Staying up to date in the ever-changing Web search world: refine your Web-searching skills

Information Outlook, March, 2004 by Rita Vine

Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/), part of the Internet.com family of brands, provides analysis of the search engine industry and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines. The site was created by Danny Sullivan, an Internet consultant and journalist, and is now co-edited by Web search consultant and writer Chris Sherman. Like LLRX.com, Search Engine Watch is a portal for search engine information, including but not limited to news about search engines and content providers. A monthly "Search Engine Report" consolidates many of the month's news stories, while "SearchDay" delivers daily news and short features.

The site focuses on information about the business side of searching and developments in the search engine optimization industry. Much of the information on the site is free, but value-added extras, like longer articles and access to key optimization tips, are available to paid subscribers. Search Engine Watch provides announcements of important new search engine features, key business deals between the search engines, and other business-related news, although ResourceShelf, TVC Alert, and Search Engine Showdown also pick up many of the same headlines. Although clearly intended for Web search optimizers, this site can also be suitable for Web searchers who use a variety of commercial search tools and need to know more about how content and paid results are delivered.

Everything Google

Google is constantly introducing and testing new features, and implements them on the public site without a lot of warning. Google doesn't sponsor its own weblog or other discussion group, (3) so a mini-industry of weblogs by Google-watchers has evolved to ensure that the rest of us are aware of anything Google-related. The news is peppered with plenty of Google-love and Google-bashing (a popular topic in the wake of Google's forthcoming initial public stock offering). Alas, because anyone can be a self-declared expert, and Google is such a popular--make that universal--brand, the commentaries put forward may not always be correct--or even informed. Readers will also be surprised at how many stories simply restate the same information (often from company press releases) with practically no elaboration or analysis--so a healthy dose of skepticism is important when following these sites.

If you really need to Google-watch, Watching Google Like a Hawk (http://wglah.com) is a good consolidator of Google-related weblog content that allows readers to double- and triple-check information among a variety of alleged experts. WGLAH links to Google stories from business and technology magazines, optimization newsletters, and personal weblogs. Editor Frank Hayson, a management consultant, hand-picks the items from news aggregators and updates the site several times a day. At present the only way to access the site is via the Web.

Finding New and Interesting Web Sites

Keepers of Web link pages need quick and reliable sources of new search sites to consider for their link pages. ResourceShelf features new sites, but if you want more sources, a few of the major link portals offer notification services of new sites that have been added to their databases. Librarians Index to the Internet (http://www.lii.org) has a "What's New?" section linked from the main page, and an optional RSS feed at http://lii.org/ntw.rss. Infomine (http://infomine.ucr.edu) offers an e-mail-only update service by subscription at http://infomine.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/alert_service_editor?screen_name = main. The long-standing Scout Report delivers a small but choice collection of annotated links every Friday at http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/Current/. E-mail subscription options are available on the Web site. Marylaine Block maintains Neat New Stuff I Found on the Web This Week at http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html, which contains a dozen or so annotated entries each week. E-mail subscription options are available at http://marylaine.com/subscrib.html. The El Dorado County Public Library maintains What's Hot on the Internet This Week, another selective, annotated list of good Web resources, at http://www.eldoradolibrary.org/thisweek.htm. No subscription options are currently available. "New and Noteworthy Sites" is featured in every issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html). This British newsletter is particularly good at linking to resources from outside of North America that, for some reason, many other site announcement services seem to miss. On the downside, some of the linked resources are too commercial for many library link collections.