From the press release:

GOOGLE CHECKS OUT LIBRARY BOOKS

The Libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford, and The New York Public Library Join with Google to Digitally Scan Library Books and Make Them Searchable Online

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - December 14, 2004 - As part of its effort to make offline information searchable online, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them in Google.

"Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products. "Today we're pleased to announce this program to digitize the collections of these amazing libraries so that every Google user can search them instantly.

"Our work with libraries further enhances the existing Google Print program, which enables users to find matches within the full text of books, while publishers and authors monetize that information," Page added. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information, and we're excited to be working with libraries to help make this mission a reality."

Today's announcement is an expansion of the Google Print™ program, which assists publishers in making books and other offline information searchable online. Google is now working with libraries to digitally scan books from their collections, and over time will integrate this content into the Google index, to make it searchable for users worldwide.

"We believe passionately that such universal access to the world's printed treasures is mission-critical for today's great public university," said Mary Sue Coleman, President of the University of Michigan.

For publishers and authors, this expansion of the Google Print program will increase the visibility of in and out of print books, and generate book sales via "Buy this Book" links and advertising. For users, Google's library program will make it possible to search across library collections including out of print books and titles that weren't previously available anywhere but on a library shelf.

Users searching with Google will see links in their search results page when there are books relevant to their query. Clicking on a title delivers a Google Print page where users can browse the full text of public domain works and brief excerpts and/or bibliographic data of copyrighted material. Library content will be displayed in keeping with copyright law. For more information and examples, please visit .

As you know search engines algorithms look at over 100 criteria. If you read forums about Search Engine Optimization, you will see that some SEO recommend to use keywords in URL and other claim it is useless. The problem is that no one have made real test (or have not published it?). We have decided to run some tests in order to make sure that words in URL is one criteria for search engines algorithms.

Below are the tests we made

As we were only focused on one item (keyword in URL) we have decided:

• To create webpages with the same look and feel of our other webpages
• To create webpages with the "word" rkpatjfg in the URL (directories and file names)
• To avoid the word rkpatjfg in the body text and head text of these pages
• To link to these new pages without using the word rkpatjfg in the anchor text

Before we started our test, we searched for rkpatjfg in Google, MSN beta, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Teoma, WiseNut, Exalead (AOL.fr) and Voila. There were no results on these search engines.

A few days later, Google, MSN beta and Exalead indexed our new web pages. Yahoo! also indexed one of them. So we did the same search for rkpatjfg on these search engines.

Results

See all the results in our search engine ranking report.

• Google, MSN (beta), Yahoo! and Exalead take into account the words in the URL.
• The other search engines (Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Teoma, WiseNut and Voila) have not yet crawled our webpages so at this time we do not know yet. Anyway, as soon as their spider crawls our webpages we will update this article.

     

Conclusions

• This test shows that keywords in URL are taken into account by Google, MSN (beta), Yahoo! and Exalead algorithms.
• This test does not show how much it helps for your ranking compared to other criteria.
• When constructing URL directory and URL file names, use targeted and relevant keywords.
• If you use several keywords in your URLs, use hyphens as dividers and not underscores. Read our article about Hyphens and Underscores
• One month after our web pages were added, the following search engines has not yet crawled our test pages! Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Teoma, WiseNut, Voila.
• Google, MSN beta and Exalead were the fastest to index our new web pages.

Related articles and tools we have used for this test

• Ranking report is generated by Agent Web Ranking
• Google test : hyphen or underscore
• Robotstats is a free application analysing the web robots on your site
• Search Engine Relationship Chart (tm) from Bruceclay.com
• If you have tested this query on other search engines, feel free to give the results in this post's comments

Version française : Les moteurs tiennent-ils comptent des mots dans les URL ?

Read Chris Richardson's article in WebProNews, called "Multiple Domains And 301 Redirects".

This article deals with sites having multiple domain names and problems with redirections. What you must do is choosing one main domain name as the official site and redirecting all the others to this one with 301 redirects. If you want know what kind of redirect you're using, copy and paste the URL in this Server Header Checker tool.

A common area of misunderstanding and confusion within search optimization has to do with how and when one should use a redirection document. If you've moved a site to a new domain and you want your normal traffic to follow, a 301 permanent redirect needs to be employed. However, there are other occasions, also involving domain-based issues, when 301's should be utilized.

Read more.

MSN beta loves new tool and extension!

Through its official blog, MSN promotes new tool and extension designed for its new beta search engine.

We’ve found quite a few people have added on extensions to the beta. It’s great to see more people playing with the new engine. Here’s a tool from DEVPPL that can be used to evaluate your rank on the Beta. Martin created an MSN Search Beta desktop widget. And Ryan has created a Firefox plug-in for the Beta. Thanks for your contributions!

I like this MSN comments :=)

Related tool for MSN Beta:

• Software to check your rankings or your competitors rankings on MSN beta

Related articles on MSN beta tool and extension:

• MSN blog: Search Beta Extensions
• MSN Rank Checker & Other Gadgets
• MSN Search Embraces Screen Scraping Rank Checker

Search-engine provider Google has opened a research and development centre at its Tokyo offices this week, as reported by Computer Weekly

This center is directed by Howard Gobioff, principal engineer. This research center makes Japan the fourth country in which Google has an R&D presence. The others are the US, Switzerland and India.

If you can read Japanese, check out this page

Via SEW blog

New at Bloglines: For your convenience, you can view the Bloglines website translated into a different language.

You may choose among any of the languages below:

• English
• Spanish
• Japanese
• Chinese (Traditional)
• French
• German
• Portuguese

About Bloglines

Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install -- simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing your account any time, from any computer or mobile device. And it's FREE!

