It is not an easy thing explaining to people why search engines differ and why you might find your results for some queries quicker on another engine then your regular one. 

It is all down to automated search engine algorithms which use various criteria to determine what results it finds more or less relevant for your search. The main search engines all have different algorithms and most of the times do not agree with each other.  

To show you why searching with Webfetch is easier and quicker, we have added a feature that shows from which search engine and in what the results Original Position is on which search engine.  

First you have to activate the search position feature. Just click on the link in the top right hand corner “show engine position: switch on “ or follow these instructions. The page has to reload, but when finished and you hover over the results you will find a new link called “Engine Position”. When you hover over this you will see where the result originally comes from. 

For instance, if you search for “best Christmas present” The top results is number 1 on Google bit number 10 on Yahoo. Result number 8 shows on Yahoo and Ask, but not on Google. Have a play and you will find that the result you are looking for is not always where you think it would come from.

If you’re looking for an accountant in London or working out directions to the car park at Gatwick Airport, you’ll benefit from the updates we’ve made recently to the Maps on Webfetch.  If you’re searching in Business Finder, you’ll notice the ‘Map’ links beside the listings.  These link to new, larger, clearer and more easily navigable maps.  Alternatively, if it is driving directions you need or you wish to pinpoint a location and you only have a postcode, then click on Maps under the ‘More’ tab at the top of the page.   Enter your locations in the boxes and you’ll not get lost.  Let us know what you think by telling us in the comments here or at info@webfetch.com

There’s a nice little piece of coverage on Webfetch online at Sky News.

 http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,91221-1285289,.html

We’re about 4 minutes into Technofile.

There’s been lots of coverage in the press recently about Google and cookies - people surprised / outraged at how long cookies remain live on their computers. 

You might be surprised to hear that cookies are not really the issue or even how long they are on your computer for. Cookies are used for lots of different, mostly useful things; many of them do not have an impact on your privacy. 

For example, Webfetch uses cookies to store your preferences, or, if you are registered for ipoints we store your ipoints ID details so you don’t need to login every time you use the site. There are many valid reasons to use cookies and do not have a privacy implication. 

So what are the issues and why is everyone talking about cookies? It all depends on what the site operator put in the cookie and how they combine the data from your activity on the site and the data on your cookie. For example, your cookie can include a unique identifier, which is also stored on a database maintained by the site operator. Every time you use the site, your activity is then stored against your unique ID. Using the database, a profile and all activities are now linked to your cookie. 

Site operators can even take it even a step further. If you need to login to a part of the site, for your emails or to get to a member area, they now will also have personal identifiable information. Even if you delete your cookies on a regular basis, every time you login, your cookie will be set with your own unique ID. This way they can continue to build up your activities and profile even if you delete your cookies. 

Some companies use this profiling for targeting advertising or perhaps adjust the content on the page. I am sure most of them will not misuse your date, but it is a risk and can be misused. Some large web search companies have been know to provide  some of these details when asked for by national authorities like the Public Prosecution Service in the U.S. 

Webfetch does not store your usage data and we do not store an ID on a database and match this against your cookie. Even with our ipoints login, we do not store your data, this is sent to ipoints. We do not pass any identifiable data on to our search partners, and they do not read our cookies.  I am not trying to scaremonger, but it is important that as an individual you understand what impact there is on your privacy so you are able to make an informed choice when using the internet.

Ernst 

Webfetch has improved and is easier to use. We have updated the old Webfetch and released the Beta version today. We will be fixing any issues we find over the next couple of days for the full launch next Wednesday. We have made improvements in how the results are displayed, additional features, and my favourite… Site Match. If you search for BMW, Site Match will provide you with the authoritative results, which is BMW.co.uk.

Please have a look and let us know what you think. You can email us at info@webfetch.com

Ernst 

Have you ever visited a website and found something isn’t working? Have you ever tried to contact the company running the website to report the problem or ask a question, but had no response? Here at WebFetch, we find that sort of behaviour  extremely annoying and so we always try to answer your queries as quickly and as helpfully as we can. My name is Michael Stobo and as the WebFetch Product Manager, one of my responsibilities is responding to questions from you, the user. I’ll be blogging about the questions I receive from visitors to WebFetch. Do leave a comment below or send me an e-mail at info@webfetch.com if there’s something you’d like to ask.

