Today WSJ announced that Microsoft will purchase Urchin Software. This reflects the trend for Search Engines to provide better analytics to Advertisers. At A-1 Internetdesign we use a number of tools for tracking including urchin.

NEW YORK and OAKLAND, Calif., March 21 — IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) and Ask Jeeves, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASKJ) today announced they have signed an agreement under which IAC will purchase Ask Jeeves. Under the terms of the agreement, IAC will issue 1.2668 shares of common stock for each share of Ask Jeeves common stock in a tax-free transaction valued at $1.85 billion net of cash acquired. IAC intends to buy back through its previously authorized share repurchase programs at least 60% of the number of shares it will issue for this acquisition, thus effectively offsetting a substantial portion of the dilution from the transaction with cash. IAC expects the acquisition to be accretive to 2005 Adjusted EPS assuming the buyback at the 60% level.

http://www.irconnect.com/askjinc/pages/news_releases.html?d=74889

Google uses more than 100,000 servers to store its data. These servers build-the Google data centers. Depending on the time and the place from which you access Google, Google will redirect you to different data centers.
For example, you might be redirected to the IP address 64.233.161.105 or to 216.239.57.105 when you enter www.Google.com in your web browser. Both IP addresses reflect different data centers in which Google will search for your query (the IP addresses in this example were operational on 29 March 2005, they can change at any time).

There are very many different Google data centers and each data center has its own index. Normally, the contents of the different data centers is about the same.
Webmasters who observe several data centers have found out that there are currently three types of data centers. Depending on which data center group you use for your search query, you’ll get different results.
What does that mean?

It seems that Google uses different algorithms in these data centers and that Google uses some data centers to test algorithm changes. Using only a few data centers allows Google to test algorithm changes without affecting all search results.
The three different data center groups that have been observed by some webmasters probably reflect the test of different algorithms that affect the same ranking factor.

Data center group one (the biggest) uses the current algorithm, group two (a small group) tests algorithm change A, group three (another small group) tests algorithm change B. That way, Google can test the best way to improve its algorithm without affecting all search results.

www.axandra.com