Copyright 2002 by Richard Seltzer
Originally published by Wiley. The rights have reverted to the author
Please post your reactions/comments/suggestions at Blogging about Books
http://www.samizdat.com/blog/?cat=10
With this activity, you will begin to build an audience, developing relationships with people who, before, had been total strangers to you. You should pay careful attention to their feedback, and seek new ways to help them and meet their needs. In so doing, you can build online people skills that are important for success in any online business.
Remember that although your site is now public, you still have the ability to change any page any time you want, and very quickly. These pages are yours -- not subject to corporate rules. Experiment freely. If you make a mistake -- and you almost certainly will make many -- take the page down and post a new version. Dare to try new things -- that's the only way you'll learn.
Elective:
• use AltaVista to send "secret" messages
Yahoo has a paid staff of editors who review submissions from Web site owners. The Open Directory has thousands of volunteers doing the same work. Both now include over a million sites each.
You can navigate a Web directory by clicking from menu to menu, making one selection after another until you finally get to the level where sites of the kind you are interested in are listed. That approach can be handy if you are looking for information in yellow-pages style, thinking in terms of a category of information, rather than something specific.
You can also search through the database that contains the descriptions of all of them.
Most major search engines have partnered with one or another of the major directories. When you click on the name of a category, rather than entering words in a query box, you are using their directory capability.
A directory takes you to the home page of a Web site, from which point you can explore to eventually get to what you want.
A search engine takes you to the very page on which the words and phrases you are looking for appear.
You should use a directory when you only have a vague idea of what you want, and when you would appreciate prompts to guide you.
You should use a search engine when your aim is to get to a particular piece of information quickly.
Use a directory for the kinds of things you'd expect to find in the Yellow Pages -- for businesses of certain kinds when you may not know the names of the businesses.
Use a search engine when you are looking for information about a particular product and know the product name and model number, but may not know the manufacturer.
Use a directory to see a list of sites devoted to alternative medicine or to cancer.
Use a search engine to learn more about a medicine your doctor just prescribed for you.
(For a detailed discussion of the differences, strengths, and weaknesses of directories and search engines see http://www.samizdat.com/dir.html)
While Yahoo is a well-known brand, few people have heard of Open Directory. But the Open Directory is embedded in the directory results of many popular search sites. Both are very important, and you can submit your information to both of them for free.
Go http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest and http://dmoz.org In both cases, you'll be asked to scan through the available categories (which are amazingly detailed), pick where you think you belong, and write a description a few sentences long. Keep in mind that that description will apply for your entire site, whether it consists of one page or ten thousand pages -- so choose your words carefully and with an eye on the direction in which you want your site to evolve.
Try tailor your description for both the needs of the directory and also your target audience. You don't want your listing to look the same as hundreds of others and hence go unnoticed; but, at the same time, you need to avoid hype and clearly and simply state what you are trying to do, or the editors will either throw your submission out or edit it radically and unpredictably.
You have undoubtedly seen ads for services that submit Web sites to directories and search engines. If you buy your own domain name, you'll see many more such ads in the form of spam email. Ignore them, regardless of how tempting they may sound. You'll learn a lot more about the Internet doing the submissions yourself rather than depending on someone else to do them for you -- and it's not that difficult to do.
In any case, don't expect immediate results from the Web directories.
Yahoo typically takes 2-4 months. You can pay Yahoo to get your site considered sooner. They charge $199 for this Business Express service, and promise to evaluate your site within seven days, but without any guarantee that you'll wind up in their directory. ("Adult" sites have to pay $600 for this same service.) For details, check http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/busexpress.html
Listing in the Open Directory is free, and they update their data weekly. But very few people go to their site to perform their searches. http://dmoz.org isn't exactly a well-known address, like Yahoo is. Rather, users go to the sites of Open Directory's partners, such as AOL Search, HotBot, Google, Lycos, and Netscape Search. And it may take these partners "anywhere from 2 weeks to several months" to include information about your site.
LookSmart, a much smaller competitor, with ties to some major search engines (like AltaVista) no longer allows free submissions. You can pay $199 their Express service and get into the directory within two days, or pay $99 for their basic service and wait eight weeks.
Despite the long delays before you'll see results, don't underestimate the importance of the major Web directories, and don't procrastinate. Your listings there not only lead to traffic from the people who use those directories directly and through their partner sites, but they also boost your importance to search engines. Search engines try to automatically gage the popularity and quality of sites, and one important criterion for them is whether your site appears in the major Web directories. In other words, getting listed in Yahoo could make your pages come out higher in lists of search results at a site like Google.
Warning: If your site is in a language other than English, these directories will treat it as a second-class citizen. At the Open Directory, your non-English site can only be listed under the category "World", as opposed to a category that matches your subject matter. The main Yahoo Directory does not accept submissions of sites that are not in English. Instead you have to submit to separate Yahoo directories dedicated to specific languages. And the non-English Yahoo directories do not accept Business Express paid submissions.
The main LookSmart directory only accepts your submission if your site is in English and your content would be useful to an audience in the US. Sites designed for non-US audiences go in separate directories covering other countries.
