I just got a heads up regarding a planned new look and feel on Norway’s biggest search engine Eniro.

The new design is cleaner and leaner and supposedly will give better Norwegian search results. Furthermore they are planning a [...]]]> I just got a heads up regarding a planned new look and feel on Norway’s biggest search engine Eniro.

The new design is cleaner and leaner and supposedly will give better Norwegian search results. Furthermore they are planning a huge media campaign throughout the year worth an estimated 2 million €.

Get a sneak peak at the new design here

See the new net search function results here

See the new company search results here

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As per August 1st one can no longer keep their personal information secret in the DK-Hostmaster [The danish body responsible for handeling the .dk domain] database.

Up until August anyone could choose to hide their personal information from the who-is quesries [...]]]> As per August 1st one can no longer keep their personal information secret in the DK-Hostmaster [The danish body responsible for handeling the .dk domain] database.

Up until August anyone could choose to hide their personal information from the who-is quesries done for the ccTLD .dk domain. This is not possible anymore.

The only way to hide your details is to have an actual secret adress. This, however, needs to be setup ay your local goverment office and has nothing to do with the domain rules. If you don’t have a public available adress or phonenumber, DK-hostmaster will of course not show one.

I expect this to lead to quite a bit of restructuting of domain ownerships and editing of personal registrant information.

For more info, visit http://www.dk-hostmaster.dk – I haven’t been able to find any news in English on their site regarding this though.

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It seems the Danish search engine scene have gone beserck releasing new search services. Recently we reported the new search engine from Danish tv station TV2.

Now search engine Jubii has recently launched a search service called Jubii [...]]]> It seems the Danish search engine scene have gone beserck releasing new search services. Recently we reported the new search engine from Danish tv station TV2.

Now search engine Jubii has recently launched a search service called Jubii iQ where the search queries are answered by other members or “experts” as Jubii labels them.

The search engine offers to answer queries in the form of questions. The questions will be passed on to a group of experts on a given subject based on tagging. The experts will the earn points based on the relevance, speed and quality of the answers they provide.

The search engine incorporates users networks, rss, bookmarks, suggested links and a point score, iQ Points in it’s answers “algo”.

This form of search is not new, however building the results on expert answers, tagging, networks etc. might be a good thing and somewhat refreshing in the search space.
One my main concerns is that waiting time for answers. Eventhough you as the searcher specify the deadline for the answer, you might feel compelled to look elsewhere for the answer and might even be able to find it before the expert comes up with an answer.

Personally I visit a search engine to find relevant results immediately and really don’t want to wait more than a few seconds. We’ll see how it goes and if Jubii will be successful with the new search service and how the advertisers will embrace it.

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The Danish tv station TV2 has quietly launched a new search engine called TV2 Fredo. The search engine presumably offers contactinfo, website links(!), maps and a link to a gift certificate partner.

TV2 describes the search engine as follows (my [...]]]> The Danish tv station TV2 has quietly launched a new search engine called TV2 Fredo. The search engine presumably offers contactinfo, website links(!), maps and a link to a gift certificate partner.

TV2 describes the search engine as follows (my rough translation):

TV 2|Fredo is a search service for people that wants to shop goods, services or find phone numbers for friends and families across all of Denmark. Persons and companies are just a single click away.

They do not offer much information about the technology or how the data is collected and how you list a new site/company.

The search engine is developed by a Norwegian company mTouch.no

Kristjan mentioned a new Icelandic search engine that recently launched in Iceland with plans to offer the same kind of yellow page search in Denmark, but I’m sure they are related?

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Inspired by Kristjan’s post about Iceland, here is a short run down of the Search Engine Landscape in Denmark

The search market in Denmark has historically, until the worldwide Google dominance, been driven by local directory Jubii (sold to [...]]]> Inspired by Kristjan’s post about Iceland, here is a short run down of the Search Engine Landscape in Denmark

The search market in Denmark has historically, until the worldwide Google dominance, been driven by local directory Jubii (sold to Swedish Spray, now owned by Lycos). However Jubii has become a shade of itself and now sits on 5-7% market share, but still the only somewhat relevant directory to submit your Danish language sites to.

