Germany - Deutschland SEARCH ENGINES #5 [continued]

Discussion on German search engines (directories separately)

[rencke]

Continued from #4 here [webmasterworld.com]

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Germany - Deutschland. Search engines.
German directories are found here [webmasterworld.com].
Fact sheet [odci.gov]
Domain(s): de
Online population: 20,1 million (1Q/2001)
Native language(s): German
Understanding of English: Very high
Hosts in domain: 2,2 million (April 2001)
Pages in language: 37,5 million (April 2001, all domains)
Pages in domain: 37,6 million (April 2001, all languages)
Local presence required for domain registration: Yes
Multiple domains allowed: Yes
Professional help: See bottom of page

Known general search engines:

Abacho [abacho.com]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: No, only title
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: Some Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: Yes Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: Keyword density is important. Update reported to be very fast.

Abadoor [abadoor.com]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: yes
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: Onle one page per domain, will not spider others. Similar to directory. Other: Max url length: 42 characters. Maximum 12 pages per domain.

Acoon [acoon.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: NO Search technology: Own Meta description used in search replies: Yes
Things that help ranking: Local language: yes Local domain: No Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: No Other: Keyword density is the most important factor. Flooding and repetition observed to be accepted.

Altavista Deutschland [de.altavista.com]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: AltaVista
Meta description used in search replies: YesThings that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: Yes Keyword in 1st paragraph: Yes Other: Link popularity. Theme based indexing. Date: Older better.

AOL [aol.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 3,9 mill page views/month Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ?
Meta description used in search replies: ?Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Belissima - see Abacho

Columbus finder discontinued.

Crawler.de [crawler.de] see Abacho

Excite [excite.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 15 mill page views/month Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Fireball [fireball.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 10,8 mill pageviews/month (research)/30 mill (own figures) Local language(s) required: Yes Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Altavista
Meta description used in search replies: Yes Things that help ranking: Local language: Mandatory Local domain: No Keyword in URL: Yes, big. Keyword in title: Yes, boost if title=url. Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: No Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: No Other: Fireball reads additional meta tags indicating a.o. language, audience and subject. Info in help pages. Likes high keyword density and newer pages before older. Frequent submssion important. Links and link text important. Will index framed pages even if noframes tag i missing. Does not give preference to de-domain, ch and at work just as well. Submitted pages in index within 48 hours. "Spammers paradise".

Google Germany [google.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Google Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: German language front end for Google. Three search options: International (default), German language pages and Germany only.

Infoseek [infoseek.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: Germany's #1 search engine with 30.8 mill page views/month + traffic from T-online Local language(s) required: Yes Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: Yes, and keywords too.
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Not much Keyword in meta keywords: yes Keyword in header: yes Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: Also on main page of T-online, Germany's leading portal with 47,6 mill page visits/month. New look and functionality May 14. Has resumed indexing new pages.

Lotse - see Speedfind

Nathan [nathan.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Lycos Deutschland [lycos.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 36,6 mill page views/month Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Direct Hit + Fast Meta description used in search replies: No
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: no Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: No Keyword in meta keywords: No Keyword in header: Yes Keyword in 1st paragraph: Yes Other: Kwd on ALT-tags. Kwd location: High preferred. First three results from own directory, following 5-6 from DirectHit, rest from spidered index, a change to Fast is expected, but not implemented per Dec 1, 2000.

MSN [msn.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 3,4 million page views/month Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Inktomi Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Speedfind [speedfind.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Own Meta description used in search replies: Yes, one line description, one line keywords, several line text from page.
Things that help ranking: Local language: Yes Local domain: Yes Keyword in URL: No Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Tigersuche [tigersuche.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Oen spidered index supplemented by secondary results from Altavista, Fast, Fireball and Google. Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Local people who can help with translations and advise:

Ulrich Wisser, luna-park GmBH. Traffic analyses, SEO and translations into German. [e-mail]

This area will be updated with e-mail and/or web addresses to translators and SEO specialists, who have posted a reply in this discussion. Please state your name, web and/or e-mail address, languages to/from and what you can help out with. Prices and promotional stuff will be edited out.

The easy way to post a reply: Copy from above, click button, paste and change.