Also consider trying to get included in Web-based directories that focus on your local geographic area.
People using directories go straight to your home page and then have to hunt to find the specific information that they want. But people using search engines will go directly to whatever page has the words that match the query.
Search engines typically index the full text of every page that they find -- and some include hundreds of millions of pages. Only words on Web pages matter -- not submitted descriptions.
Search engines don't wait for someone to submit information about a site. And no one filters, judges, or rearranges submitted information. Rather, they send out robot programs (called "web crawlers") which surf the Internet and bring back the full text of the pages they find. Search engine indexes are generated automatically, based on the words and phrases that are found on Web pages.
Tens of millions of people a day go to these search engines, enter queries, and decide where to go next based on the results lists they receive.
When you create a Web page, you don't have to register it anywhere; you don't have to tell a soul that it exists. You simply upload the file to a Web server connected to the Internet. Hence there is no central place for search engines to check to see what Web pages exist -- they have to "discover" the content of the Web by going from link to link to link, bouncing around among about a billion Web pages. Because of that, you can't predict with assurance when search engines might randomly find a new page of yours. But you can alert search engines of your existence, using the "Add URL" or "Submit Site" functions at their sites. In this case, you do not have to choose a category or provide a description -- you just enter the URL in their form. Then if your pages are properly designed (as described here) your information will be indexed within a few weeks and people will be able to find you.
Don't bother to submit to the following:
• AOL, MSN, NBCi, and iwon all use Inktomi for their search index.
(Submit to HotBot to reach all of them).
• Webcrawler and Magellan use the Excite index.
• Netscape uses Google for its index.
Basically, text counts, and text near the top of a page counts for more than text at the end. In particular, the HTML title and the first couple lines of text are the most important part of your pages. If the words and phrases that match a query happen to appear in the HTML title or first couple lines of text of one of your pages, chances are very good that that page will appear high in the list of search results.
For instance, if you want to find a job by posting your resume on the Web, don't put your name in the HTML title. You aren't trying to be found by people who already know you. You want to be found by people who have never heard of you. Don't waste any space in the HTML title on your own name. The first word in the HTML title and in the Web page itself should be "resume". After that, list your main qualifications and the kinds of jobs that you are looking for. Then you can proceed with a standard resume-style format.
As an example of how search engines rank pages, let's take a close look at AltaVista. AltaVista considers both static factors (calculating the value of a page independent of any particular query) and query-dependent factors.
It values:
• Long pages that are rich in meaningful text (not randomly generated
letters and words).
• Pages that serve as good hubs, with lots of links to pages that have
related content (topic similarity, rather than random meaningless links,
such as those generated by link exchange programs or intended to generate
a false impression of "popularity").
• The connectivity of pages, including not just how many links there
are to a page but where the links come from: the number of distinct domains
and the "quality" ranking of those particular sites. This is calculated
for the site and also for individual pages. A site or a page is "good"
if many pages at many different sites point to it, and especially if many
"good" sites point to it.
• The level of the directory in which the page is found. If you have
a hierarchy of directories at your site, put the most important information
high, not deep. Search engines will presume that the higher you placed
the information, the more important it is. Some crawlers may not venture
deeper than three or four directory levels.
• If a page is buried deeper than three or four directories, or if
it takes too many clicks to get to a page, the crawler may stop before
it ever gets to that page.
AltaVista recomputes these static factors about once a week,
and new good pages should gradually move upward in the rankings.
Query-dependent factors include:
• The HTML title.
• The first lines of text.
• Query words and phrases appearing early in a page rather than late.
• Words mentioned in the "anchors" associated with hyperlinks to your
pages. An anchor is the highlighted words that you click on to go to a
linked page. For instance, if lots of good sites link to your site with
anchor text "breast cancer" and the query is "breast cancer," chances are
good that you will appear high in the list of matches.
I
n any query, rare words count more than common words. If someone searches
for fruit and pomegranates, pages with the word pomegranates will appear
at the top of the list (a technique known as "inverse document frequency").
Hence you should use specific terms on your pages, in your anchors, and
in your metatags, not general ones that won't give you any advantage. Be
specific whenever you can.
Repeating a word or phrase multiple times probably won't improve a page's ranking and might trigger an alarm that the designer of this page is trying to trick search engines (see below).
If you keep these ranking rules in mind, you should be able to get high ranking on searches for the phrases that matter most to you, because large corporations often use design techniques that inadvertently block search engines and are often constrained by design rules, related to branding, that limit their ability to make sensible adjustments. Basically, they are throwing away the opportunity to have search engines drive traffic to their sites, leaving the field open for smaller sites like yours.
Don't try tricks like that. Sooner or later you will pay dearly for them. Search engines work hard to detect cases where information submitted to their indexes that differs from what ordinary users see on those pages. When they find spam, they penalize the offending page. In cases of repeated abuse, they might exclude an entire site from the index. When that happens it is very hard to get back in again.
