Search engine news w/e Feb 14, 2003

• Feb. 14, 2003

Well, it’s been a relatively quiet week on the search engine front.  Some speculations have been made on whether Google is close to making an IPO.  Personally, I don’t see a reason for them to do so.  Google is making enough money as a private company, why would they want to spread the wealth.  Even if it’s only a couple hundred million.

 

Ted Turner is busy selling off more AOL Time Warner stock.  After leaving the company in January, Turner has been selling off stock in bits and pieces, if you consider $51 million a bit.  To Turner it probably is a “bit”.

 

What is Yahoo!’s next move?  That thought is on the minds of many SEO’s and Webmasters.  After their recent Purchase of Inktomi in December, and their hiring of an Overture executive last month, not to mention they keep repeating the fact that their current deal with Google is non-exclusive.  Although nothing has been announced, you can bet it will be big, and likely happen overnight.  Just like when they virtually eliminated their own directory listings in favor of Google listings last fall.

 

On the heels of Yahoo!’s next move are thoughts of MSN.  Since Inktomi is a major supplier of results to MSN, one begins to wonder what they will do.  Just this week MSN announced they were changing their search features somewhat, and even displayed a “test” search portal with less advertising and more search results.  They also increased the visibility of Looksmart’s results on these pages  Speculation is that MSN will drop the Yahoo/Inktomi results in favor of Looksmart in the coming months.

 

I don’t think you will see this happen, though, until after the Inktomi shareholders gather in March to decide whether they will approve the Yahoo! Deal.

 

Despite many recent changes to their business model, Altavista still continues to struggle.  They even announced recently that they will scale back their services by getting out of the enterprise search field.  Maybe Microsoft should buy Altavista?

 

Finally, what do you think is the most recognized brand in the world today?  Google.

 

It’s true.  Google beat out Coke and Apple to become brand of the year.  Not bad for a 4 year old company.

 

That being said, spring cleaning is just around the corner.  Who knows what kind of “cleaning” the search engines will be doing in the coming months.  The implications to search engine optimization could be huge.

 

Rob Sullivan

Assistant Production Supervisor

Search Engine Position – the search engine positioning specialists