Searchmaven

B2B Tech Buyers Rely On Search

Google recently commissioned a Millward Brown study focusing on B2B IT Buyers, the revealed that tech buyers are using search, both paid and natural listings, in every stage of the enterprise technology buying process.  Use of search engines is particulary import in the reaserch phase of the buying process.  The study, entitled "The Importance of Search in the Business Technology Purchase Process," was conducted in the Spring of 2005 involving 900 people involved in corporate technology buying decisions.   

As reported by Mediapost, John Topping, Google's director for technology B2B verticals, said that the research shows that technology business-to-business marketers can reach buyers with search, especially in the earlier phases of the buying process.

In addition, a 2004 KnowledgeStorm  study states that over 36% of IT buyers go to search engines and directories before any other media.  Check out the findings from this study.
http://www.sempo.org/research/AdForum.pdf

Answers.com Provides Answers, Not Links

Answers.com, a new search engine from the Israeli high tech firm GuruNet, provides direct answers to questions, rather than generating a list of web links.  While Ask Jeeves, A9 and other engines have long offered to answer posed questions, they generally returned links rather than  actual answers.  So far, Answer.net only (only?) has  has answers for a million topics and relies heavily on Wikipedia.  It's free and only accepts ads on the right side of the results page, to avoid confusing the user.  No less an expert than the WSJ's Walter Mossberg thinks it may "be a start to a new search paradigm where the object is to provide real instant information, not just links to web pages".  Check it out here.

Meet The Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is a massive archive of web pages dating back nine years.   Named after a device in an old cartoon show - The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, the Wayback Machine makes  it possible for lawyers to search for web pages that might have infringed their client's copyrights.  According to the Wall Street Journal, lawyers now ask their staff, "can you do a Wayback on that?".  Dell's lawyers used the Wayback Machine  to shut down DellComputersSuck.com.  They used evidence gleaned from the Wayback Machine to prove to an arbitration panel that the site had infringed Dell trademarks.  The Wayback Machine stores one million gigabytes worth of data found in over 50 Million web sites, comprising over 50 Billion web pages.  It is growing at the rate of  20,000 gigabytes per month.  Check out the Wayback Machine here.

New Products Cause Stir

You might not think that it's still possible for new products to cause a stir in the Search world, but you would be wrong.  Two new products are garnering a lot of attention.

Del.icio.us is a "Social Bookmarking" manager.  "It allows you to easily add web pages you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only among your own browsers and machines, but also with others.", according to the web site.  Check it out here.

Zabasearch.com claims to be "the #1 people search on earth".   Many find scary the amount of information (addresses & phome numbers) the engine  displays when they type in their own names.  Zabasearch's business model appears to be based on selling background checks to its users.  Check it out here.

TVEyes Debuts Podcasting Search Engine

The podcasting buzz keeps ballooning, with one company readying a search engine for the new format. Real-time broadcast search provider TVEyes is hoping to be the first to make sense of the growing podcasting world, helping users sift through volumes of audio content. The engine, named Podscope, will convert audio content into searchable words, allowing indexing and organization. To accomplish the feat, TVEyes is leveraging its expertise in audio and television broadcast search. The company will crawl the existing inventory of podcasts for the upcoming service.

Become.com launches shopping search engine

The folks who brought you MySimon.com have launched a new shopping search engine called Become.com.  The site is starting with 3.2 billion pages of shopping related information from over 40 million websites.  Read more about it here.

WSJ Discovers Click Fraud

The Wall Street Journal focused its page one spotlight today on the simmering issue of "Click Fraud" in Search.  It defines click fraud as "clicking on a search add with ill intent".  The article quotes Google's Chief Financial Officer, George Reyes, as saying click fraud is "the biggest threat to the Internet economy.  Something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because potentially it threatens our business model".

Search Scandal Roils Blogosphere

A Search-related scandal is roiling the "blogosphere".  Wordpress, a very popular open source blogging program has been outed in Waxy.org.  Reportedly, Wordpress has "been quietly hosting at least 168,000 articles on their website. These articles are designed specifically to game the Google Adwords program, written by a third-party about high-cost advertising keywords like asbestos, mesothelioma, insurance, debt consolidation, diabetes and mortgages". Read more about the controversy here.

Meet Oodle: Google For Classifieds

Some of the  original folks behind Excite have launched Oodle, touted as "Google for Classifieds".  The site aims to be a comprehensive search engine for online classifieds, including Craigs List, eBay, newspaper sites, Cars.com, job boards, etc.

They are in Beta in Chicago, Dallas and Phildelphia but the plans are to roll out nationally soon.  The site allows consumers, depending on the category, to sort by price and location, among other relevant criteria.

Yahoo Debuts Creative Commons Tool

Yahoo! has launched a beta version of a tool that's designed to search the Web for information that can be shared, edited, and reused. Yahoo! calls the tool the Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons.  Read more about it here in MediaPost.