ÿþ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title>Lycos White Paper - Copywriting by David Almquist</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"> <link rel=stylesheet type="text/css" href="lycos.css"> </head> <body> <table width=100%><tr> <td width=50%>&nbsp;</td> <td width=650> <div class="a"> <p>Lycos white paper I<br>&nbsp;</p> <p><b>The Web's Premier Search Engine Achieves <br>a New Level of Power and Sophistication</b> <br>As part of a series of enhancements announced on June 23, Lycos has vastly improved its search engine and taken the unprecedented step of placing in the user's hands key relevancy controls affecting the order in which search results are displayed.</p> <p><b>Putting the user in control</b> <br>Relevancy&mdash;or finding the right information&mdash;is the primary concern of everyone searching the Web. Unfortunately, even though search engines turn up thousands of documents in response to a single query, all too often the initial page of results is far from promising. Out often or more items listed, half may be patently off the mark and the rest questionable.</p> <p>This puts users in a quandary. How many items should they check out? Should they try the next page? Rephrase the query? Do a customized search? Or should they just accept that what they are seeing probably represents the best the Web&mdash;or at least this navigation center&mdash;has to offer?</p> <p>Because users rarely choose to go beyond the first page of results, the order in which results are displayed is critical. It will determine:</p> <p>" Whether users do in fact find the specific information they seek <br>" How much interesting or useful information they will discover <br>" How much time they will spend locating that information</p> <p>This is why, as the centerpiece of the enhancement package announced on June 23, Lycos, Inc. has taken the bold step of making its relevancy ranking metrics public and allowing users of Lycos Pro Search to radically alter the order in which their search results are displayed.</p> <p><b>Fine-tuning the search</b> <br>Lycos calls this new tool the PowerPanel. A Java applet compatible with all browsers that support Java, including versions 3.0 of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, the PowerPanel gives users access to six different relevancy controls which can be adjusted&mdash;in increments often on a scale of zero to 100&mdash;to change the rank order of results.</p> <p>For example, one relevancy control affects the number of bonus ranking points allotted if the search terms appear in the title of the document. If users are looking primarily for documents that have the search terms in the title, they can slide the metric up to 100 from its default position of 50. If they want this factor to have less impact, they can slide the relevancy scale to zero.</p> <p>Two other controls allow the user to adjust the importance of matching every word and of the frequency of appearance of the search terms in the document.</p> </div></td> <td width=50%>&nbsp;</td></tr></table> <center> <div style="width:400px;"> <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"> <!-- if (window.name !== "lycos") document.write('<p align=center style="font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#eeeeff;margin:0px 50px;line-height:1.25em">&nbsp;<br>This writing sample is part of the<br>David Almquist\'s B2B Copywriting website.<br><br><a href="http://www.davidwriter.com/" title="home page">Home Page</a> | <a href="http://www.davidwriter.com/media_types.html" title="copy writing samples">Writing Samples</a><br>&nbsp;<br><b>David Almquist</b><br><a href="mailto:david@davidwriter.com" class="dw">david@davidwriter.com</a><br>PO Box 240&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cobb, CA 95426<br>707 928-5203<br>&nbsp;</p>') else {document.write('<p align=center style="font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#eeeeff;margin:0px 100px;">&nbsp;<br><a href="javascript:window.close()" title="close this window">Close Window</a><br>&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;') } //--> </script> <noscript><p align=center style="font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#eeeeff;margin:0px 50px;line-height:1.25em">&nbsp;<br>This writing sample is part of the<br>David Almquist's B2B Copywriting website.<br><br><a href="http://www.davidwriter.com/" title="home page">Home Page</a> | <a href="http://www.davidwriter.com/media_types.html" title="copy writing samples">Writing Samples</a><br>&nbsp;<br><b>David Almquist</b><br><a href="mailto:david@davidwriter.com" class="dw">david@davidwriter.com</a><br>PO Box 240&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cobb, CA 95426<br>707 928-5203<br>&nbsp;</p></noscript> <p><br>&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;</p> </div> </center> </body> </html>