I’m going to look at results for the same query across each one just as a comparison. I’ll use the classic “level 4 brain cancer” query that we’ve looked at on Google various times throughout the content farm/Panda update discussion this year.

We first used this example to show where non-authoritative information was being surfaced for important health-related queries in Google, prior to the launch of the Panda update.

Ask Jeeves

Ask Jeeves was founded in 1996, and eventually became Ask.com, although it’s still Ask Jeeves in the UK. While there was always an emphasis on Q&A, this is very much the case these days. Here’s what it looks like:

The results:

Alta Vista

AltaVista was founded in 1995. Eventually it was purchased by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. Last year, Yahoo indicated that it would be shutting AltaVista down, but so far it is still live, delivering Yahoo results with an AltaVista logo. Here’s what it looks like:

The results:

AlltheWeb

AlltheWeb came out in 1999. It was eventually bought up by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. It was just earlier this year that Yahoo simply started directing it to search.yahoo.com.

Excite

Excite was founded in 1994. Ten years later it was acquired by Ask Jeeves. Now it’s owned by IAC, which also owns Ask. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

Lycos

Lycos was founded in 1994. In 2000, it merged with Terra Networks to become Terra Lycos. In 2004, Lycos was sold to Daum Communications. In 2010, it was sold to Ybrant Digital. Here’s what it looks like these days:

The results:

HotBot

HotBot was launched in 1996 by Wired Magazine, and is now owned by Lycos. Here’s what it looks like these days:

The results:

Infoseek

Infoseek was founded in 1994, and was eventually bought by The Walt Disney Company. It then was rolled into Go.com, but has been replaced by Yahoo’s search, which is interesting, considering that Yahoo’s search has been replaced by Bing. Here’s what it looks like:

The results (they simply redirect to Yahoo search results):

WebCrawler

WebCrawler is a metasearch engine. It launched in 1994, was bought by AOL in 1995, and sold to Excite in 1997. Infospace acquired it in 2001. Currently its results pull from Google, Yahoo and Bing. This was actually my go to search engine before discovering Google. That seems so long ago. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

DogPile

DogPile is similar to WebCrawler, and is also now owned by Infospace. It was launched in 1996. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

Mamma.com

Mamma.com, a metasearch engine, was launched in 1996. The company eventually purchased Copernic, and changed its name to Copernic Inc. In 2009, Copernic sold Mamma.com to Empresario.

There’s currently a message on the Mamma.com saying that a new version is on the way. Here’s what it currently looks like:

The Results:

The moral of the story: a lot of search engines think eHow has the best result for “level 4 brain cancer”. That includes Bing and Yahoo. Google is going with Harvard’s MGH Brain Tumor Center for its top result for the query. Blekko is going with Cancer.org. DuckDuckGo is going with medical-answers.org.

When was the last time you used any of these old school search engines? Let us know in the comments.

A quick glance at the organization’s website is enough to tell anyone that things aren’t going well.  Look at the diving stock chart on the left, for starters.  The technical problems and revenue decline mentioned in the middle column aren’t positive developments, either.  And in between these two bulletins sits the real deathblow.

 Lycos Europe Homepage

After a little hemming and hawing, the "strategic review process" announcement simply states, "[T]he Management Board and the Supervisory Board of LYCOS came to the conclusion that the best available option of the company is to (i) strive for a sale of its domains, Danish portal and shopping activities and (ii) to discontinue the portal and webhosting activities."

Since a black lab is the Lycos mascot, this brings to mind unfortunate metaphors about being put down.

The decision still requires the approval of shareholders, though, so it’ll at least be a sort of family decision.  Lycos’s shareholders will meet on December 12th, and they stand to gain 50 million if the new plan is adopted.

The biggest search gainers include Republican presidential Mitt Romney who had a 600 percent jump in search activity with Web users. Fellow Republican candidate Ron Paul still generates more search interest than any other Republican candidate, receiving 143 percent more searches than Romney.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton continues to be the most popular candidate overall receiving 35 percent more search activity than the other presidential candidates combined.

The top 10 search terms for the week ending August 11 were poker, golf, MySpace, YouTube, Naruto, Beyonce, Disney, Pokemon, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton respectively.

Lycos has also added a new gossip blog to its site called "Under the Red Carpet" and has given the Lycos 50 a new look.

