or both. These are primarily designed to squeeze more out of the customers they have. They also provide that long tail effect on your search engine optimisation. But they take focus and money away from the core offer. They require money support and increase the complexity of your offer. A downturn is when you look at what you are doing and where the profit centres in your business are. Find the things with the least elasticity in demand.

Once you have found this you can focus website around that single minded proposition. Strip away the home page to concentrate on the core proposition. Turn your website and your optimisation into a billboard for that message. All those other things that survived the cut be taken care of with basket prompts, deep linking and email campaigns once they are customers.

Google, MSN and yahoo will also find it easier understand us. The search engines crawl fewer search terms. We are now more relevant to the core proposition. We've increased the number of leads from natural search by 45% because we rank better on fewer search terms.

It also means the single minded proposition is your primary focus for your above the line marketing. No more money spent on the little stuff. If you are a bank and mortgages and deposits are your thing then stop spending money on text banking. This isn't time to differentiate on service. Customers are more desperate to get the basics right and many can no longer afford the bells and whistles.

More leads, better understanding, fewer products to support. You're now in a position to scale to the core proposition on less cost.

4. Reduce the legal friction point

Revisiting how you sign up customers and when you get legal acceptance of your terms and conditions. This means negotiating with your house lawyers and taking on some more business risk. Is there a way to get the purchase process underway before they click "accept". This allows you to gain more commitment to the sale before terms and conditions are placed in front of the customer.

5. Has the downturn changed the customer market or produced a new one?

You want to focus on where your market is moving to. The downturn in the market will cause people to look for basics. For investing money is still there - it just needs somewhere safe to go. Enter from stage left government bonds which no one demanded a year ago but now we have a nice campaign going generating new business on new demand that none of our competitors are advertising.

6. Rationalise your media spend

Look through all your old campaigns and separate out the long term brand builders. They are now priority number two. Priority number one is response. This will kill you medium term on brand recall but the goal here is immediate market share. Move as much money as you can to your top responders by volume. You will be in a better position to negotiate your rate, your trafficking costs will go down.

7. Use your creative library

Cut that 10%-25% out of your advertising budget by re-using and rotating creative. Not sexy and it won't win you awards but that banner advert that worked well last time for acquisition and will do the same job this time around.

8. Hold your price for as long as you can

Price increases are inevitable but cause more pain. Remove costs first and get lean. While you are doing this your competitors are increasing their prices to make up revenues. This will cause churn and you can make price a point of difference. It will increase your acquisition in the short term and creates room in the market to move price up later without churn.

If you do this there is an added bonus once the market turns. Because you have all the customers, you get the biggest turn upward.

It is a very slick way to aggregate all the Web's information on a topic into one page. You also have ythe option of an advanced search to narrow the search down.

A search on the missing Australian "Britt Lapthorne" found a lot of very current news about the search for her in Croatia and another search of "Bill Henson" and photographer was equally successful in finding information about the current controversy concerning the photographer and the models he uses.

I also tried a search on the Tasmanian Devil, as there was a small piece on the animal in one of today's newspapers. It again brought up quite a lot of useful information although the accuracy was not quite as good as the previous searches.

If you chose to do a search using the feature "Network" you get an exploration of the relations between entities and events. The feature "Hotspots" allows you to track an issue by date and geographic location and the "Media Trends" feature graphs information.

I liked the visual displays, that help to highlight possible relationships and trends. Silobreaker allows the user to get a feel for the subject and enables you get a more contextual insight into a subject you are interested in. It recognises people, organisations, topics, places and keywords and tries to relate them to each other as part of the news flow. I like the idea that it is trying to make sense of the huge amount of news that we can now attain daily.

One thing that I couldn't do was to limit a search to a particular country, and I would like to be able to do that as well as do the global search.

Search Engine : This is the tool which is used by almost all the Internet Users when they start browsing. Except for a few known and popular sites which are already fed into our brain, we all depend on Search for our day to day Internet requirements. From Shopping to Business development , and for every thing , we all depend on Search Engines, No one using Internet can Opt out of this.

As we know currently there are only few bunch of Search Engines that most Internet Users are Using. Namely these are Google, Yahoo and the List continues.About Three - forth of Internet Users depend on these two Search Engines for their daily activity. So, Google and Yahoo are expanding to more and more remote parts of the World.

Common strategy of Searching : We generally Start Searching with Our loved Search Engine, it is nice and fine if we can find some thing related to our requirement, otherwise what we'll do is simply shift to another Search Engine and do the same process. The thing is We might find something related in this step.

The Idea : What if we can club the Two Major Search Engines in to One and Enjoy the Same fruits with some Extra Enhancements. This Site does exactly the Same thing. It shows results from both Yahoo and Google with a single Click. Results can be compared as they are displayed side by side.