Bloglines is a window to a whole new world of dynamic content that is being created and distributed over the new "live" web. You can make your own personalized news page tailored to your unique interests from our index of tens of millions of live internet content feeds, including articles, blogs, images and audio. And it's FREE!

Bloglines shields you from the confusion of news feed standards -- RSS, Atom, and others. Bloglines allows you to search for, read and share any updates from your favorite news feed or blog regardless of its authoring technology. And it's FREE!

Try it and you'll love it

It's the best tool to read everyday your favorite blogs. If you are a Bloglines member, don't forget to subscribe to PR Weaver's blog by clicking on the Subscribe with Bloglines button below or by cliking here.

We're reporting Google Toolbar versions history since a few months and Google wasn't giving any information about what changed from one version to another. Google has just updated its :

• Version 2.0.114.8 : Improved stability
• Version 2.0.114.7 : Miscellaneous fixes and improvements
• Version 2.0.114.6 : Miscellaneous fixes and improvements
• Version 2.0.114.5 : Miscellaneous fixes and improvements
• Version 2.0.114.4 : Miscellaneous fixes and improvements
• Version 2.0.114.1 : Miscellaneous fixes and improvements
• Version 2.0.114.0 : Miscellaneous fixes and improvements
• Version 2.0.113 : Miscellaneous fixes and improvements

1) Syntax: link:www.your-domain.com or link:http://www.your-domain.com
DO NOT use space after link:
will show the backlinks of that page which Google knows and decides to show with that command
will show results that contain the text "link" and the text "www.cnn.com"

2) Google doesn't return all backlinks in response to link: command.

3) Google link: command is not updated in "real time" but it is updated approximately once per month

4) Since June 2004 Google returns backlinks which have any PageRank value (and not only backlinks which have a pagerank of 3 or 4 or more as Google used to do)

5) To get more accurate and up-to-date Google backlinks you may use the following command
:www.cnn.com Remark: not all results return by this command are links to www.cnn.com page, it can be just a plain text URL (www.cnn.com) without links mentioned on the page somewhere
:www.cnn.com -site:www.cnn.com This command will show you all the pages linking to cnn.com, minus the pages from cnn.com site.

6) Related Google links tools
Google backlinks and anchor text analyzer
Google ranking software (based on Google API)

7) Articles related to Google link: command

Google backlink strategies

Hope this may help you!

MSN launched MSN Spaces, its new blogging service.

The MSN Spaces beta version is a free service available in 14 languages and 26 markets worldwide. MSN Spaces was designed to make it easy for consumers to create and maintain a personal Web site, bringing the power and benefits of blogging to millions of Internet users, regardless of their level of technical expertise. More than a blogging tool, MSN Spaces is a dynamic online scrapbook where consumers can share photo albums, personal music lists and more. And more than an ordinary personal Web site, through seamless integration with MSN Messenger and MSN Hotmail, MSN Spaces will automatically notify online contacts when a person's Space has been updated so his or her online community knows when it is time to pay a visit. People can sign up for MSN Spaces through MSN Messenger or by going to http://spaces.msn.com. Key features of the service include the following:

• Control your Space. Consumers can choose the people who visit their Space through three levels of permissions: public, MSN Messenger contacts only or private.
• Use pictures and music to say more. MSN Spaces enable consumers to easily display their pictures via a photo album slide show. Consumers can easily share playlists through their Space with Microsoft® Windows Media® technologies. With just two clicks, people can sample or purchase a song on someone's playlist through MSN Music.
• Create an extension of yourself. Contact Cards - a new addition to MSN Messenger and Hotmail - are windows into a consumer's Space, mirroring its look and the most recent information posted. MSN Spaces also supports RSS, so consumers can publish their Space to others by way of RSS viewers and aggregators - including My MSN, coming soon.
• Post remote updates. Consumers can post updates to their Space remotely via e-mail or a mobile phone.
• Make it your own. Fifteen custom backgrounds and five layout templates give consumers a way to quickly customize and personalize their Space.

Read Nathan Weinberg's first impressions about MSN Spaces

Philipp Lenssen has redesigned its fabulous blog Google Blogoscoped

Google has released a new version of its Toolbar: version 2.0.114-8. They don't say what's new in this new minor release...

Do you want to install some free Google softwares? Check the

You can even install them all 5 with one click!

Jon Payne writes about the need for directories subscription in Search Engine Optimization process. He claims that one should submit its website only to the main directories, and more specifically to theme-based directories.

"Anyhow, theme-based directories offer the ability to really provide more detailed, industry-specific information. They also seem to lend themselves moreso to actual human editing, which generally results in higher-quality results and thus a more useful directory." says Jon Payne.

Yahoo! employees Leonid Zhukov and Pavel Berkhin, and Stanford University searcher David Gleich (while working at Yahoo!) published a paper called "".

Here is the abstract:

In this paper we investigate the convergence of iterative stationary and Krylov subspace methods for the PageRank linear system, including the convergence dependency on teleportation. We demonstrate that linear system iterations converge faster than the simple power method and are less sensitive to the changes in teleportation.

In order to perform this study we developed a framework for parallel PageRank computing. We describe the details of the parallel implementation and provide experimental results obtained on a 70-node Beowulf cluster.

And the conclusion:

In this paper we have demonstrated that PageRank can be successfully computed using linear system iterative solvers. We have developed an efficient scalable parallel implementation and studied Jacobi and Krylov subspace iterative methods. Our numerical results show that GMRES and BiCGSTAB are overall the best choice of solution methods for PageRank class of problems and, for most graphs, provide faster convergence than power iterations. We have also demonstrated that the linear system PageRank can converge for much larger values of the teleportation coefficient c than standard power iterations.

Maybe with such improvements of PageRank calculation, Google is already updating the PageRank continuously, even if it doesn't update the PageRank displayed on the Google Toolbar...

Via Abakus