Searching Gets Serious
For retailers and manufacturers with serious investments in their Web sites, being found by the major Internet search engines can make the difference between success and failure.
Once upon a time, all a Webmaster needed to do was embed enough repetition of pertinent text to achieve a high-ranking site, but those days are gone forever. Indeed, search engines have become big businesses, spawning new models that are banging at the door with their attempts to deliver more-relevant search results.
Google Inc., www.google.com, remains the largest of the major search engines. America Online Inc. abandoned its own branded search engine last year to become a licensee of Google, Apple Computer Inc. built Google into its new Safari Web browser, and rumors abound that Google will go public soon.
This success is due to superior software technology developed by a group of students at Stanford University some years back. Based on the premise that searching by page references or text analysis alone was not enough to deliver relevant search results, Google invented a revolutionary page-ranking methodology. It ranks sites simply based on the number of visitors each receives. Top placement in Google’s search results indicates winners of an open, popular “election,” with “voters” declaring the relevancy of the sites to their interests.
New kid on the block
New on the scene is Teoma, www.teoma.com, developed by Rutgers University computer scientist Apostolos Gerasoulis. The search engine offers a whole new search paradigm that goes after the “community” of people and sites that surround the topic searched. Its results do not passively reflect some predetermined definition of relevance; they dynamically feature what is currently being said about the subject or topic. For example, conducting a search on “Spring fashion color trends” will likely turn up a variety of sources currently discussing the subject. “It’s a great way to learn about a topic or to find the precise thing for which you are looking without having to go to a lot of links,” said Portals columnist Lee Gomes recently in The Wall Street Journal. Teoma also powers the popular Ask Jeeves search site, www.askjeeves.com.
But don’t think Google is resting on its laurels; the company is constantly developing and testing new methods and experimental search criteria. In the consumer shopping arena, Google is currently beta-testing a specialized search site just for online shoppers at www.catalogs.google.com. There you’ll find a healthy array of apparel and accessories catalogs, with 323 links to apparel stores and 40 to accessories.
There is no cost to submit your site for consideration.
Site Review: Where is the Girl-on-thestreet?
Fun, up-to-date, youthful and trendy fashion sites abound online these days. One we stumbled on is Girl-on-the-street, www.girlonthestreet.com. It offers a cool, edgy and newsy insider’s view of the fashion scene, as stated on the home page: “Girl-on-the-street seeks to represent the living, breathing, movable life of urban culture—how it really is, not how it is whitewashed and repackaged. The undercurrent of that aspiration is a focus on the women who forge ahead using the energy and style around them as a tool.”
But clicking on the headline “Fashion Week Is Here Again!” left us a little befuddled. There is no reference to location on the whole page, but further searching revealed that it was New York’s Fashion Week that was being discussed. Assuming that New York is the only place with a Fashion Week struck us as a bit of naiuml;veteacute; (or hubris), considering the global reach of the Internet.
Still, there are lots of quick fashion takes from local scenes all around the world, including what high school kids are wearing. These are haute little bytes on what’s current, brought to you by the “GOTS Girl Street Team,” which appears to be a network of contributing reporters.
So while the site strives to be global with its outreach coverage, it remains Big Apple–centric. We’re willing to cut Girl-on-the-street some slack, though, because it is undeniably cute and witty. Bookmark this one—with hopes that it might soon integrate greater global awareness.