I December they published a list new fees for commercial websites, which in my opinion is totally out of touch with reality. They charge way too much to justify a commercial listing and your money will probably be spent more wisely on ppc or linkbuilding elsewhere.

The national search engine market looks something like this:

Google.dk
Google.com
Eniro.dk (Google driven)
MSN.dk
Jubii.dk
Yahoo.dk
Minor local players

Milage may vary depending on your optimisation efforts, but like most other European countries, spending your time optimising for Google is a very good bet.

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Kservik over at Threadwatch reports on the launch of no less than 3 new search engines in Norway.

All the 3 new engines are all powered by the technology from Norwegian FAST Search & Transfer – the left over [...]]]> Kservik over at Threadwatch reports on the launch of no less than 3 new search engines in Norway.

All the 3 new engines are all powered by the technology from Norwegian FAST Search & Transfer – the left over tech from when Yahoo bought Alltheweb.

The most spectacular news is by far at Startsiden, where the prime default search tech on the front page is now from FAST and not Google.

As Kservik points out, this will have a huge effect on Google’s dominance in Norway as Startsiden is a major player and the default home page for many norwegians.

As reported on WebmasterWorld a few days ago, another new search engine is Sesam owned and developed by one of the very big media groups in Norway – Schibsted. However the tech is also from FAST. Norwegian member Tor tips about an email to submit your site Sesam: tipsurl@sesam.no. At this point we are not sure wether it works or not, but it can’t harm to try it.

Finally a 3rd new Norwegian engine launched, Yelo. Yelo is owned and operated by Findexa, who also owns the popular Yello page site at GuleSider.no.

All in all some VERY exciting news from Norway and following the developments will be very interesting. Now if only some of the other Scandinavian countries would be as innovative and produce some new search destinations and ante up the competition in the search playing field, which today also in Scandinavia is very dominated by Google.

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Danish online media site Mediawatch reports today that the Swedish yellow page and search engine company Eniro is rumoured to be about to buy Norwegian search engine Findexa. Mediawatch quotes a financial analyst from Swedbank in the Swedish [...]]]> Danish online media site Mediawatch reports today that the Swedish yellow page and search engine company Eniro is rumoured to be about to buy Norwegian search engine Findexa. Mediawatch quotes a financial analyst from Swedbank in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri.

Earlier Eniro stated that they are very much interested in buying up other search properties in the Scandinavian area. Now that is true of today’s deal.

Mediawatch mentions that today trading with the Eniro stock has been halted on the Stockholm Stock Exhange and so has the Findexa stock on the Olso Stock Exchange. This ads more fuel to the speculation that a merger is taking place in the Scandinavian search sector.

Press release from Findexa confirming the sale of all Findexa shares to Eniro

Prelim Press release from Findexa:
Findexa Limited – Further information to the temporary suspension of the Findexa share

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Nordiske forskere har fået et legat på DKK 2,5 mio. fra Nordisk Ministerråd til at udvikle og forske i en søgemaskine (Tvärsök), som kan søge på tværs af de nordiske sprog, herunder dansk, svensk, norsk, finsk og islandsk.

De [...]]]> Nordiske forskere har fået et legat på DKK 2,5 mio. fra Nordisk Ministerråd til at udvikle og forske i en søgemaskine (Tvärsök), som kan søge på tværs af de nordiske sprog, herunder dansk, svensk, norsk, finsk og islandsk.

De eksisterende søgemaskiner er endnu ikke gode nok til at vise resultater på tværs af sprog og slet ikke forståelsen af ordene på tværsprogligt niveau.

Den nordiske søgemaskine fungerer bl.a. ved at søgeordet, når det indtastes i søgemaskinen, bliver sendt gennem et oversættelses-program, videre til et leksikon/ordbog for først dér, at blive sendt på søgning i de fundne dokumenter søgemaskinen har i databasen.