One of the questions we are often asked is, “How do I get my website to appear on WebFetch?”  First, let me give you some information about how WebFetch works. WebFetch is a metasearch engine which means we compile our results from many search engines. When you click the search button, we check for results on Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Ask.com, Miva, Mirago (and several other engines) and then show you the best results. We don’t manage our own index of internet sites and we are unable to add listings to the results from our search partners. Instead, we make sure that our system picks the most relevant results from the best search engines on the web. 

What this means is that if your site is listed by one of our search partners, in natural (free) results or in sponsored (paid) listings, it has a very good chance of appearing in WebFetch results. We therefore recommend you contact one of our search partners and follow their procedures to get your site listed. Your site will appear on WebFetch soon afterwards.

Hello everyone! By way of introduction, my name is Ben Gallagher, Director of Engineering at Infospace and I bid you a very warm welcome to this blog and hope that you like our site.

As Ernst has mentioned, my team is currently working hard developing a new, improved version of WebFetch, which should make your search experience one of the best on the web. On top of that, one of the key messages I’d like to get across is that we are a totally UK focused brand, unlike Google, Yahoo! Or Ask. This has a big advantage for us in that we can tailor our site’s features and style to closely match the preferences and culture of our UK based audience. Other sites are not as free in this regard, since their brand tends to be dominated by the requirements of their largest market, namely our friends across the pond in the USA.

Okay that’s all for now, but do stay in touch as we want WebFetch to be as much your site as it is ours.

When Ask launched their “information” campaign a few months ago I have to say I was pretty sceptical about it - it seemed to me like a big brand playing at being dangerous and underground and once it was revealed who was behind it I sensed a collective “naff” judgement from the marketing community. On reflection I really like the idea of trying to make “search” a bit more interesting and engaging, and to compete with Google you definitely have to try to get a point of difference and an emotional engagement. But positioning yourself as “the other search engine”  still seems defeatest to me and although it is clearly realistic I can’t help feeling that it can’t be that motivational. Still, time will tell and they have certainly thrown a significant budget at the campaign. Food for thought as we’re developping our own brand positioning…

Andy Kendrick - Marketing Consultant

Hello and welcome to the WebFetch blog!  This being my first post I guess I’d better introduce myself and say why we are starting this blog. 

My name is Ernst van Leeuwenkamp and I am Senior Director of Product Management at Infospace – the company behind WebFetch. I’ll assume that you know that WebFetch provides meta search results, if you want to know more about that have a look at the “about” tab. 

I’ve worked for Infospace for a while and for over 22 years been in various IT and Product Design roles. So why start a blog now? 

Well it’s interesting times for the search industry in general and for WebFetch specifically. WebFetch is growing rapidly and we’re constantly working on improving the service. Currently we have a site refresh underway to update the look and feel of the site, to improve navigation and to increase the standout of natural search results. I expect to be pushing the update live in July, but will post some sneak previews here first. 

I very much hope that this blog becomes a forum for us to share what we’re working on, to take feedback and ideas from users or interested parties and to make contact with other people interested in “search”.  Have a look at WebFetch, give it a try and let me know what you think.

This being my first post I  better introduce myself and say why we’re starting this blog.

My name is Andy Kendrick and I’m working with the team at Webfetch. Webfetch provide  meta search results - i.e. they return the top results from a variety of search engines including Google, Live Search, Ask and Yahoo on a single page. 

Why is that a good thing? Well the web has become so big and complicated that there is an ever increasing divergence in the results that you get back from the individual search engines. In fact we did a study recently which showed an average of just 0.6% overlap on the first page results across the 4 main search engines. Since few of us have got the patience to look beyound pages one and two of results that means that by relying on just one source of data is going to overlook a huge amount of relevant content. So, that’s what we do - offer people the best results from a variety of search engines in one place.

So why start the blog now? Honestly it is because we need to tell more people about what we do, to get feedback on the service and to look for help / support / ideas on how to grow our user base. In the UK, Google has a real strangle hold on search, and despite Ask’s efforts to be seen as “the other search engine” they seem to have made little impact. We see Webfetch as a much more viable alternative - with us you get Google as well as Ask etc. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty daunting challenge to take on the likes of Google and we need all the help we can get.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be running a test display advertising campaign and are working on adding in some extra functionality and a clearer design look to Webfetch. Watch this space……

In the meantime, if you’ve not tried Webfetch give it a go and let us know what you think. 

 Andy Kendrick (Marketing Consultant)