Search
Not a plug for Lexis Web
Tried out the (US) Lexis Web beta search engine yet? It indexes “important, legal-oriented Web content selected and validated by the LexisNexis editorial staff”, including Governmental agency information (federal, state, local) Informal commentary on legal issues (e.g., blogs specifically for lawyers and legal professionals) General Web information about legal topics At first it seems quite […]
Catching up
Been away on protracted hols. Quite possible to have kept posting of course, but did not have the inclination. Had I done so, here’s a few things I might have posted about: Martindale-Hubbell Connected In July Robert Ambroggi took an exclusive first look. It’s now out in public beta. Will this fly or crash? The […]
Don’t don the black cap
A recent post on LexBlog highlights the importance of knowing what you’re doing or what others are doing for you when you seek to boost your Google juice by purchasing links or engaging in “excessive” link exchanges. In his post FindLaw gaming Google? Kevin O’Keefe reviews what FindLaw are doing for lawyer customers for $1,000 […]
Quick and easy custom search with Google
Some 18 months ago Google launched its Custom Search service (still in beta) that enables you to create a custom search engine (CSE) focussing on anything up to 2,000 specified URLs. The rationale is that, despite its undoubtedly sophisticated algorithms, even with a carefully crafted search, Google will always return results near the top that […]
Taking the juice out of Google
When Google launched it’s Custom Search Engine service 18 months ago, I expected thousands of CSEs to pop up all over. That’s happened, but I’m not aware that any in the areas I monitor have made a mark. Why so? In the UK legal arena I know of only a few CSEs: I put together […]
What’s a “legal” search?
A couple of big players have recently come out with new “legal” search engines (for the US market). There is Westlaw’s WebPlus which, “through a combination, it seems, of editorial selection of sites or domains and an algorithm the engine offers to fetch you from the web a better selection of legally interesting results than […]
Navigational search
Navigational search – gaining access to a specific site or page by searching for the actual web address or a portion of it – is common, not just amongst the uninitiated (who you might say do it out of ignorance), but amongst the web savvy. Jeremy Crane at Compete: It’s actually astonishing how often people […]
Google – the only law firm directory to bother with?
Larry Bodine thinks so: Clients use Google to look up phone numbers and addresses, so law firms can cancel their yellow pages ads. When clients want to check out your firm, they are not going to call up to get your printed brochure, they will look you up online. Kevin O’Keefe agrees but sees the […]
Adnonsense (3)
Google is in a bit of a bind. On the plus side it can be credited with: opening up access to the web with Google search, providing advertisers an effective channel for their web marketing through its AdWords scheme, and giving legitimate publishers, large and small, the opportunity to generate income from serving up those […]
SEO for dummies
Nearly Legal has a thing for Sally Field naked: she boosts his Google juice. His recent rise in the rankings for the said search term was helped by the fact that on Tuesday Sally won the Best Lead Actress Emmy for her role in Brothers and Sisters where all those leading TV actors you’ve seen […]
SEO: quality is the key
Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine in the New York Times gives a rare view inside one of the key departments at Googleplex. Amit Singhal, for some reason quaintly referred to as “Mr. Singhal” throughout, is the master of Google’s ranking algorithm, the complex program that calculates the relevance of a particular page to a […]
A victim of his own success
I used to follow John Battelle’s Searchblog closely for news and insight into the web search business. It’s still the place to go and I’m trying to stay interested, but wonder if I should bother. Not if he continues to dish out posts like this: Bezos at Web 2 Expo….S3 Data Jeff Bezos just gave […]
Google is illegal says Brussels
Struan Robertson analyses on OUT-law.com the Court of First Instance ruling in favour of newspaper group Copiepresse that Google News and Google’s caching of web pages infringe copyright. The Belgian court … ruled that it cannot be deduced that the absence of technical protections [the robots.txt and NOARCHIVE protocols] is an unconditional authorisation. Google’s method […]
Have I got news for Yahoo?
I’m well aware that my post titles suck for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes. For those unfamiliar with that black art, consider just that I could have entitled this post “Writing headlines for the search engines”. Boring or what? As the linked NY Times article says: “There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or […]
Law blog search
Two new (US-based) law blog search tools: Blawg.com is a relaunch of Blawg.org with 1233 entries in 26 categories. It remains a coventional searchable catalogue with brief descriptions and links to both the blogs and their feeds. BlawgSearch is a more advanced offering from Justia with 900 entries in 40 subject categories, 169 state law […]
