Norway - Norge

4 search engines, 5 directories

[rencke]

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Norway - Norge
Fact sheet [odci.gov]
Domain(s): no
Online population: 2,34 million (55,7%) (1Q/2001)
Native language(s): Norwegian
Understanding of English: Very high
Hosts in domain: 452.100 (April 2001)
Pages in language: 2,4 million (April 2001, all domains)
Pages in domain: 2,84 million (April 2001, all languages)
Local presence required for domain registration: Yes
Multiple domains allowed: No
Professional help: See bottom of page

Known general search engines:

ABC Startsiden [startsiden.no]
Language interface: Norwegian Traffic volume: 536.000 unique visitors/week 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: ?

Fast [ussc.alltheweb.com]
Language interface: English Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Own 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: ?

Kvasir [kvasir.no]
Language interface: Norwegian Traffic volume: 725.000 unique visitors/week Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Fast 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: Kvasir is part of and on main page of Scandinavia on Line portal with 750.000 unique visitors per week.

Lycos [no.lycos.de]
Language interface: Norwegian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Fast 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: Spray.no portal owned by Lycos Europe has 139.000 unique visitors/week.

MSN Norway [msn.no]
Language interface: Norwegian Traffic volume: 150.000 unique visitors/week 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: ?

Origo [origo.no]
Language interface: Norwegian 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: ?

Known general directories:

Leti.no [leti.no]
Language interface: Norwegian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Spray [spray.no]
Language interface: Norwegian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

SunSteam [sunsteam.com]
Language interface: English Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Webindex [webindex.net]
Language interface: Norwegian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Yahoo [no.yahoo.com]
Language interface: ? Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Local people who can help with translations and advise:

Tor at B-found [b-found.com] in Bergen, Norway provides translations into Norwegian and SEO-services. [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.

Updated 30 May, 2001

Edited by: rencke

[snappa]

Check out this servey. It's in norwegian, but i guess those of you that are interested knows the language. If not, give me message and I might bother translate some of it.
[gallup.no...] (Name: Webtopp)

[rencke]

Velkommen til WebmasterWorld snappa!

I hope you will like this place and we sure need a Norwegian to help us with the facts on Norwegian search engines and directories. A lot of people are very interested in this - not just other Scandinavians like myself, who can read your language. In fact, the Americans are beginning to realize that they will be outnumbered by Europeans at the end of 2001 and are frantically trying to learn as much as possible about all these strange countries. In addition, the success of Fast has generated additional interest in Norway.

If you set the drop down box at the bottom of the forum's main page to show "All", you will see a number of examples of this interest.

I read the document you had linked to - The Gallup figures for Norway for 3Q 2000 and pulled out this:

Rank/Site/Unique visitors in thousands:
1. Scandinavia Online 759 (Question: Is Kvasir search right on their main page?
2. Kvasir (Search) 725
4. Altavista.no 573
7. Yahoo.no 434
16 MSN.no 150
17 Spray.no 139 (Is Lycos on the main page?

Did I get all the ones with web search or directory or are there more among the ones I skipped? Looking forward to hearing more from you.

[snappa]

Thank you for the warm welcome. I think I met you on IMS 200 Stockholm. You where the one who tipped me on this forum. And so far it's ewerything you sed it would be. Thank you again.

>Did I get all the ones with web search or directory or are there more among the ones I skipped? Looking forward to hearing more from you.

There is no Altavista.no yet (probaly it will show up soon), so the numbers are for the Altavista.com. The numbers for Yahoo! are for both .no and .com (I called them to check on that, and they did'nt have seaparate numbers for the .no and .com). Sol uses kvasir on their mainpage and spray uses fast/alltheweb results only. Also, there is ABC startsiden (www.startsiden.no) that uses many different engines(kvasir, Yahoo!, Google etc.)

[rencke]

>You where the one who tipped me on this forum
Guilty as charged your honor! Thank you. Now I have a face to the nickname.

If you look in Breaking Search Engine News, you will find a thread where I have posted links to the three news articles i wrote from the conference. There are quite a lot of comments there also, some of them from people you met last week. And the news about Joe Frost's revelations about Inktomi has sparked a lively debate in that forum.

Is Startsiden so heavy on searches that they should perhaps be listed under search engines in your opinion?

These are the Gallup figures. Rank: #5 Name: ABC Startsiden Vol 536.000/week.

I have become uncertain about the measurement. All the figures above are for one week. That is rather unusual. Monthly is common or daily, which Gallup does provide. The question is if these are actually unique visitors or page imressions/page visits. Can you figure it out?

I will update the Norway chart as soon as I know.

[snappa]

>Is Startsiden so heavy on searches that they should perhaps be listed under search engines in your opinion?

Well, I don't know. I will send them a mail and ask if they got any number on it.

