As seen on C|Net:
Fast Search & Transfer's AlltheWeb.com has dropped the use of banner advertisements in a Web site redesign that recalls the look and feel of rival search provider Google. The redesign, unveiled Tuesday, comes amid an overall decline in the use of banner ads online, as advertisers move on to larger, more eye-catching formats as well as to the kind of simple, text-only marketing popularized by paid search listing pioneer Overture Services
Indeed. AllTheWeb is now very Google-like on their home page. Makes you wonder what the next search.yahoo.com home page will look like, doesn't it?
All in due time...
Update: People are reading too much into what I've said.
Posted by jzawodn at March 04, 2003 02:20 PM
The design itself is okay. But they are the first search engine I've come across that does not have http://tfr.cafe.ee, my original homepage in Estonian, which has been up since about 1996, indexed. It does have http://en.tfr.cafe.ee though, which has been up for a couple of months only. Weird.
The intense competition to keep up with Google has led many search engines to improve algorithims, expand databases and to index faster. One of the challenges I face as VP Marketing at http://vibedirect.com is to improve visibility and rankings through legitimate means of search engine optimization. I do it the old fashioned, hard way. I combine relevant, marketable copywriting while including keyword density and relevancy techniques. It sometimes takes longer to achieve results, but I am generally successful with this approach.
Believe it or not, 5 years ago when I worked at lycos deutschland (before it became lycos europe) we planned just such a puristic design based on tabs and tables. But due to international branding concerns we were not allowed to launch it :-( Isn't it incredible. Guess my feelings when I saw Google (in Beta) the first time :)
