BPN 1241 Google jubilee: a confession

This year Google celebrates its first decade of operation. In just a few years Google was able to send search engines into oblivion. Who does still use Altavista, for example? Over the years Google has become an institution with an idealistic objective of making all the information in the world accessible electronically. And this not only means already digitised information, but also printed information such as books.



As part of the celebration Google has put up the internet index, not of the starting year 1998, but of 2001, when the first annual internet index was technically possible. This index shows a snapshot of internet in the new century. It also delivers an opportunity to compare the Google index of 2001 with the present index in the search engine. And the search company collaborates for the 20001 project with Internet Archive, which preserves old internet pages.

Of course I did some search and hit work. I looked for the name of my company in 2001 and 2008 and of course for my own name. The name of my company yielded some interesting results. Electronic Media Reporting (between quotes) delivered in 2001 a simple 245 links. The interesting part I that there were no links to my company, but al US links to the method of reporting with electronic media. In 2008 there were 3920 references, with only four references to the method of electronic reporting on the front page and more than 8 references to my company. In fact the first the first reference is to my company, which shows the improved localisation of the search engine. Of course I did also a search for my own name. This yielded in 2001 already 1820 references and had grown to 3110 links in 2008. For me the Google index of 2001 still showed the rise of internet and the global city theme, as my name is mentioned in the OJR Features: 50 international names to know (in journalism).

The jubilee also reminds me of a goof-up. By 1999, Google was ready to spread the wings over Europe. At that time I was working for the Dutch language newsletter Telecombrief . So on a day a press release came in and told about the launch of the Dutch language version of the search engine; at that time the major Dutch language search engine was Ilse., which now has shrivelled. I remember responding to the press release, which came from a Belgian PR bureau, which released the press releases rather in Flemish than in Dutch. Besides my remarks about their antiquated words, I told them that we, journalists, had heard all that stuff of being the best one before and that search engines still were stupid machines as they yielded more irrelevant stuff than relevant links. I told them also that Google still used the stupid search method of Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and that searching had not moved forward since 1972. Looking back I am still convinced that my comments about the information overload and Boolean operators still stand, but I must grant that Google in the meantime grew to giant proportions.

I wonder where Google will be in the next ten years. Will they still exist? Will the company have made improvements on their search engine? In the meantime Google is the best we have at the moment.

Blog Posting Number: 1241

Tags: search engine

BPN 1099 ilse gives up in favour of Google

The Dutch pioneer search engine ilse has lost the search engine battle in favour of Google and will no longer be the heart of Startpagina, the starting pages for Dutch language sites. The company ilse media is defining a new strategy.

In 1996 ilse, the first Dutch search engine, was launched by Wiebe Weikamp, Merien ten Houten and Robert Klep. ilse grew at an amazing rate and quickly became the market leader in Dutch search engines. Two years later in 1998, a group of friends, under the supervision of Durk Jan de Bruin set-up Startpagina. This site with site pages per subject, including all daughter sites (respectively 1,500 and roughly 5,000 pages) quickly grew to become the biggest Dutch internet portal. By 1999 Google appeared on the scene. In 2000 VNU magazines, now Sanoma magazines, acquired both companies and put them in ilse media B.V.

The search engine became the stimulus for the development of a digital publisher company. By now ilse media has a network of 150 websites, of which Starpagina is the largest. It has a news site and a weblog site. IN 2005 ilse media started a cluster of youngsters and youth sites under the name newrulez. Ilse media also manages the women and home sites of Sanoma publishers and the site TVGids.nl, an electronic television guide, for the public broadcast stations.

From the beginning the search engine ilse was a popular site for the Dutch language searchers. When Google started its activity, ilse was on its height and has been going down ever since. In the last year there was a discussion about the search engine. Most people thought that the engine had come at the end of the cycle. And this became clear from the penetration rate, which went down to 5 per cent, while the real use for searching went down to 2 per cent. Presently users of Startpagina use Google five times a week, while the search engine of ilse media is used five times a week.

Of course Google will bring in extra revenues. But the management of ilse media will have to contemplate the use of the search engine. The company is adamant in stating that the dismissal of their own search engine ilse is the beginning of the end. Ilse media is working on a new strategy for the search engine. One way will be to use the search engine for vertical sites like the women magazines of Sanoma.

On May 8, 2008 ilse media announced a new site, familii.nl, a family and relatives sites, which offers tools for keeping contact with family and relatives and for mapping the relatives. Familii.nl has a few competitors in the Dutch market: Verwant.nl, familieband.nl and familiepagina.nl. Verwant.nl is the Dutch version of the popular German Verwant.de and is run by De Telegraaf.