Technology : This Site is not as many of the inframe Sites, which Embed Yahoo and Google Pages in their Pages. This Site directly connects to Google and Yahoo through respective API's and fetches results.

Features : There are Mainly Three Features associated with this Site.

• Displays Yahoo and Google Results Side bye Side.
• Word Suggestions appear as we type in the Search Box
• Probable Results are Displayed before hitting the Search button.

For Whom : For Every one who uses Search Engine to find Quick results.What Next : Go and try to Search Yahoo and Google Quickly.

Search Yahoo and Google together - - http://www.mahan.in

Another they suggest is called FreshBargains which covers 15 major deal sites.

The visual representations make it easy to see your favourite sites at a glance and by simply clicking on one of the pictures, you are taken straight to the site you want to visit.  It's quite a nice touch and makes it easy to access your favourite sites from the moment you launch your browser software.

One other feature I quite like about Chrome is the ease of searching the website that you are on.  Just by clicking on a menu option you are provided with a little box in which to input your search terms.  As you type in your term, the page highlights whatever you have typed so far on the page.  So, when you type in 'library' all the items on the page are highlighted (see below).

I find this website search tool much more efficient than other methods I have used before to find certain search terms on a website.  As it looks for the terms in real-time, you can see the terms on the page quickly and efficiently - very useful when you are hunting through a particularly long page.

So, in short, so far so good.  There are some little oddities (like the small toolbar and the lack of a 'home' link in the browser window) but overall I find Google Chrome to be quite a useful browser.  Having said that, I am still typing this whilst using IE!  It  might just be a hard habit to break, but when I do it will certainly be worth it!

But...

After I finished up that post, I happened across an article in the UK's Guardian about a new Ask.com ad campaign that coincides with the update to the search engine, and it got me thinking. Ask is far from the largest search engine, but it may be the most heavily-advertised one--for years, it's attempted to make inroads against Google in part through multiple barrages of TV spots. But Ask, which in its Ask Jeeves days at least had a distinct personality, leaps from advertising message to advertising message with abandon, always in search of a new way to differentiate itself from the crowd but never holding onto a message for long. After the jump, a retrospective.

This 2005 ad, from the beginning of the end of the Ask Jeeves days, uses American Idol curiosity William Hung and promises you'll "get what you're searching for"--which is not a differentiating point but the basic promise made by every search engine since the beginning of time.

This one, from 2006, involves Bigfoot trying to impress a girl. The message--"Use Tools. Feel Human"--appears to be a subtle reference to the fact that Ask.com offers more way to customize your searching than Google does. But I wondered at the time whether that message tended to play to Google's strengths: Google is so good it doesn't need much in the way of features other than a Google Search button and an I'm Feeling Lucky One.

Another "Use Tools. Feel Human." ad that resorts to the last refuge of a product in search of a message: an ape spokesperson:

This 2006 ad takes what might be called the Seinfeld/Churro approach: It has almost nothing to do with the product. It's barely an ad for search engines in general, let alone one that provides a reason to try Ask.

Here's yet another 2006 ad--this one plays up Apostolos Gerasoulis as the creator of Ask.com (actually, he was cofounder of Teoma, a search engine that Ask acquired and turned into its ExpertRank algorithm). He says that if you're trying to escape a bear, you shouldn't use any search engine. But if you do, it should be Ask. Okay...

This 2007 ad has a preroll that identifies it as the work of ad agency Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky--the same folks responsible for Microsoft's current Windows ads. It's a soft sell that--like many Ask ads--doesn't mention Ask until the end. And it seems to think that TV watchers will understand the notion of a search algorithm and be excited about the possibility of Ask's being powerful...which seems like a lot to ask of TV watchers.

Also by Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky, this 2007 ad may be the most entertaining one ever made for a search engine, and it possibly deserves brownie points for involving a search that's probably all too representative of real ones. Like the previous one, it throws in a slogan--"Experience Instant Getification"--that I'd forgotten Ask ever had. It's practically the opposite of the claim that Ask was making just a few months earlier, when it seemed to be arguing that Ask was superior because it let you drill down into searches and explore related ideas.

Also from 2007, this ad is for the Ask.com redesign from that year which I liked a lot. It involves a search for musician KT Tunstall, takes on Google more or less explictly without quite mentioning its name, and is shockingly straightforward, showing how you can listen to Tunstall music without ever leaving your Ask search results. Very cool...but today's new version of Ask.com doesn't have this feature anymore. (Yahoo, meanwhile, recently introduced something similar, though it doesn't seem to work for KT.)

This 2007 ad was part of a controversial UK guerilla marketing campaign that didn't always mention Ask and which seemed to boil down to "Try us, we're not Google!"

I have no idea what's going on here except that once again it involves a monkey.

