Yahoo Does A9

I just ran into this. It looks like Yahoo likes what they see over at A9, and they've done some interesting work.

It is called My Search, and it offers a personalized search experience. You can do a regular web search or a personalized search. They have something called My Web and Recently Visited. It comes with the ability to save results you like, block ones you don't, share what you find and find anything you've saved. It looks like it has a lot of potential. I especially like the simple clean interface -- apparently they've learned something from Google too.

I have to admit, I am really impressed with Yahoo. I didnt' think they had it in them. But they are really doing it. They are creating new innovative search applications and not sitting still.

Link.

Blockbuster, Netflix and ComScore

I saw this article on CBS MarketWatch last week, and just couldn't believe it. Apparently, Blockbuster had surpassed Netflix in online traffic, according to ComScore. No way. I don't believe it.

So I checked. ComScore is nuts. Not only is ComScore wrong, but they are 2 to 3 times off the mark. According to our stats, Netflix is killing blockbuster and taking no prisoners.

Using our 600X multiplier, we would estimate that Netflix has 1.8 Million daily visitors. Bluckbuster has 720K daily visitors.

So what does this say about ComScore? They don't come close to getting right. Sites ranked at 233 and 747 respectively are off by factors of 2 or more. Now, that's a big grain of salt.

Mapping Application

I have always been impressed by map applications. The amount of data they provide is astounding to me. Coworker Jason Broughton found this new one. It uses Java for a more interactive, albeit clunky, experience. Link.

Yahoo Video Search

Yahoo unveiled their new Video Search yesterday. I'm still not sure what use video search is, except for porn.

I've been playing with it (the search, that is...) and it is pretty good. Here is a short roundup of video search sites. For each one, I searched for surfing wave.

Yahoo Video Search - 92 results
Blinkx TV Video Search - 2 results
Altavista Video Search - 88 results
Singing Fish - 60 results

There's also alltheweb (results from altavista) and aol (results from singingfish.)

Jakob Nielsen on Web Usability

If you work in the Web then you are probably familiar with bad web sites. Here's one that's bad on purpose. But what makes a Web site bad? There have been extensive studies on the subject. A leader in the field, Jakob Nielsen, has devoted his career to the topic and has a Web site, Use It, that provides a lot of useful info. Take his Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design for example. I couldn't agree with him more... I hate Bad Search, PDFs and popups!

He recently posted something else interesting, The Most Hated Advertising Techniques. I am proud to say that we are guilty of exactly zero of them.

Sex Offender Database

In California Megan's Law requires that all sex offenders register with local law enforcement and that information about their offenses and their location be made publicly available. Today, Megan's Law went online. You can search for offenders near your address, in your City, Zip Code, by name and more. Luckily, there were no offenders in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, I did find that there was one living next to my coworker and friend. Link.

Movers & Shakers

I was surprised to see Hot or Not at the top of the Movers & Shakers today. I don't see any reason for them to be there. Does anybody else know? Then there was Accoona, that new search engine, that as far as I can tell, stinks. #4 on the Movers today was Pantera's Web site. I guess fans are going there following the death of Pantera guitarist, Dimebag.

At the bottom of the list, we have the first Christmas entry onto the list, Blue Nile. I expect to see a lot more e-commerce sites show up here in the next few weeks.

Can Search Go Open Source?

It is funny the things you stumble across when you aren't looking. About a year back, Nutch was in the headlines touting the future of open source search. They still have a long way to go. Just now I bumped into this Zettair Open Source search engine. Looks like there are a lot more. Anybody need a large Web Crawl to try your engine...?

we're big in China

The Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China is distributing the Alexa Toolbar on their site. Since China began to come online in large numbers, Alexa has been following their traffic. It seems a good strategy for their Ministry of Commerce because our global rankings demonstrate the extent to which China is a part of the online world, that they're ranked among the big boys from the US and elsewhere.

MSN Says "Me Too" To Desktop Search

MSN and Ask Jeeves announced their imitations of Google's Desktop Search application. Link. Link.

Google Suggest

Google keeps pumping out the cool features. This one, Google Suggest, provides query suggestions and number of results -- BEFORE you search. I started typing Pontiac and, halfway through the word, at PON, it had finished typing the word for me and told me that there were 9 million results. It also showed other things I might be about to type like PONG (1.8 million results) PONTIAC GTO (300,000 results.) I kept typing and it kept refining it's suggestions.

Lots of fun, and useful too!

This reminds of this other really amazing tool built by Google, called Google Personalized. First, you have to create a profile, selecting your favorite categories from their browse tree... that part is a pain. But then, after that, you get a search interface that still amazes me. You get a slider to choose personalized vs. generic, and as you move it left to right, the results change on the fly. I don't know how they did it. It is very smooth and fast. There is something here, but I don't think they've hit it yet.

Search - Backstage Pass

These sites allow you to peek behind the curtain and see what people are searching for.

Lycos Top 50 - Online since August 2000
Yahoo Buzz Index - Since January 2001
Google Zeitgeist - Since July 2001

Snap - New

MSN Search Insider - Brand New

It's neat to compare the top searches from August of 2000 to today. Britney Spears has dropped from #1 to #6. Napster has disappeared and been replaced by Kazaa.

Movers & Shakers

Craigs List had a big spike in traffic and just made it into Alexa's Movers & Shakers list. They just released a new Buffalo NY community, but that probably wasn't why they had the big spike... Craig's list hosted something called "An Evening with Craig's List" at the Kimmel Center in New York, and it was crashed by some streakers. Nothin' like nudity to get people to visit a Web site.

Also on the Shakers today is myspace.com (traffic graph), a blogging site. I wonder if people are confusing it with Microsoft's new blogging site, spaces.msn.com?

Today's Hot Searches

Here's the stuff people with the toolbar are looking for today:
• world aids day • julia roberts • ken jennings • susan saint james • anna benson

US National Debt... To The Penny

Did you know that the US Treasury calculates the National debt daily, down to the penny? Really, they do. Our current debt, as of December 12, 2004 is $7,522,602,352,797.79. Too many commas for you? That's 7.5 Trillion. And you can even get the tally from previous dates. The year 2000: 5.7 Trillion. The year 1992, 4 Trillion.

If we divide up the current debt between every man, woman and child in the country, you are responsible for $25,483.24. But we don't divide it up evenly. You owe more. You owe a lot more. There's a bunch of pages on the net dedicated to providing counters and banners that steadily and ominously tick upward (as the dollar ticks downward...) here, here and here.

N.B. In the time it took me to write this post, the debt rose another 30 Million bucks.

CopyFight: Brewster Kahle Loses Round One

Brewster Kahle, co-founder of Alexa, has been fighting in court for the right to preserve out-of-print media. His case was dismissed, but he plans to appeal. Story on Wired.

FireFox and Alexa

We've been getting a lot of requests to build an Alexa Toolbar for FireFox (nifty new Open Source browser.) Here's the party line(s):

1) We already built one. It is called "What's Related" and it was built into Netscape and Mozilla, but the FireFox folks have orphaned it. Send them a note.
2) Build one yourself. We have a feed. They have an Open Source browser. Build one!

In fact, it looks like some people are already playing with it here, here and here.

Chinese Users - Folllow Up

This is a follow up to the previous post about the global distribution of Alexa Toolbar users. As mentioned, our sample may lean a little heavy on the China users. So I thought I'd take a look to see if it is getting any worse.

Here is a Reach per million graph of 4 of the top 10 Chinese sites, and they all appear to be falling.

Perhaps in a few more months this will normalize, and like the Korean users, and our sample will become more representative.

Home Computers of the Future?

At some point in the past, this was to be the future.