Blog Posting Number: 1099

Tags: search engine

BPN 1023 Search engines in the Netherlands

How do search engines fare in the Netherlands? Of course some of the Dutch use Google, Live Search Yahoo, and/or Altavista. And others search in engines from Dutch origin. The result bears hardly any surprises as Google is way ahead of foreign and Dutch search engines. In fact nine out of ten Dutch people google, when searching.

Checkit and the marketing survey bureau RMI Interactive monitor the use among 1475 internet users by web survey twice a year. The method is simple. User get a list of search engines and are asked whether they know the name of the search engine, have used occasionally or use it mostly.
Below are the stats of the five most popular search engines in The Netherlands. Between brackets is an indication of the rise and fall over against the results of the survey presented in September 2007. Google, Live Search and Yahoo are foreign search engines with a Dutch language interface and Dutch priority search. Ilse is the oldest Dutch search engine, owned by the Finnish publishing company Sanoma. Vinden.nl is a meta search engine, combining the results of more search engines.

Familiar with name
Google 99% (+1)
ilse 83% (-3)
Live Search 63% (+15)
Yahoo! 71% (=0)
Vinden.nl 49% (+14)

Used occasionally
Google 95% (=0)
ilse 9% (=0)
Live Search 7% (-1)
Yahoo! 4% (=0)
Vinden.nl 7% (+5)

Used mostly
Google 93% (-2)
ilse 1% (-1)
Live Search 0% (-1)
Yahoo! 0% (=0)
Vinden.nl 2% (+2)

From these stats and this graph it is clear that Google is well known and well used. Remarkable is the fact that MSN Live Search picks up 15 per cent, when it comes to name familiarity, hardly used. Vinden.nl picks up name familiarity and converts this in more search actions. The eldest search engine in the Netherlands ilse is slipping further into oblivion.


Blog Posting Number: 1023

Tags: meta search engine, search engine

Blogs not popular with the Dutch

On June 1 The Next Web Conference will take place in Amsterdam. The conference has grown into an international conference with leading speakers such as Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media), Jay Adelson (Digg) or Marten Mickos (MySQL). Besides the special The Next Web Interview Teaser videos, there was a quantitative survey into the name familiarity, the use and the added value of Web 2.0, online networks and blogs among Dutch consumers. Some 1053 people were asked to fill out the survey on internet; so, it is a biased impression. The results of the survey are available on internet in Dutch (! It is an international conference) as a PowerPoint presentation, be it still in the Dutch language.

Not too many Dutch internet users do recognize the term web 2.0, despite the fact that the term is known since 2003, when Tim O’Reilly used it for the first time... In principle this is not surprising as web 2.0 is a multifaceted term, comprising, wikis, RSS, APIs, social bookmarking, mash ups and web based software. On the other hand the 40 percent of the respondents are active on online networks and half of them log in daily. The projection is that half of the Dutch population is daily online for at least 2 to 3 hours.

I will pay attention to the blogging results of this survey. In the Netherlands there are 800.000 weblogs, according to an estimate of Paul Molenaar, COO of Sanoma and CEO of Ilse media group, at Blognomics 07. Some 50 percent are using Web-log.nl, the ilse blogger service. This estimate concerns only Dutch language blogs and not blogs in another language originating from the Netherlands like this blog.

Here are some of the results:
- 6 out of 10 Dutchmen do not read blogs;
- of the blogreading Dutchmen 62 percent spend less than 1 hour on the reading of blogs.

It is interesting to read why people would read a blog:
- content is the most important factor for the reliability of the blog;
- the blogger is also a criterion for the reliability of the blog;
But no less than 31 percent says that reliability is not a criterion. But people like a well written blog (26 percent) and 14 percent hates spelling mistakes. Links to other reliable sites, references to sources. Surprisingly design is hardly an item (8 percent), while only 3 percent hate advertisements. The amount of comments, the amount of posts, trackbacks and the URL are not heavy weighing criterions for the reliability. The number of RSS readers is totally irrelevant. (These results are completely contrary to the famous rules of the big bloggers. Of course not many Dutch bloggers enjoy any popularity worldwide).

The vast majority of the Dutch population does not keep a weblog. Only 1 in 8 maintains a weblog, of which 3 percent has more than 1 weblog. 90 percent of the webloggers spent 2 hours or less per week on writing blogs, while 6 percent work more than 7 hours on writing their own blogs.

Looking at the results of this survey, one conclusion is clear: blogs are not popular with the Dutch. However how do you get 800.000 blogs?

Blogposting Number: 767

Tags: blogging