>I have become uncertain about the measurement. All the figures above are for one week. That is rather unusual. Monthly is common or daily, which Gallup does provide. The question is if these are actually unique visitors or page imressions/page visits. Can you figure it out?

The numbers are for unique visitors per week (and per day). It's a phone survey, they called up people and asked them if they have visited the websites last week (or last day).

[rencke]

The Norway chart has now been updated with the information supplied by Snappa. Thank you, nice work.
Have you got anything on their submission rules and things that help ranking?

[Rumbas]

Things have happend lately at Kvasir [kvasir.no...] towards a more SEO friendly approach.

Kvasir - the search engine for Scandinavia Online in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland has implemented 3 three nice features avaiable to all users - yet.

A keyword tool which shows you the number of searches done in a short period (it has not been up and running that long). A great way of discovering keywords to target your optimization. Don't bother optimize for keywords id no one is searching for them ;)

Online searches done right now - see what people are looking for as we speak - you'll be amazed!

And finnaly a toplist for the 50 most used search terms including rising and falling terms - spot the trend over time.

Keyword tool with most used search terms:
[kvasir.no...]

Keyword key hole - look at online searches:
[search.sol.no...]

Kvasir top 50 and falling/rising terms pr. week:
[kvasir.no...]

Correct me if i'm wrong - my norweigan is not that good.

It's actually pretty nice and it work's on

[kvasir.dk...]
[kvasir.no...]
[evreka.fi...] and
[evreka.passagen.se...] as well :)

[rencke]

Thanks Rumbas. Well spotted!

The Top 50 list is far too short for my taste, but is interesting anyway and some cultural differences can be noted here. While the Danes and Swedes seem obsessed with s e x, the kinkier the better, the Norwegians are looking for travel arrangements and accessories for their mobile phones. Healthy people. Or maybe they are just bashful of typing four letter words into their search engine, now that the whole world is watching them.

The hitlist seems less useful and Kvasir.no doesn't have the popularity meter which you assumed would be there and which is offered in the other countries. Wonder why? It would have been a real help to Norwegian webmasters to determine the best keywords.

[Rumbas]

>the Norwegians are looking for travel arrangements and accessories for their mobile phones. Healthy people.

I don't know if they are healthy - but not as kinky as their "brothers" ;)

And yes, it's a shame that Kvasir isn't offering the keyword anaysis tools in Norway - wonder why..

[rencke]

Here are some new traffic statistics for Norway from Nielsen/NetRatings.

Top 10 web properties in November 2000 (Unique audience)

1. Scandinavia Online (includes SE Kvasir.no) 876,707
2. Telenor (Phone & ISP) 868,060
3. MSN 605,979
4. Schibsted (media) 505,537
5. Microsoft 499,550
6. Yahoo 443,675
7. Lycos (includes Spray.no) 440,439
8. Everyday.com (portal with Inktomi) 296,005
9. Dagbladet (newpaper) 262,746
10. TV2 252,768

This underlines Kvasir's dominating importance in Norway. Note that Altavista didn't make it to the top 10, contrary to the Q3 Gallup poll.

[sugarkane]

Does anyone know anything about www.start.no ?

They showed up in my logs, and are google powered. I was just wondering if they were an ISP, portal or whatever?

[rencke]

Checked the home page. Looks like a portal owned by an ISP. No directory, just links pages and Google search. Works with major morning daily Dagbladet for news.

[sugarkane]

Cheers Rencke

[snappa]

Start.no is a perfect example of a internet company that tries to be a litle bit of everything. Portal/ISP/Serch/News service etc. As you can see I got my mail account from them. Rencke summarized it pretty well. Don't know how many hits they recieve daily, but they are quite big.

[Rumbas]

FAST lays off the "idiots", says board leader Thomas Fussell. Cutting staff by 10-15%.

From Pandia.com - english [pandia.com]

Original article Dn.com - norwegian [dn.no]

[rencke]

Juicy stuff. And an unusual choice of words, to come from the chairman of a respected company which just postponed its introduction on NASDAQ. Direct quote from www.dn.no: - Vi har ansatt noen komplette idioter som ikke er gode i jobbene sine. Nå lar vi noen av dem gå, sier styreformann Thomas Fussell. In English: "- We have hired som complete idiots who are not good at their jobs. Now we are letting some of them go, says board chairman Thomas Fussell".

When Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten asked about "idiots" he said that he could not remember having used the word and didn't mean it if he did, according to Pandia's summary.

- Han burde skjerpe seg. Det er ikke jeg som er idiot her - He should get real. I am not the one who is the idiot here, says Bjørn Remseth, one of the 34 employees fired, according to dn.no [dn.no].

My guess: We won't be hearing much from Mr Fussell in the future. The principal owner (Opticom - 40%) may well decide that he and Mr Remseth are both right. Who said Norwegian business was staid?