Last updated May 14, 2001

Edited by: rencke

[Eric_Jarvis]

Jules: "you are right about the limitation - this is just our first step to "conquer the www" :-)). we think its a good idea to focus on a given area (like german-language domains), set up a strong basis and then expand. so, we don't mean to neglect .com/org/net. "

wouldn't it be more sensible to only spider pages with the language content marked as de?...that would be independent of domain name but would be pretty accurate in terms of language

[Jules]

eric,
unfortunately, the language marker of web pages too often is "misleading". some webmasters do the weirdest things to maximize their chances to get into an index...
we considered this option but had to realize that we will have to analyse each page to determine the language with sufficient accurracy.
since quality of the results is of paramount importance to our search engine (hence the name QualiGO), we decided to first tackle the domains with the highest probability of beeing german, so most of the pages we crawl actually have the potential to build up our index. now we do have a substantial index (13 million pages +) and aim to expand it to an even broader reach.
we already are in the process of developing intelligent strategies to spider .com/net/org and to single out german content with reasonable effort and sufficient accurracy. but it will still take us a couple of weeks to get started here.

you may ask why we did not include a free add url button in QualiGO. of course, we do want to promote our auctioning system. but the main reason was again quality. if you consider the recent change in the submission process on altavista.com - their argument for effectively blocking automated submission was, that 98% of the pages submitted had to be considered spam (either malevolent or just lousy designed pages without content). it would take us a lot of effort and money to clean our index of this spam, so we decided to let our spiders do their job following existing links rather than submissions. fresh pages will have to use the keyword auction and pass the standards of our editors who review the bids. this is how we hope to insure superior quality both in paid and unpaid results.

[heini]

Jules
"this is how we hope to insure superior quality both in paid and unpaid results."
This is a bit confusing: First you argue that 98% of all webpages "had to be considered spam (either malevolent or just lousy designed pages without content)."
Then you continue saying that by your pay for play system you hope to insure superior quality.
Apart from the fact that the first part of the argument sounds like a rather hostile attitude towards your potential customers, the question arises, if you would turn off a customer, who is willing to pay for inclusion, because of "lousy designed pages". When looking through SERPs at QualiGo, one comes across listings, which are definatly unrelated to the query. I understand that you use the swiss Eurospider technology. Iīm not sure how this works, what the algo is, you are imploying, but the relevancy of QualiGoīs SERPs does not convince me. And how could they? Itīs not the quality of the page or site, that makes the ranking, itīs how much itīs owner is willing to spend.
Furthermore, when not indexing relevant pages, just because siteowners do not pay, wonīt that hurt the quality of QualiGoīs results?
This approach might be okay for commercial sites, but what about the rest, like information sites? And how do you treat sites with hundreds and thousands of pages, all with quality content on them, contnent that users are looking for?
Superior quality and pay for play clearly is a contradiction in itself.

[Jules]

heini,

this "98% argument" is a citation from altavista's press relaese why the block automated submissions now. it does not imply that 98% of all web pages are spam - just that 98% of the pages submitted to AltaVista that way were considered to be spam.

there seems to be some missunderstanding concering the way QualiGO works.
not all of our results comes for our positioning auction, in fact, it's only a tiny fraction of the 13 million pages in our index.
the vast majority come from our own spidering process, which includes existing pages in our index just the way any search engine does. we do not have a pay-for-submission program, so these results are entirely free for everybody exept us (we had to spent serious money to set the spiders up and keep them running)
in addition to our free index, we have the positioning auction. it provides the opportunity to either get listed in the first place and/or to position a page for it's relevant keywords. these listings are reviewed by our editors to insure quality. these paid listings are placed at the top of the results - the highest bidder will be first.
so QualiGO is in fact a combination of a search engine and a keyword auction. our search technology and the deliberate omission of an add url button insures the quality of the free results. our editors are responsible for the paid listings. they do in fact reject irrelevant pages even though the owner is willing to pay. if a site is accepted for the pay-per-click program, it will be relevant for the corresponding keywords.
hence, QualiGO is the living example of a superior quality search engine and and pay-for-play - just the combination of the best of both worlds. this sets QualiGO apart from other pay-per-click search engines as goto.com, who do not have their own index.

i hope this helps to clarifiy the functioning of QualiGO and to answer your questions. i admit though, that the positioning auction implies a bias towards commercial sites - but we included a checkbox to easily turn off the "commercial results" if you search for clearly non-commercial sites. we really try to give searchers the best.

[heini]

Okay Jules
I understand that QualiGo tries to build a good, attractive searchengine.
In order to become attractive to webmasters a SE must be attractive to users.
As a user I must say though that I donīt trust SEs working with paid results.
I agree that AV does not deliver good results either, but that is rather a problem of weak algo.
Becoming a SE of superior quality IMO involves a huge db. That means a lot of spidering and an intelligent indexing system. And a ranking that goes for relevancy to the query.

So, all the best for QualiGo - and keep spidering!

[oLeon]

Did anybody notice the fast-submit at Abacho.de [funktionen.abacho.de]? You have got two choices to get into the index within 72 hours:
1. call a telephone-no where you have to name your URL you want to submit (it costs DM 3,63 ($1.65) per minute) or
2. take a software (powered by Deutsche Telekom) to pay once DM 10,- (about $4.50) and then you may submit.

