The past six months have been an extremely interesting time in the business world of search engines. So many changes, mergers and acquisitions have happened in such a short time one almost needs a score card to keep up. Here it is:

This quick chart offers a run-down of the major names behind recent announcements and acquisitions. The real story however is in how these changes will effect the industry. Last year, the buzz-word was "cross-pollenation" with Google, Inktomi and Overture providing either paid or traditional listings to the other players in the market. Now, one might ask why Yahoo would continue displaying Google results when Google's AdWords program competes directly with Yahoo's newest prize Overture. The same can be said for MSN. As it is developing its own spider, why would it continue to display results culled from Inktomi's database? All things will change again at the end of December 2004 when several agreements between Google, Yahoo and MSN are set to expire. Until then, assuming there are no more major surprises in the works, we expect the state of search to remain fairly steady. There is only one other change we anticipate... MSN has yet to make a major purchase. Rumors have LookSmart, Ask Jeeves or FindWhat as their target. There is a long-shot rumor we should mention... some industry watchers have speculated that Google may be the next major acquisition target for Microsoft, and that would be the biggest deal of all.

Lycos has introduced a new feature, Sidesearch, that should make searching easier, faster and more precise for the end user. Sidesearch is a downloadable browser plug-in, much like Google and Yahoo's toolbars, that allows Lycos users to conduct a concurrent search on another major search engine. Another Sidesearch feature allows a searcher to sample each page before actually clicking on it by displaying a thumbnail image of the page beside the search results. Sidesearch will also display results drawn from the Lycos database beside searches conducted on other search tools but this feature can be disabled by closing the plug-in while using other search tools. The Lycos Sidesearch is unobtrusive and does not record personal data from each usage. Sidesearch requires Windows 98 or higher, with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 and above with scripting enabled. There are Mac or Linux versions available.

Download Lycos Sidesearch here: http://install.sidesearch.lycos.com/

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Are you having a difficult time achieving top placements under your chosen keyword phrase? If you are it could be the result of fierce competition.

Perhaps your web site is fresh to the Internet and you are trying to compete with big fish that have had the time to solidify their positions? In such cases there is only one reliable option... work your way up. At StepForth we review countless web sites that have just been designed and 90% of them are trying to compete under highly competitive keywords. This is like trying out for the Olympic swim team after just learning to swim!

Is it possible to quickly obtain a top placement under an extremely competitive phrase? Of course it is, but you will always run the chance of running into a wall of very secure web sites in the top10 which will leave you somewhere between the 10-50 position range. This is a risk that many do not wish to take. If you want to play it safe and smart we recommend building web site credibility and link popularity by targeting less competitive keywords. Once your site has some exposure under other keywords your chances of cracking the top 10 under a more competitive phrase are considerably greater.