Knowledge Archives
http://www.co-internet.net/net/articles/wisenutframejob.txt.html

The Wisenut Framejob
------------------------------------------------------
by
Ralph Tegtmeier aka fantomaster
------------------------------------------------------

Freshly launched new Google contender Wisenut has met
with a good deal of preliminary applause: to date, the
media buzz has focused on their lean-and-mean, no-frills
interface, their huge database (approximately 1.5
billion webpages), and their highly relevant results.
What no commentator we are aware of seems to have
covered in a critical manner, however, is their peculiar
"Sneak-a-Peek" function. When clicked, this opens a
textarea like window immediately under the search result
displaying the targeted web page.

Is this another caching job like we've become used to
in the Googleplex? Wisenut says no. Here's what they
replied (very promptly, kudos to their customer support!)
to our inquiry:

"[...] this feature does not show a cached version of
the website. Instead it opens up the site within the
search page eliminating the process of opening up a
whole new window. Therefore it serves as a preview
button for your convenience. Please do not mistake this
as a cached page. The page that is shown through this
feature is a live site."

To make absolutely sure their claim is correct (it
wouldn't have been the first time search engine staff
gave out clueless technically erroneous information,
after all), we checked it out ourselves and can now
confirm their statement: it's a simple frame calling the
referenced webpage. In this respect their are acting
very much like their competitors About.com and
AskJeeves. With a difference, though: based on JavaScript
code, this frame is called from the searcher's browser.
Thus, webmasters will find the searcher's IP (not
Wisenut's) in their access logs.

Do we like it? It depends. The feature is pretty fast
and allows for a decent preview. From the searchers'
standpoint it definitely beats jumping to the target
page and back if it isn't what they had in mind.
However, framing third party content without their
express permission is a moot practice legally. After
all, there are those who would argue that displaying
copyrighted content within a different environment
(framework, if you'll excuse the pun) constitutes a
violation of copyright, and indeed there have been
several court rulings supporting that contention.
Legal issues aside, here comes the good news for those
webmaster who prefer to display their content unfettered
by other people's frames: a simple generic frame buster
script will do the trick. E.g. this one:
< http://fantomaster.com/framebuster.html >

So Wisenut is not enforcing usage of a proprietary
meta tag to prevent caching like Google (which is a
bit of a nuisance in its own right); nor does it display
dated cached content with broken links and busted
JavaScript code. Annoying as it may be to some, at least
there's a fairly easy way out.

It would, however, be a gesture of goodwill and
smart PR if Wisenut chose to point out this
possibility to those webmasters who prefer to de-frame
their content.

This text may freely be republished or distributed in unmodified form provided the following resource box is included intact either at the beginning or the end of the article and a complimentary copy or notice (link) is sent to the author at the address specified below:

Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ >, a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services.

He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available at: < http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html > You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2002 by fantomaster.com
All rights reserved.
Downloaded at: < http://fantomaster.com/ >