search engine update

Amazon has made some books full-text searchable at its own Web site, as well as with its A9 search engine. The full-text display at Amazon changed significantly; it now uses the new Amazon Online Reader. (See page 42 for a full review of the Reader by Michael Banks.)

Ask added a blog and feed

search database. Building on Ask-owned Bloglines data, the new database covers blog postings as well as feeds from news sites and other assorted RSS feed outlets. Each result gives several options for subscribing to the feed (at Bloglines, Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and NewsGator) as well as several quick post options, a save to Ask's MyStuff, and the binoculars preview. Feed results and news results are available under two separate tabs, while the "Top Feeds" are also displayed on the right side of the page. Each search can be subscribed to via an RSS feed as well. The new blog search is also available from Bloglines.

Google unveiled new developments in its search and expanding portal programs. It launched Google Notebook for online clipping, note taking, and sharing. Google Spreadsheets is an online, collaborative spreadsheet program; and Google Checkout is a payment service for online stores. On the search side of the business, Google launched a new Google U.S. Government Search that replaces the older, languishing Google Uncle Sam. The new Google U.S. Government Search [http://usgov.google.com] covers both state and federal sites and mixes them in the results with no easy way to sort or exclude one from the other. It does locate some government sites beyond .gov and .mil domains, finding the Forest Service (at fs.fed.us), but it missed the Smithsonian at si.edu.

Google Blog Search expanded its date limit features. While it still defaults to a relevance sort, the left side of the screen has quick limits for results from just the last hour, 12 hours, day, week, month, and a user-specified date range. While some of this was available via the advanced search, the new display makes it much easier to add the limits.

Google Book Search has created a special Shakespeare Web site that provides access to various out-of-copyright editions of Shakespeare's works along with links to a full search for all copies in Book Search. There is also a new official blog called Inside Google Book Search [http://booksearch.blog spot.com].

MSN Search and its sister site Live.com have both stopped using ads from Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture) and instead are relying on Microsoft's own new ad system. In addition, MSN Search added indexing for https sites, although only those the crawler can reach. Live Search will also be integrated into Windows Live Messenger in a similar fashion to Yahoo! search being available within Yahoo! Messenger.

NOODP is a new metatag introduced by Microsoft in response to complaints that Open Directory Project (ODP) descriptions of sites have gotten too old and out-of-date for some entries. For a number of years, MSN and Google have used the brief site descriptions from the ODP instead of the keyword-in-context snippets for certain Web sites. Some sites have changed content significantly, and the ODP description no longer matches their content. MSN's NOODP metatag lets Web sites specify which pages should not use an ODP description. Google now also supports the NOODP metatag.

retrievr is a search engine for pictures where the search looks for matches based on color and pattern rather than text matches. Search using retrievr's sketch pad or by uploading another image. Alternatively, just paste the URL of a Web-accessible image, retrievr then matches based on color and pattern from its small underlying database of Flickr images. It works best with color matching and fairly pronounced shapes.

Yahoo! has a new home page redesign. Many users may still default to the old layout, but for those who choose to move to the new layout, it has several significant changes beyond the graphics and Web 2.0 styling. Search is still featured prominently at the top. However, the Yahoo! Directory no longer shows as a separate section or any subcategories. It is only accessible via a search (the directory search tab is still there) or by clicking the "More services" to see a direct link. It is also available directly at dir.yahoo.com. The new page puts more emphasis onYahooi's own personalized services such as mail, local, and messenger.

On the search side, Yahoo! added support for the wildcardword-within-a-phrase search technique using an asterisk. Place the asterisk within a phrase search to match on any one word in that exact position. For example, to find "sighs more lunar than bronchi a L" whenyouare not sure of the third word, search "sighs more * than bronchial ". Use multiple asterisks-"sighs * * * bronchial "-to retrieve instances of the phrase with any three words between sighs and bronchial.

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Greg R. Notess [greg@notess.com; www.notess.com] is a reference librarian at Montana State University and founder of SearchEngine Showdown.com.