Apr

8

Taking the juice out of Google

Filed Under Search

When Google launched it’s Custom Search Engine service 18 months ago, I expected thousands of CSEs to pop up all over. That’s happened, but I’m not aware that any in the areas I monitor have made a mark. Why so?
In the UK legal arena I know of only a few CSEs:

I put together a number […]

By Nick Holmes, 8 April 2008

Nov

8

What’s a “legal” search?

Filed Under Search

A couple of big players have recently come out with new “legal” search engines (for the US market).
There is Westlaw’s WebPlus which, “through a combination, it seems, of editorial selection of sites or domains and an algorithm the engine offers to fetch you from the web a better selection of legally interesting results than a […]

By Nick Holmes, 8 November 2007

Oct

19

Navigational search

Filed Under Browsers, Search

Navigational search - gaining access to a specific site or page by searching for the actual web address or a portion of it - is common, not just amongst the uninitiated (who you might say do it out of ignorance), but amongst the web savvy.
Jeremy Crane at Compete:
It’s actually astonishing how often people search for […]

By Nick Holmes, 19 October 2007

Oct

16

Google - the only law firm directory to bother with?

Filed Under Search

Larry Bodine thinks so:
Clients use Google to look up phone numbers and addresses, so law firms can cancel their yellow pages ads. When clients want to check out your firm, they are not going to call up to get your printed brochure, they will look you up online.
Kevin O’Keefe agrees but sees the directories playing […]

By Nick Holmes, 16 October 2007

Sep

27

Adnonsense (3)

Filed Under Mammon, Search

Google is in a bit of a bind. On the plus side it can be credited with:

opening up access to the web with Google search,
providing advertisers an effective channel for their web marketing through its AdWords scheme, and
giving legitimate publishers, large and small, the opportunity to generate income from serving up those ads through its […]

By Nick Holmes, 27 September 2007

Sep

20

SEO for dummies

Filed Under Search, Miscellany

Nearly Legal has a thing for Sally Field naked: she boosts his Google juice.
His recent rise in the rankings for the said search term was helped by the fact that on Tuesday Sally won the Best Lead Actress Emmy for her role in Brothers and Sisters where all those leading TV actors you’ve seen over […]

By Nick Holmes, 20 September 2007

Jun

7

SEO: quality is the key

Filed Under Search

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine in the New York Times gives a rare view inside one of the key departments at Googleplex. Amit Singhal, for some reason quaintly referred to as “Mr. Singhal” throughout, is the master of Google’s ranking algorithm, the complex program that calculates the relevance of a particular page to a […]

By Nick Holmes, 7 June 2007

Apr

17

A victim of his own success

Filed Under Search

I used to follow John Battelle’s Searchblog closely for news and insight into the web search business. It’s still the place to go and I’m trying to stay interested, but wonder if I should bother. Not if he continues to dish out posts like this:
Bezos at Web 2 Expo….S3 Data
Jeff Bezos just gave out some […]

By Nick Holmes, 17 April 2007

Feb

14

Google is illegal says Brussels

Filed Under Copyright, Search

Struan Robertson analyses on OUT-law.com the Court of First Instance ruling in favour of newspaper group Copiepresse that Google News and Google’s caching of web pages infringe copyright.
The Belgian court … ruled that it cannot be deduced that the absence of technical protections [the robots.txt and NOARCHIVE protocols] is an unconditional authorisation. Google’s method of […]

By Nick Holmes, 14 February 2007

Jan

18

Have I got news for Yahoo?

Filed Under Search

I’m well aware that my post titles suck for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes. For those unfamiliar with that black art, consider just that I could have entitled this post “Writing headlines for the search engines”. Boring or what?
As the linked NY Times article says: “There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish […]

By Nick Holmes, 18 January 2007

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