Tripod for Teachers offers classroom templates, building tools and hosting services for teachers to create a Web site. Tripod allows teachers to post homework assignments, provide links to Web sites for references, host class photo albums, field trip videos and blog with parents.

"Education is the fifth most popular topic with our millions of Tripod members, and we are thrilled that more and more teachers are turning to Tripod to access our easy-to-use site building tools to aid them in their classrooms," said Don Kosak, chief technology officer for Lycos. 

"Lycos is proud to be able to offer educators the opportunity to utilize our award-winning building and blogging tools to better connect with the audiences that are most important to them."

Tripod for Teachers directs educators to site building tutorials, offer guides to building Web sites, blogs and photo albums. It also offers customizable Sitebuilder templates to build a Web site. Tripod’s Blog Builder tools allow teachers to communicate publicly or privately.

"Tripod has made a huge impact in my classroom, especially in the communications between myself, students and parents," said New York teacher Heidi McCasland.  "I discovered Tripod more than five years ago and have been using it in my classroom ever since, and spreading the word to colleagues across the country as well."

The top ten biggest movers and shakers for the week ending June 1,2007 were:

    1.          Fred Thompson                                        1100 %
    2.          David Blaine                                            1100 %
    3.          Father’s Day                                          209 %
    4.          Keith Richards                                        200 %
    5.           Pirate Bay                                            200 %
    6.          Sarah Silverman                                       157 %
    7.          FIFA                                                       117 %
    8.          MySpace                                                  97 %
    9.          Lindsay Lohan                                          82 %
   10.         Katharine McPhee                                      

Lycos also looked at the 2008 presidential candidates to see which ones were the most popular with Internet users.

The top 5 most popular candidates were:

    1. Hillary Clinton (D)
    2. Fred Thompson (R)
    3. Ron Paul (R)
    4. John Edwards (D)
    5. Barack Obama (D)

Hillary Clinton had the most search activity, receiving 125 percent more search interest than Fred Thompson. Thompson has not officially entered the race but is expected to in the coming weeks.

Ron Paul, who has generated Internet buzz, but not much mainstream media, is going to appear on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" this week. Paul was shown to be 133 percent more popular in online interest than candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama.

So along with the new Google hot trends report and analysing the top peformers within the affiliate programs, what other tools are available? I have put together a list of tools below that can help inspire & provide ideas to help identify trends, potential niches or opportunities that could provide decent traffic and monetisation opportunities for a dedicated blog or site.

Search Engines -

• Google Trends
  
• Google Hot Trends – US only. Replaces the old Google Zeitgeist.
• Yahoo Buzz – The days top 20 overall searches.
• MSN Hotlist – The days top 20 overall searches.
• AOL Hot Searches – Latest top searches with categories.
• Ask Top Searches – Top overall searches and movers.
• Lycos Top 50 – Just that.
• Dogpile – Not great.
• Search.com – Top 1000 searches.
• Metacrawler – Most popular search queries with categories.

Blog Sites -

• Technorati Most Popular – Top searches, blogs and videos.
• Ice Rocket Blog Trends – Top movies & news too.

Shopping Sites / Products -

• Ebay – List of top searches on Ebay.
• Kelkoo – Kelkoos most popular, not great.
• ShopZilla – As above, not great.
• Amazon Bestsellers – Bestsellers by category.
• Amazon Movers N Shakers – Whats hot or not anymore.
• Amazon Hot Future Releases – What should be hot.

News Sites -

• NY Times – Most popular search phrases.
• BBC – Top searches & fastest movers.
• BBC Celebdaq – Highlights hot celebs.
• Wall Street Journal – Most viewed / E-mailed.

Others -

• Alexa Top Sites
• Alexa Movers N Shakers
• Jupiter Research Most Popular – Inc most popular searches.
• Touch Local Popular Searches

Can you add to the list?

Hat tip to the Search Anyway blog, it was about time I spoke a little more about affiliate marketing.

Comments

TV Web Sites Heat Up During Prime Time

At NBC.com in February, 40 percent of total time spent was during prime time, which made it the number one Web site ranked in the prime time index. Other TV sites that did well during the same time period were ABC Primetime and Fox Broadcasting, which had the number two and three spots in the index.

"Although online content is available on demand, whenever and wherever you need it, Americans still enjoy an evening of entertainment," said Michael Pond, media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.

