AOL and Inktomi?

when did this happen?

[ihelpyou]

I noticed a strange referral today from AOL and went to investigate.

On a very good search term, AOL is now showing results from Inktomi first.

When did this start? I thought they showed results from ODP first and then defaulted to Ink.

Not complaining, mind you..:)... just curious as to this.

[ihelpyou]

I answered my own question.

NO, they are still showing the ODP results first.

Also saw that iwon and AOL show the exact same database of Ink... same title and same description. Description is from Looksmart.

Does anyone know who pulls from who? Is iwon copying AOL?

[Brett_Tabke]

The partnerships se's have generated over the last year is tough to keep it all straight (eg: who is doing what to whom when).

You can find kw's where the odp isn't being shown on AOL.

[tedster]

I also watch some keywords on AOL where ODP and INK are interwoven with a logic that I can't untangle -- and for periods of time the results seem to change frequently (at least daily). Then they seem to stabilize for a period, then they're all stirred up again. It's been like this for maybe three months.

I've given up trying to understand it. Perhaps that is AOL's intention.

[InternetEsquire]

AOL's database is still comprised of mostly proprietary content. As such, AOL's search services perform internal searches of its own pages, as well as external searches across the Web. The service that scans the external Web uses ODP data and supplements these with crawler-based results from Inktomi. Before AOL created its AOL Search Service in October of 1999, it has a service called AOL NetFind that was powere by Excite's search engine.

[tedster]

Internet Esquire, welcome to the forums!

I'd almost forgotten about the former Excite and AOLNetFind connection. My how time flies.

It's that combination of ODP and Ink data to rank websites outside of AOL that fascinates me. Are you certain that AOL isn't also throwing some proprietary data into that mix as well -- something like AOL member clicks maybe?

That's just a guess, but I can't account for what I see on the basis of ODP plus Inktomi alone.