Design Tips

Stop by Web Pages That Suck for a great tutorial on page design. They do it by tearing apart badly designed pages.

Need to Brush up on Your Java?

The Internet provides an interesting opportunity for education. Ziff-Davis (the company behind PC Magazine, and other computer periodicals) obviously realizing that has created ZD Net University (ZDU). Online courses are offers at considerably less than the correspondence course from your local college. For $4.95 a month you can choose as many courses as you can handle from subjects such as Lotus Notes, Java, PaintShop Pro, HotDog, and HTML. You can even earn OEContinuing Education Units, from the American Board of Education. Unfortunately they don,t have a course on time management, which is what you really need to keep up which the incredible learning curve of this thing. --Linda Wilson

Still More Search News

We've often thought of Excite, with its bright red interface and multiple search options as "the little engine that could" but of course didn't. That could all change with the announcement that Excite has bought WebCrawler, previously AOL,s exclusive search vehicle for their online service. Excite will develop a new search engine service for AOL to be called "AOL Search Powered by Excite" that will be available to AOL's more than 7 million. Excite also acquired Magellan and City.Net early this year. This development is likely to put Excite in the number 2 position behind Yahoo. Both AOL and Excite have said that they will explore ways to better integrate smart search capabilities throughout AOL's content channels, which should also translate into more opportunities for advertisers as well. --Linda Wilson

Infoseek Upgrades Its Engine

While Excite and Lycos enhance their offering by adding editorial content, Infoseek is taking the emphasis off of iZone, its content area, and instead focusing on power searching and attracting the business user. Last July, Infoseek introduced its new Infoseek Ultra search technology in beta. This new engine which claims to be faster and more accurate has been integrated into its search offerings and is the power behind Ultrasmart and Ultraseek. Ultrasmart allows "smart" queries in natural language and question format, and the results will include related topics and news items. Weary of a technology that "intuitively" knows what we are looking for, we will probably use Ultraseek, which most closely resembles their old service and allows both natural language searches and search expressions and the ability to search for links, domains, and titles. The Infoseek Ultra engine will also include real-time indexing which claims that URLs submitted to Infoseek are added instantly." How "real-time" remains to be seen (see yesterday's column on Lycos). The service is currently unavailable.

The engine also claims to remove dead links from the directory on a regular basis. Sounds interesting. We're sure to use this search engine, if only we can remember what it's called. Info-seek-ultra-seek-ultra-smart-seek? --Linda Wilson

Lycos Upgrades

Lycos, owned by America Online, has added four new enhancements to its services. Two of these improvements will be of interest to web marketers. The first called The URL Finder indicates whether or not your site has been indexed by Lycos. The second new feature, Real-Time Spidering, will index your site on the spot. This sounds great until you read that although your site was indexed and you see how it will appear in the catalog, it still won't be added for 2-4 more weeks. Other services on the site include Top 5% of the Web and Sites by Subject. Unfortunately adding your site to these editorial services is harder. It seems that inclusion to these groups is based on traffic to your site. --Linda Wilson

Excite

Search Engines in an attempt to remain competitive are adding more value and editorial content to their sites. Excite in addition to their search engine has acquired City.Net, added site reviews, an option to create a dynamic page based on personal preferences, and regional editions. The latest addition, Exciteseeing Tours, is a "how-to" service where celebrities, experts and web users share their expertise on a variety subjects. Each of the 225 tours already created provide several links in order to learn about subjects that range from sailing to job hunting. This can be an excellent opportunity to promote your site and others that you have strategic alliances with. The writer of the tour gets a byline and a link to their site, but once a topic is taken your opportunity may have passed. Web Marketers should also be aware that submitting your site to the Excite search engine, does not mean your site was considered for the Excite Reviews. If you think your site is worthy of editorial commentary, send an email to editors@excite.com. --Linda Wilson