[Tor]

Local people who can help with translations and advise:

Rencke,

www.b-found.com has been in the SEO-business for nearly 2 years. Some of the largest financial institutions and travel companies are among our clients.

[Tor]

By the way: Multiple domains are now allowed in Norway. Up to 15 .no domains can be held by a company.

[rencke]

Velkommen til WebmasterWorld, Tor. Jag håper at du liker vårt "Søkemaskinsuniversitet".

I have added you to the Norway overview above and will change the info on domain rules later on. Anything else you could tell us about search engines in Norway? We seem to be missing quite a lot of info.

PS. Did you check your site in the Search Engine Simulator at SearchengineWorld? Might be a good idea.

[Tor]

I have been lurking around this forum for quite some time and I must say that I`m impressed by the exellent work you have done Rencke. Bravo!

I will get back with more input on Norwegian engines quite soon.

[heini]

Figures from Nielsen / Netratings
world internet access [eratings.com]
and
hot-of-the-net-July [nielsennetratings.com]

Norway:

Online population: 2,452,772

active users: 1,389,599

online time/month 4:37

online shopping last 6 months
24% % of adults (+16) browsing for products online
14% adults purchasing online

[hstyri]

Regarding key numbers, Gallup (TNS) Devember 2001 numbers are:

Online population: 2,571 million

Regarding the service ABC Startsiden it's not a search engine. It's a directory. It used to be a small directory (5.000 links) it changed policy in October 2001 and currently lists 45.000 links in 3.200 categories.

[Rumbas]

Hi hstyri - Welcome to WMW :)

- and thanks for the numbers. 45.000 links, now that's not much?
Maybe you could tell us a bit of more on ABC tartsiden, is it free? How do you submit?

If you have a look around here, you'll find a ton of good information on search engines. If you can't find what you're looking for, just ask.
- or use the Site Search on the top of the page :)

[hstyri]

Some information about the Norwegian SEs and directories to supplement the first post in this thread.

ABC Startsiden:
Directory
Local language not required, but all descriptions are in Norwegian.
Lists any domain
Search in directory only

Small directory with high threshold for listing. Categories are displayed in a two level manner, first page list only best pages and second page lists all sites in cat.

Employs a user voting system for feedback on sites, but data is not automatically used.

At present submission is by mail and category, title and description is required.

Directory rates second highest in unique users per month.

Kvasir:
Directory/Search Engine (SE powered by Fast/AllTheWeb)
Local language not required for listing in directory, but it's strongly recommended.
Lists any domain
Search returns directory results first, then SE results.

Directory is split in a business section with P4I and P4P, and a general non-commercial section with free submissions.

Submitting requires naming an appropriate category, title and description. Descriptions are in Norwegian.

The business section use keywords specified when submitting site. Higher price gives both better ranking and more keywords.

Fast
Don't know why the first post mentions this as it's AllTheWeb. Quite popular as the SE is made in Norway, but it's a general, international SE.

Lycos
The traffic to Lycos is quite small compared to the traffic this directory/SE receives under its other name in Norway:
Nettguiden [nettguide.nettavisen.no]

Local language not required, but all descriptions are in Norwegian.
Any domain is listed.
Search is either in Scandinavian Lycos or Interational. Sites listed in the directory are returned at the top of the results page.

Yahoo! Norge
Language Interface is Norwegian.
Local language not required, but all descriptions are in Norwegian and sone Norwegian relevance is usually required (every category in directory links to similar category of the US Yahoo!).
Any domain is listed.

[Rumbas]

That's quality info. Thanks for the update.

[heini]

Nettguide is rumoured to be on sale, says Europemedia [europemedia.net].
The portal is #5 in Norway, with 824,000 visitors in March.
Owner Lycos.Europe is in the process of "restructuring" - cutting costs whereever possible.

[Rumbas]

..however according to News Editor Jørn Wisløff from Nettavisen, they are not for sale!

He says that no brokers have be asked to sell the newspaper, and it is only a rumor that the source, Dagens Næringsliv, has picked up.
The claimed drop in traffic is caused by the way Gallup Webmeasure is measuring the traffic. Before they counted both spray.no and nettguide.no together with Nettavisen. They don't do that now, hence the drop.

Source: MediaWatch (in danish!), 04.17.2002 [mediawatch.dk]

[heini]

Well - rumour mill ;)

They might however be better off without Lycos.Europe anyway...

[hstyri]

Well, it was a small drop when they removed spray.no and nettguide.no from Nettavisen's numbers. Guess that makes the Norwegian part of Lycos pretty small.

(Not that this should worry any Lycos PfS customers. Fast powers Kvasir.)

The exciting item in the march numbers is ABC Startsiden that seems to be pretty close to SOL now. Not bad for a directory with about 50k URLs. ;)