Seniorforsker Jürgen Wedekind, Center for Sprogteknologi på Københavns Universitet siger bl.a. til ComputerWorld, at “Vi vil gøre det muligt at finde frem til relevante sider på eksempelvis norsk og svensk ved alene at søge på det relevante danske ord”.

Det bliver spændende at følge udviklingen af tværsproglige søgemaskiner og teknologiens større forståelse af vores måde at bruge sprog på.

Læs mere om:
Legatet
Tvärsök og teknologien bag søgemaskinen

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A multilingual web search project has received a research grant of DKK 2.5 mio ~ 335,000 EUR to research the options of multilingual web search covering Scandinavian languages including Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic.

Receiving the grant will [...]]]> A multilingual web search project has received a research grant of DKK 2.5 mio ~ 335,000 EUR to research the options of multilingual web search covering Scandinavian languages including Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic.

Receiving the grant will enable the university research group to work (part time) on the project for a while without worrying about funds for about a year. The project called Tvärsök – roughly translated as ‘cross search”, meaning searching across several languages but using one language. This will enable users to search across all the langauges using phrases from only one language.

Hercules Dalianis from the University in Stockholm is the project manager and CEO for the company behind the search engine technology to be used in the project. Euroling, the company, has developed the search engine Siteseeker, which already is being used on more than 80 public sector websites in Sweden. According to an article in Computer Sweden, Mr. Dalianis sees no problem in him being both project manager and CEO for the company delivering the tech behind the search engine and Dalianis mentions that Euroling has covered the cost of developing the tech and, if succesfull, the results from the engine will be free to use and and a demo of the search engine will be available during two years. He sees combining dictionaries and glossaries from different languages as being one of the major obstacles to overcome for the group. He finds that they might even have to do quite a bit of manual work to cross reference the local language data.

The project is supposed to give the user a unique option of searching in Danish language and receiving results based on all the languages. Technically when a user puts in a search query the phrase will be sent to a translation program which then sends the translated search phrase into the different local language databases. So far, results will be presented in different frames to help get a better overview of the results.

Many Scandinavians are able to read and understand their neighbours, but having the ability to do actual searches in other Scandianvian languages, is very limited. To do this kind of search, you have to have knowledge about what words and phrases to use. However the languages in the Scandinavian region are very similar in many cases, but being under more than a 1,000 years of development, there are some important differences including grammar rules, number of words used to make up sentences, pronounciation and word variations. Tvärsök seeks to solve some of these problems making a universial Scandinavian search engine possible.

The future for Scandinavian web searchers certainly looks a little brighter.

Read more on Information retrieval with human language technology
Tvärsök Homepage

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Congratulations on the deal between MIVA and Eniro.

Thank you both for taking time out to talk to Multilingual Search and answer a few questions about the deal with MIVA and Eniro.

RASMUS: A lot has happened with Espotting in Scandinavia since [...]]]> Congratulations on the deal between MIVA and Eniro.

Thank you both for taking time out to talk to Multilingual Search and answer a few questions about the deal with MIVA and Eniro.

RASMUS: A lot has happened with Espotting in Scandinavia since launching your service a couple of years ago. Could you maybe tell us a bit on the history behind Espotting and entering the Scandinavian market?

CHRYSI: Sure. Espotting were the first Pay-Per-Click player to enter the Scandinavian market. We launched in Sweden at the end of 2002 and in Norway and Denmark in 2003. Our expertise in the market is second to none – we have been offering Pay-Per-Click solutions to both advertisers and partners for longer than any other player. Our customer base has continued to grow since we launched.

RASMUS: The deal between Eniro and MIVA covers MIVA’s Private Label Partner programme which launched recently. Could you tell us a bit about that? How does it work? What does it take to be a Private Label Partner? What are the key benefits for the partner?