I didnīt try and use it - does anybody else?

[heini]

oh well.
I mean, itīs not expensive, but what the heck...
abacho doesnīt send traffic. Period.
Plus they are spidering.
Does anybody go to abacho.de, apart from webmasters?

[heini]

Changes at AV.de: the url-submit is directed towards the main (US-) AV.com. Graphic submission codes for german eyes!
More important: Looks as if the german db has been dumped also. So we would have the standard AV.com db, filtered only when a search is restricted to german results.
Which in a way would be cool: AV.de has lately been extremely slow in indexing new pages.
Didnīt really follow AV discussions: didnīt AV.uk go the same route?

[oLeon]

Thatīs heavy!
But if it leads to faster indexing, Iīd welcome it very much. And if the strange listings ends now, Iīd be very happy.

[Ica]

I just did discover it.

Luckily I did make a check of my pages just some days ago at AV.com and AV.de. And it seems that the database have been joined instead of the german DB been dumped.

Because the missing pages in the "new" DB have reduced to some pages that before both DB didnt list.

With other words: At AV.com now this pages apear, that before only appeared at AV.de.

But this is only proofed for about ten pages difference.

[heini]

And it seems that the database have been joined instead of the german DB been dumped.

Ica, I have checked some more, and obviously you are right insofar that the german db has not been dumped. The pages have not disappeared.
The dbs have not been merged either. When going to AV.com from germany, a popup pops up saying, that in AV.de youīll find much more german pages, which for the moment is true.
So the question remains: why does the AV.de add-url direct to AV.com?
How can a seperate db be maintained, if all new submissions are made to the standard db?
By the way: What reasons have been ther anyway to maintain seperate dbs? A simple filter for languages and/ domains should be an easier and cheaper solution to install.

[rencke]

Here is what I think:

1. AV wants to stop automated submissions in order to take some of the burden off their spiders. Most of the automated submissions are spam anyway.

2. The reason for the separate DB:s might be technical. Google and Fast use technology that imposes no upward restriction on the size of the database, but I think AV, which is using older technology, might have such a restriction. When submissions are made, they will be placed in one or the other of the databases depending on language and domain.

Does this make sense?

[heini]

rencke
I can only speculate on this.

>automated submissions:
why not apply the same technique (=graphic submission code) to the german add-url process? Itīs not that the german submission page has been changed, it quite simply doesnīt exist any more.

>seperate dbs
As Ica pointed out it was always possible to submit de. pages to AV.com. In fact when finishing the submit process for AV.de one was invited to do so.
So where does your submission go now?
a. both dbs?
b. the one remaining main db?
c. still to the german db but not to the main db?

Maintaining two or more seperate dbs I guess is in the long run more expensive than investing in technology to serve all requests from one db.
Even more farfetched speculation:
AV recently has fired european executives: They are in trouble, I guess.
Might this not be the beginning of a withdrawl from europe? Not in terms of targeting european markets, of course, but in terms of maintaining huge regional departments with lots of employees?

[heini]

More signs for a merging of the dbs
AV.com today shows nearly as much pages of one of my sites as AV.de. Two days ago only a small part was in over there.
Also a US-member is complaining [webmasterworld.com] about .uk and .au sites turning up in the US db.
Am I seeing things or is there really something going on?

[heini]

Just to complete this: look
here [webmasterworld.com].
What could have been good news turns out to bad news. Instead of getting rid of the rather unsatisfying AV.de situation weīll be facing a even more disturbing pay-for-inclusion situation.

[rencke]

I have been doing some testing today and will do some more this week. The search results I have seen have been absolutely appalling - people are simply not getting what they are looking for and the Americans will be livid - search replies for keywords in English will turn up sites in foreign languages on page one.

I think I'll spend $39 to test the meaning of "featured site" and will let everybody know asap.

[heini]

>The search results I have seen have been absolutely appalling - people are simply not getting what they are looking for
(sorry for not using the [quotie], canīt get used to that one)
Well this is something german users of AV.de have been experiencing ever since the good old days. Need useless results? Okay, lets go to AV.de!

[oLeon]

Oh yes, horrible -
I hoped that AV-listings would be better after the switch to AV.com, and now...at AV.com the same strange results we Germans know from AV.de. Useless - why should anybody use a se which donīt give you results you were looking for? More and more people know Google...
so: goodbye Altavista?

Or is it just the correct lifebelt AV tries to use by launching the pay-service...?