"Moreover, the advent of interactive television such as voting online for contestants on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘Grease: You’re the One that I Want,’ encourages the simultaneous consumption of TV and Web content. Advertisers can also take advantage of the interplay between these two media, adding online promotions to their traditional 30-second television spots."

For the early evening hours between 5pm-8pm, Web sites that cater to kids had an increase in the amount of time spent on their sites. Dictionary.com ranked number one on the early evening index in February with 31 percent of its total time spent between 5pm-8pm.

Lycos Network Angelfire, a social networking site popular with young people, and the WB network were ranked number two and three, with a respective 28 and 25 percent of their total time spent between 5pm-8pm in February.

Interestingly, two cooking Web sites were in the top 10 on the early evening index. About.com Food & Drink and CondNet Publishing Network, which includes Epicurious.com. This demonstrates the usefulness of cooking Web sites and the value they hold for users looking to download a tasty recipe for dinner.

After doing some research it became clear that TestTube is not a new feature to YouTube and it has been around since December 2006 as reported here. Maybe it is a case of Internet amnesia. I will briefly cover these not so new features anyway.

Test Tube features AudioSwap where users can exchange audio on their videos with music. The music is licensed and YouTube has agreements with a number of artists and plans to add more. They have also added Streams where users can chat with others who are watching the same video.

On their site they describe Test Tube as," This is where YouTube engineers and developers test out recipes and concoctions that aren’t quite fully baked and invite you to tell us how they’re coming along. Your comments will help us improve and perfect the mixtures we’re working on. So jump in, play around, and send your feedback directly to the brains behind the scenes."

Lycos launched its Cinema Platform in November, which is like YouTube’s Streams. The Cinema feature allows users to watch video content in synchronicity with other users and they can chat about a video in real-time.

In February, Lycos added Lycos MIX, which allows users to access content from other video sites besides YouTube. With the MIX feature users can have access to video content from MySpace Video, Yahoo Video and Google Video.

They can also chat in real-time and have control over their play list of favorite videos. Other viewers can participate by adding their own videos to the MIX and leave comments much like a video blog.

The New York Times reports that Lycos is betting big on a new brand in the U.S. – it no longer owns the rights to the U.S. trademark – and is launching Jubii.

Lycos Europe is hoping to ride the wave of Web 2.0 with Jubii, which combines search, e-mail, chat, photo and file storage, phone texting, blogging, Internet phoning and other services that are increasingly popular with young Internet users. The company expects to introduce Jubii officially this month.

The company is so excited about the launch, they honestly believe the new brand will help them reverse the trend of 27 money-losing quarters out of the past 28 reported!

Here’s some free advice for them.

1. Don’t make me sign-up to use your service. I have no clue if I want to go thru that hassle. Let me use it first and then decide.
2. Hire an SEO to help you understand why a meta-refresh on you homepage is about as lame as the old Lycos search technology.

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“American Idol” contestant Antonella Barba had a surge in Web users searching for her. Not because of an outstanding performance on the show but because news surfaced that there were nude pictures of her on the Internet.

In a frenzy users flocked online to see for themselves, resulting in a 47,000 percent jump in interest just for being naked.

Former Vice President Al Gore also saw an increase in users searching for his name but for very different reasons than Barba. Because of his recent Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” users were curious. Search results for him rose 800 percent.

Rounding out the top five for biggest gainers in search were board games which saw a 495 percent increase in interest most likely due to cold weather.

TV Guide had a 495 percent increase and Brittany’s ex Kevin Federline jumped 200 percent in search.

Here is a list of the biggest search gainers according to Lycos.

Biggest Movers and Shakers for Week Ending Feb. 24, 2007:

1. Antonella Barba 47400%
2. Al Gore 800%
3. Board Games 495%
4. TV Guide 345%
5. Kevin Federline 200%
6. Nintendo 114%
7. Yu-Gi-Oh 102%
8. Tom Hanks 100%
9. Cher 93%
10. Idol 92%

The LYCOS 50(TM) Top 10 Search Terms for the Week Ending Feb. 24, 2007:
1) MySpace                    6) Cher
2) Paris Hilton               7) Naruto
3) Britney Spears         Disney
4) Anna Nicole Smith  9) RuneScape
5) Poker                       10) Pokemon