CHRYSI: As we all know, Pay-Per-Click has been the shining star of online advertising. Our Private Label Partner programme provides large companies the chance to offer a Pay-Per-Click Advertising solution under their own brand name. For example, through this announcement, Eniro will be offering Eniro Pay-Per-Click Ads to advertisers and partners. The benefits for our Private Label partners are:

• A speed-to-market solution – they can begin offering their own Pay-Per-Click Ads to clients in less time than they would if they were to develop a Pay-Per-Click solution on their own. What this translates to is the ability to earn revenue quickly and effectively.
• MIVA is the largest independent Performance Marketing Network in the world. What do we mean by that? That we do not have a destination site and so we do not compete with our partners for users to their website.
• We pioneered Private Label and have a wealth of experience in understanding partners’ needs. Other private label partners include Lycos and Verzion in the U.S and Mitsui in Japan.

RASMUS: Contextual advertising is a hot subject in the online advertising sector these days and more and more companies are launching contextual programmes where ads will be matched to the actual content on the pages where the ads are shown. How will MIVA’s listings be served by Enrio? Will it only be in relation to actual search queries or will we see listings on some of Eniro’s content properties (Guides) too?

CHRYSI: Espotting (now MIVA) were the first company to develop a Content Product back in 2001 and many of our partner websites in Scandinavia, which will soon come under the Eniro brand, have content as well as search implementations. It’s quite interesting to note that we use the word Content and not contextual. Why? Simply put, we believe that the contextual products currently available on the market are not as targeted as our content product which uses a human editorial process to select the keywords that trigger the Pay-Per-Click Ads, as well as automated tools.

RASMUS: How will the advertisers sign up? Through Eniro’s properties or through MIVA?

CHRYSI: For the Scandinavian market, in the short-term advertisers will sign up through Espotting and soon through Eniro. For the rest of Europe and the US, advertisers can sign up through MIVA.

CHRISTER: We have been using DART for our advertisers up until today, but we expect to launch direct sign up with Espotting from Eniro this summer.

RASMUS: The press release mentions MIVA’s assets in Scandinavia and that the deal falls under the Espotting brand. Does this mean that the Espotting Brand still exists? And what in particular is MIVA’s assets in Scandinavia these days?

CHRYSI: When we rebranded our company in June to MIVA, we did not rebrand our Scandi operations – they continued to use the Espotting brand. Now, with the partnership with Eniro, the goal is to use the Eniro brand in Scandi, which is much stronger than the Espotting brand. So the Espotting brand will, in the near future, cease to exist as the front-facing client interfaced brand. To provide more detail on exactly what ‘assets’ were transferred to Eniro, we mean that our contracts with our clients (advertisers and partners) and our team members (our employees!) based in Scandinavia, have been purchased by Eniro. In summary, MIVA, Espotting Scandi’s parent company, will, we believe, have a stronger presence in the Scandinavian market through our Private Label deal with Eniro than we would have had by remaining a stand-alone company under either the MIVA or Espotting brand. We think the partnership between us and Eniro (the combination of the Espotting Scandi assets, Eniro’s brand and resources, and MIVA’s ongoing expertise at Pay-Per-Click and providing Private Label solutions) will create a leading (if not the leading) Pay-Per-Click offering in Scandi.

RASMUS: The fact that Eniro bought the Scandinavian assets does that mean that we won’t see other Private Label deals in Scandinavia?

CHRYSI: No, it doesn’t mean that you won’t see other Private Label deals from MIVA.

RASMUS: How much will the deal with Eniro mean in terms of building the reach for Espotting/Eniro advertisers and partners?

CHRYSI: Eniro is, as all your readers know, the leading directory in the Nordics. Advertisers will benefit as their Pay-Per-Click Ads will be displayed across Eniro’s web properties. The traffic volumes from across its web properties have continuously increased. In April 2005, the number of unique users to www.eniro.se alone increased by 51% to an all-time high of 4.3m (versus April 2004).

RASMUS: Google’s publishers program – Adsense – has seen a huge increase in popularity among many webmasters since it launched and Eniro has been running the Adsense/Adwords programme up untill now. Do you have an oppinion on why MIVA’s product was more compelling to Eniro?