And finally, here's a new ad for the new Ask.com--I can't figure out how to embed it, so clicking on the image below takes you to the Guardian site for viewing. It starts Fat Pat, a character from the BBC's Little Britain sitcom, and aside from the weirdness, basically encourages people to type in questions and says they'll get immediate answers--which is the premise that Ask Jeeves was founded on in 1996.

So that's a quick history of Ask.com advertising over the past three years or so. Pretty schizophrenic, and not very successful...at least if market share is any gauge, and it is. (Google, incidentally, got where it is without advertising itself, though rumor has it that it may begin soon.)

After all this time, one of the most famous things about Ask.com is still that it used to be Ask Jeeves. Is it utterly insane to broach the idea of it returning to the old familiar moniker? Probably, but Ask marketing has been so random that it wouldn't be that huge a leap. And if Volkswagen can bring back the Rabbit nameplate after a couple of decades, convincing Jeeves to come out of retirement would not be without precedent...

It would seem that consumers didn't greet a radically different Ask.com as warmly as I did--Comscore data for August 2008 shows Ask with 4.5 percent of the search market, down from 5 percent in May 2007, right before that redesign. Fifteen months later, Ask has released another new version, and it's dumped the divvied-results feature in favor of something that looks a lot more like Google, previous versions of Ask, and most every other search engine on the planet.

Here's a screen I captured of the Ask.com I dug back when it was new, and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was in the news, so I searched for his name:

And here's the new Ask's results for the same query:

Lots of little changes: The blocks for Images, Video, and Encyclopedia on the right-hand side are gone. But the new Ask wove image results into the Web results--just as Google often does. Options for "Narrow Your Search" and "Expand Your Search" are gone, and Related Searches have been moved from the left-hand side to the right, and there are three times as many of them. Tabs for Images, News, and other specialized results have been moved from that left-hand pane that doesn't exist any more to above the main results--a lot closer to Google's presentation.

Also new, and neat: A link to related questions at Ask Q&A, a Yahoo Answers-style feature. And both old Ask.com and new Ask.com--for the search above and lots of others--lead off the results not with a standard Web result but with a little box with a snippet of information and links to related sites.

So what else is new? Well, Ask is encouraging folks to type in queries in the form of questions and see what happens. But the two examples it provides--"Is Cops on TV tonight?" and "What causes headaches?"--don't provide results that are particularly spectacular. The former results did include a link to a Fox Network schedule, but I had to find that link, click on it, and then scroll until I found the information for Cops. (When Ask suggested the search, I kinda wondered if the schedule information would show up right in the results.) The latter query also doesn't provide an answer right in the results--actually, its results are very similar to Google's, and information on the causes of headaches is just as far away.

I tried a bunch of other searches of my own, and didn't find results that were enough different from or enough better than Google's to form a strong opinion of how Ask compares--though I did note that the first result was often the same for both services (random example: here's "How often should I water my lawn?" in Ask and Google).

Ask also says that its new version is faster: I can't do a meaningful comparison, but for what it's worth, the new version seems plenty zippy.

Search junkies will find more features in Ask than in Google: One I haven't mentioned yet is previews of sites that let you see a pop-up glimpse of what they look like before leaving your results:

And Ask retains its search suggestions, a feature that it had long before Google's recent rollout of the practically-identical Google Suggest. With both Ask and Google's versions, though, I find the search queries that the engines give me as I type as much intriguing as useful in most cases. And it's fascinating to compare the recommendations. Here's what I got from Ask when I began to type "How should I..."

And here's Google:

As far as I can tell, both Ask and Google users are really interested in their hair and investments, but Ask users eat more pomegranates and Google users are (eek!) more likely to contemplate ending it all.

There's one aspect of Ask that I find both confusing and annoying. Like most search engines, including Google, it usually tops search results with a few Sponsored Results (read: ads). But if frames them in a light green box that's so incredibly faint that I didn't see it at all until I squinted, and even then I wasn't positive whether it was really there:

Compare that to the yellow box around Google's sponsored results:

Whether Ask made the box so faint in order to make it tough for its users to tell an ad from a non-sponsored result, I don't know. But I do know that this presentation diminishes the effectiveness of the new version's emphasis on putting useful information right at the top of the organic results, since it's hard to tell where the sponsored results end and the organic ones begin.

What's the bottom line on the new Ask? It's got some nice touches and interesting features that make it worth a look--and no matter how much you love Google, I recommend trying other search engines from time to time, just so you know what's out there and so that Google never develops a stranglehold on the market that's based more on inertia than quality. But the new Ask.com is a less distinctive choice than the old one--it's rearranged things in ways that are more Google-esque than before.

If that's what research told them Web searchers want, then it's hard to argue with the decision, I guess...but you gotta wonder whether the search engine that succeeds in chipping away at Google's dominance will be one that's rather like Google, as the new Ask is, or a whole lot different in fundamental ways...which is the direction Ask seemed to be going until now.

