Geocities said Monday it has dropped Lycos' search-engine technology in favor of one powered by Inktomi, in an effort to improve the home page site's search capabilities and keep ad revenues closer to home.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The new search engine, which was live on Geocities' site Monday, offers two kinds of searches: one for the site's 22 million member pages and another for the Web at large. Geocities offers free homepage building services to its members, or "homesteaders."
"This technology from Inktomi is going to make searching on the site faster, more efficient, and better quality," said Bruce Zanca, Geocities' vice president of communications.
The switch to Inktomi (INKT) is also expected to improve the company's advertising revenues.
Previously, "the ad inventory that was associated with the search function on our site wasn't ours to sell," Zanca said. "It is now."
Lycos' relevancy results "have been weaker than some of the other search engines," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch. "I would suspect that Inktomi's technology is probably better."
A Lycos (LCOS) executive said he was surprised Geocities stuck with Lycos as long as they did, given that Lycos owns two of the site's biggest competitors.
"Given we've got the two fastest-growing home page sites on the web -- Tripod and Angelfire -- I'm a little surprised they didn't make the switch earlier," said Jan Horsfall, vice president of marketing at Lycos. "We've always had a good relationship. But everybody's in a competitive environment now."
RelaventKnowledge, a Web ranking service, put Geocities.com just ahead of Excite.com (XCIT) as the fifth-most visited single domain in August, with 15.48 million unique visitors. Tripod.com came in 12th with 7 million, and Angelfire.com was 13th with 6 million.
Sullivan said Inktomi's strategy of being an original equipment manufacturer and not a competing Internet directory is paying off. Inktomi "can say to someone, 'Hey we will give you results and not compete with you in any way.'"
The move was another score for Inktomi, which has found itself quite popular with the other search sites. It provides the technology behind Yahoo's search, Microsoft's MSN Web Search, CNET's Snap, the Disney Internet Guide, and Wired Digital's HotBot.
Geocities (GCTY) stock rose $1 to $19.63. Inktomi was gained $6.75, or 6.8 percent, to $84, and Lycos was up $1 at $29.
Lycos is in the process of buying Wired Digital, the parent company of Wired News. Wired Digital also owns HotBot, a search engine based on Inktomi technology.