CHRISTER: We have been trough mergers and accustions before as have bought other companies before. This aproach had made us a major online directory / yellow page company.

We wanted a program that offeres private label agreements and we looked at the market place and experienced that neither Overture nor Google Adsense offers this solution to their partners today. Furthermore we wanted a running company – a company that was already in business and had experienced employees. Espotting fitted this perfectly and it was the obvious solution to us.

The services now offered through Eniro will run on the same existing technology as MIVA is using today. This was also one of the major issues for us. We wanted to be able to get off the ground quickly and offer our advertisers new marketing solutions.

Finallly Espotting have been researching and analysing new ways of marketing companies online that didn’t have an online pressence (website). Espotting had been working on the Pay Per Call model which was something we also had been pondering about. This and their excisting business model made it a clear to us that Espotting was the right solution for us.

RASMUS: Interesting. Now the next obvious question is; what about Eniro’s excisting arrangement with Google? Today the search properties of Eniro are all using the Google search technology with Adsense on top. How will this turn out in the future?

CHRISTER: Well, so far we have been very pleased with Google – both on the advertising and search platforms. Right now we don’t have any plans of changing the search part away from Google, but of course we will be unsing Espotting as the “sponsored listings” provider. On our content properties and guides we will proberbly be using Google Adsense, but we’re pragmatic and things change all the time, so what the situation will look like in the future, I can’t promise you.

RASMUS: Excellent! Thank you very much both Chrysi and Christer. It has been very interesting talking to you both and I hope the deal between Eniro and MIVA will benefit at lot of webmasters, user and advertisers in Scandianvia.

Press release from MIVA/Espotting on the deal.
MIVA
Eniro

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Norwegian news site Digi.no reports that Google have opened an office in Oslo, Norway. So far the office only employs one, Mr. Jan Grønbech. Grønbech is the former boss of ad giant DoubleCLick (Adlink). However Google employs another 3 people, [...]]]> Norwegian news site Digi.no reports that Google have opened an office in Oslo, Norway. So far the office only employs one, Mr. Jan Grønbech. Grønbech is the former boss of ad giant DoubleCLick (Adlink). However Google employs another 3 people, who are all in Google European headquaters in Dublin Ireland.

Grønbech’s new title is “Vertical Head” and apparently he will heading up the Norwegian office, but also will play a role in starting up real representation in Denmark. Google is already represented in Sweden and so far 5 people work in their office in Stockholm.

Grønbech explains that he will be busy a man as his primary job will be working with the big clients on Adwords and that the opportunities are wide open as only 6-7% of online advertising are being spend on search in Norway and 9% in Sweden – while it’s a whopping 42% in the UK. Grønbech estimates that it will rise to 30-40% in Norway within a very short time.

Google had a long time dispute over the Google.no domain, which was owned by a Norwegian sunglasses company before Google claimed right on the domain. Google lost the first case, but came out on top eventually and won the right to the domain. On the WayBackMachine you can see the sunglass site as it looked in November 2002.

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After closing their local sites 1.5 years ago, Yahoo has once again opened up to local users in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The local sites have a very similar look and feel to the US site, but one major difference [...]]]> After closing their local sites 1.5 years ago, Yahoo has once again opened up to local users in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The local sites have a very similar look and feel to the US site, but one major difference is the absence of the directory.

At the time of posting, there are signs that the directory will not return to Scandianvia and so far no signs of local Surfers (Yahoo’s editors) have been spotted. Running and maintaining a quality directory is of course a heavy manual task and with the relatively small population in these countries in mind, one cannot blame Yahoo for not continuing to keep the directory afloat. The last few years of actively running Yahoo Scandinavia, Yahoo spent quite a lot of money .

Interesting and refreshing of course that the local search is back (and quite good for that matter), but with a mild aftertaste as it was the once the great directory that made Yahoo!

Have at look at Yahoo Denmark, Yahoo Sweden and Yahoo Norway.

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