Marketers who explain to other marketers that they specialize in social media marketing are often times met with smirks and rolling eyes. Social media marketing by most marketers is still seen as a waste of time as in most cases the campaigns fail to reach mass audiences.

It must be understood that social media marketing is focused on allowing brand evangelists to be the spokespersons for a product in hopes that their enthusiasm will influence others.

In order to achieve success social media marketers need to focus on building relationships and starting authentic conversations. The question then becomes where to host these conversations.

Ideally the platform would be on a social platform that is all about the brand that the marketer is trying to promote, although utilizing an existing popular social network like Facebook, MySpace or YouTube will allow for greater reach.

The key to connecting on an existing social network is bringing something of value to the users and allowing them to easily share it with their friends. This can be done by building a unique and useful application. Unless you are a developer, this should be done by contracting with a digital advertising agency. When contracting out, make sure to see examples of applications they have already built.

Facebook Application Information
Open Social (Myspace, LinkedIn, Ning, Friendster) Application Information

The topic of social media marketing is huge. I hoped this helped your basic understanding. Look for more posts about this subject including case studies in the future.

Yes, folks, I pay attention to search strings that bring people to my blogs. (Don't believe me? Check out the number of hits on Confessions of a Fat Chick. A lot of that is from catering to search strings.)

The search string I noticed tonight has to do with wearing a pendulum.

Is it ok to wear a pendulum as a necklace?

From my view, yes. I've said before that I wear mine quite often. A pendulum works best if it is attuned to the user. The best way to have it be attuned to you is to either use it often, wear it, or otherwise carry it around so that it is in close contact with you.

Wikipedia definition:
The term Internet meme is a neologism used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.

Internet memes in a way, are the online version of chain letters.  Most are silly and uninteresting.  A waste of cyberspace.  The blogger Nessa, tagged me on the following Internet Meme and whilst I usually avoid them, this one in particular has an appeal strong enough to compel a response.

The objective is to enter your answer to each question into Google and then choose an image from the first page.  Some cheat and swipe an image from any page.  Others choose their target based on aesthetic—either what they find 'pretty' or 'beautiful' and/or what they think others will like with a primary purpose to impress.  Whatever their reasons, they are a byproduct of intellectual laziness with a flair of conformity.

I see this meme foremost as a psychological exercise.  By sticking to the rules, it necessarily forces specificity on the author, thereby transforming it into an enjoyable logically inductive experience.  The images are both ambiguous and highly descriptive.  Many of the images in my response contain more than one meaning; specific search criteria and selective scrutiny within the confines of Google search engine.

As an example, I have chosen the first image because I will be 28 on my next birthday, enjoyed the film 28 Weeks Later, and the biohazard sign is one of the symbols for Androgyne.  My answers are all contained within the images, accessible for those that can decipher them.  It is a two-way psychological mindfuck regardless of whether or not people manage to interpret accurately.

Therein lies the full extent of the allure.

Note: Whatever you choose to believe, I will neither confirm nor deny.

1. The age you will be on your next birthday.

2. A place you'd like to travel to.

3. Your favourite place.

4. Your favourite food.

5. Your favourite pet.

6. Your favourite colour combination.

7. Your favourite piece of clothing.

8. Your favourite TV show.

11. Your first job.

13. A bad habit you have.

14. Your worst fear.

15. What you would like to do before you die.

]]> http://steaciehealthsci.wordpress.com/?p=57 Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:20:53 +0000 Rajiv Nariani http://steaciehealthsci.ru.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/nucleic-acid-research-databases/ NAR Database short list

NAR Database Categories Complete List

The Molecular Biology Database Collection: 2008 update

The main problem has been with the hit-and-miss nature of the search engine.  When entering one particular search term, the engine threw up no results, even though I knew the term was in the database.  Thankfully, the guys at Zoho have been very helpful.  After encountering the problem, I decided to get in touch with a member of the team.  Impressively, they got back to me the very next day and said they would look into it.  It turned out there was a fault with the software and they assured me that they would rectify it.  They also asked of there were any features that would make the service easier to use.  I suggested that it would be useful if when a search is conducted, instead of just directing you to the page, the search terms could be highlighted on the wiki page.  Again I got an email the very next day, and they said they would look into it.  Impressive service!

I am really hopeful that this will make it easier for members of staff to use and I am hoping to build it into a one-stop shop for help with reference queries.  It will provide a wealth of information specific to our library that is easily searchable.  For example, a page would be created with copyright information on maps so that (as inevitably happens) when members of staff struggle to remember the technicalities of copyright laws, they can find the information via a simple search engine on the database.  It will take a lot of time to get to this stage, but I am confident that using a wiki in this way will make it much easier for staff to provide a quality service and, after all, that is what we should be aiming for.