Search Engine Milestones for December (via Search Engine Watch)

#3 PPC player FindWhat completes aquisition of Meva Merchant, delays talks with Espotting on merger, and is to start using IntelliMap broad match technology later this month.
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24/7 Media search is partnering with Lycos for its ad program. press release
ePilot gearing up for beta testing regional ads.

Ego ad agencies do horrible search engine marketing.

Shopping search results 2003 are in.

Paid Inclusion has a so so outlook. (I suggest using a blog instead)

Lots of news on top searches 2003
Google Yahoo

and of least importance to those walking the Earth: Macon online is at #5 for Macon AGAIN...to them I tip my hat.

Recently the media has picked up on a story about Vivismo clustering technology. While I think the categorization of search results may be a great feature, most of the time the key feature is quality of results.

If people search for things and can not find them they learn to search smarter. By using tools which visualize search extensions we will begin to notice patterns and thus become smarter searchers.

I think SEE ALSO (Teoma, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb all have this feature) is a great feature for search engines to have, but the visualization of the search will not take off any time in the near future, the quality of results still needs to be the focus of innovation.

Some software companies charge for a service I rarely think is worthwhile free, but sometimes it is fun to play with a search engine such as Kartoo. If companies want to spread their ideas and software they would be better off having it web based and free...so the idea is quick and easy to spread.

I try to write at least one or two articles every month. This one is about the reranking of results based on local inter connectivity. Local Community Link Structure

Time recently came out with a new article called Search And Destroy which I did not enjoy.

In my eyes it was apparent the writers knew nothing about search. Listed are a couple quotes which show what I am talking about.

"Should they be allowed to push the websites of their own businesses to the top of the stack? Could a search engine suppress the website of a political party with which its CEO disagreed?"

If it was know that this was happening people would quit using the search engine. Politics are frequently fed by greedy companies who can afford to waste money anyway...as noted on this very site yesterday. The largest drug companies have already started to control ads anyway.

"But when the competition gets stiff and Page has to answer to his shareholders, integrity may be a luxury Google can no longer afford."

I certainly think it will be hard to balance, but there is no way that going public will imediately cause them to loose all of their business ideals which made them a success.