[heini]

>Or is it just the correct lifebelt AV tries to use by launching the pay-service...?

pro:
- AV still is one of the best known brandnames on the web
- everybody else (apart from Google, that is) is going the same route

con:
- as a search engine AV sucks
- their strange algo doesnīt garantuee site owners a good ranking even if they have paid for inclusion
- AV as a portal site has already failed

[heini]

Fast is getting massive over here:
add netguide.de [netguide.de] to the list of Fast powered web searches.
Netguide has just started. Its a mix of own dirctory and websearch, belongs to focus online. Focus is the successful portal site of Focus, a magazine in the "Spiegel" class.
Might be added to the directory list as well.

<added>netguide seems to imply some changes to the algo on the fast delivered results. Serps look different than in Web.de or Lycos.</added>

[oLeon]

Just to inform you all:
Fireball.de did a relaunch. Only a bit new design, now the new (and older) aim to be a searchengine not a directory (yes, there is still a directory available on FB - you have no possibilities to submit there, the editors find your site by themselves or not at all). And the most important news: Fireball [fireball.de] has now an redirect to count the clicks onto the results.

[heini]

Hello oLeon
It was featured on heise.de, but I must admit I didnīt really notice any design changes - looks pretty similar to me. The story on heise said that lycos.de (fireball belongs to the lycos group) would further strengthen the shopping - info - entertainment section while fireball would reduce this section. Which is fine with me. How many portals do we need? I like lean, fast, pure SEs!
Most interesting of course is the click-measurement. How will this effect rankings? Should we start clicking our pages?

[oLeon]

At the top the header you could click to come to the other sections like "shopping" or "Profisuche" are gone.

[heini]

As long as the add-url remains and the catalogue is still there - all is fine with me!

BTW: Has anyone had any traffic from netguide? Anybody tried to get in the directory?

[oLeon]

Yes, I know, all still available - the relaunch is not very important, except from the new click-measurement.

[oLeon]

Just a few numbers, you can get at webhits.de [webhits.de]. At the buttom of the page are the percentaged distribution of SE-using. Very interesting.
The numbers come from a daily update.

[rencke]

Interesting indeed. If we are to believe this, Google is now the #1 search engine in Germany with Yahoo (including google.yahoo.de presumably) as #2, Lycos as #3, web.de as #4 and Fireball as #5. Infoseek, which resides on Germany's top site - T-online - is number 9 only.

But can we believe it? I am not sure of this remark underneath their graph: "Verteilung unter 15900 verwendeten Suchergebnissen." How do they derive these data? Their other statistics seem to be based on webmasters voluntarily installing counters on their pages, but the search engines haven't done that of course. If we are talking of surfers voluntarily installing software on their computers, then did they select themselves? If so, we are talking of a savyy elite of trendsetters, not Herr und Frau Schultze mit Kinder.

[heini]

Oh sh**
Canīt find it anymore. Just saw march figures from netvalue, spefically for searches performed from Germany on SEs, wanted to post them later... And amazingly Google made a clear No 1! This is reflected by all my logs, by the way. Iīm not sure about the following SEs, only remember that with the exception of infoseek the ranking from webhits.de is vaguely right. I donīt think web.de is as big. It has aggresively expanded itīs reach, but mostly as a portal, not as a SE. Infoseek is bigger than No 9, Iīm pretty sure. Only wish I could find those numbers again...started rambling in yahoo>hightech.. than changed to >internet news...
Netvalue doesnīt offer those figures for free :(

[heini]

Okay, here are some figures from netvalue [de.netvalue.com] from march
-----------------------------
1. figure: single visitors
2. figure: reach
3. figure: time spent per user
4. figure: pageviews per user

google.de
1.369.000
10,4%
17,2
44,9
infoseek.de
1.093.000
8,3%
5,8
11,4
google.com
813.000
6,2%
11,3
24,9
metager.de
547.000
4,1%
2,5
4,9
abacho.de
429.000
3,3%
4,4
10,6
goto.com
304.000
2,3%
2,9
3,6
metacrawler.de
212.000
1,6%
4,6
10,2
------------------------------

Now this of course only includes pure SEs, not the portals like lycos, web.de, altavista etc. Those three clearly belong to the top 10. From my logs I can say that web.de, although it comes close to lycos concerning reach, and uses same Fast db as lycos, accounts for some 30% of lycos traffic. AV.de is a rare referrer for me, but I do not care and donīt rank well there.
One thing is clear though: Google as in /.de, /.com and yahoogle is definitely No1. Followed by Fast powered SEs, especially Lycos. Then come Fireball and infoseek.
The portals still have a tremendous reach, but aol and msn are not very often used as SEs.