How could they ever detect what you are doing, among the hundreds of millions of pages in their index? Easy. Your competitors and the design and marketing firms which serve your competitors keep a close watch on how their own pages and your pages do in the various search engines. If they think you are cheating, they'll blow the whistle instantly, providing the search engines with all the information they need to sort out what you are doing and how misleading it is.
This also means that if being found by way of search engines is important to your business, you should be careful about where you have your pages hosted. If your hosting service happens to host spammers and pornographers, you could wind up penalized or excluded from some search engines, simply because the underlying (IP) address for that service is the same for all the sites it hosts, including yours.
The tell-tale indicator of such a site is a question mark ? in the URL. When a search engine crawler arrives at such a page, it captures the content for that page, but halts immediately, and will not follow the links, because it sees an infinite number of pages ahead -- a black hole that would bring it to a crash.
Google is an exception. It can crawl some kinds of dynamic pages, but it does so at a lower priority than ordinary HTML pages, which are far easier to deal with.
Many commercial sites also use Java script for fancy graphic effects or as a way to present information. When you look at the source code of such a page, you don't see the text content, and search engines don't see it either.
Frames make a page look and feel like two or more pages. The frame itself typically remains constant throughout a Web site, providing corporate branding information, site navigation links, and sometimes advertising. And the windows inside the frame is where the real content appears as you click from link to link within the site. For users with small screens, this approach can be a major nuisance, greatly reducing the space usable for real content.
Search engines typically index the outside of the frame as a distinct page. They also index each pane of the frame window as a separate page. That means that if the content matching a query is in a pane, visitors clicking on such a link in a search engine results list will see the pane and only the pane -- not the full page as it was designed. So if you want visitors from search engines to experience your pages the way they were intended to be seen, you should have non-frames as well as frames versions of those pages; and you should submit the non-frames versions with to the search engines with Add URL.
Tables present a similar problem -- the crawler sees the text, but not
organized the way it was intended to be seen.
Registration and databases
A web crawler is just a dumb robot. It cannot fill in a form; it cannot answer questions; it stops short whenever input is required. Hence, if you require visitors to register and/or login before entering your site, by so doing you block search engine crawlers -- even if you don't charge anything, but are set up this way just to gather information about your visitors.
If you would like to gather information about your users/members but
would also like your pages to be indexed, make the registration optional.
Similarly, a crawler cannot get content from a database, because
it cannot fill out a form.
If your information is contained in one, big, beautiful picture -- great artwork, with the words embedded inside it -- the crawler won't see anything at all, and the words won't be indexed, and nobody will know that your image is there.
Other issues
• Search engines cannot see encrypted pages (ones that begin with https://
instead of http://). If you are tempted to use encryption at your site,
do all the pages at your site need to be encrypted? Or only certain pages?
The more content you make public, the more search engines will be able
to index.
• Exceptionally large pages -- bigger than a book chapter -- might
present problems for some search engines. As a compromise, they may only
index the beginning of such a page. Hence, if you want to post an entire
book, you should break it into chapters.
• Google indexes PDF (Acrobat) pages, but the other major search engines
don't yet.
• Search engine crawlers can't follow links in "drop down menus." If
you use that technique, you should also have corresponding text links.
Basically, a sitemap is the table of contents for your site. If you have a couple dozen pages or less, your home page can and should serve as your sitemap. But if you have more pages than that, you should build a separate sitemap page.
Keep your sitemap simple -- without graphics or distractions. The folks who choose to use a sitemap typically know what they want and want to get there with a minimum of hassle.
Put links to your sitemap from every other page at your site. Then from any page, anyone can quickly go to the sitemap and then go to any other page at the site in just one more click.
Some crawlers will only go one or two layers deep at your site. In other words, if you submit your home page and it has links to about a dozen other pages, and they have links from them to other pages and from them to others, etc., the crawlers will halt long before they have found all the pages at your site.
If you have a sitemap page, with links to every page at your site, by submitting that page, instead of your home page to search engines, you avoid that problem.
No matter how large your site is, you should make every effort to keep your sitemap complete and up to date and to include all the necessary information and links on a single page. If your site is large, you should organize your sitemap by category, and, at the top of the page, list your major headings with internal links to those portions of the page. Keep it simple.
Remember your aim isn't to keep your visitors at your site for a long time, but rather to help them get what they want quickly and effectively, so they'll come back again and again.
My own sitemap, at www.samizdat.com/sitemap.html lists over a thousand pages. It would take over 60 pieces of paper to print out that "page." Another good example of a sitemap is www.jeremyjosephs.com/sitemap.html, covering the site of a freelance writer in France, where he has posted the complete text of over a hundred of his articles.
For a quick path to the submission pages of each of the major search engines, go to www.samizdat.com/submit.html Click on the link for each of the search engines listed; then enter the URL for your sitemap page, not your home page. That should take you less than 15 minutes.
You don't have to have any special authority to submit a page. This is not a directory, like Yahoo, where the information providers have to submit the information and have to prove they are who they say they are. When you submit a URL to a search engine, a web crawler will immediately or eventually fetch that page. Actually getting the information into the index may take anywhere from a week (AltaVista) to two or three months.
To fight back, AltaVista has initiated a new page submission process that is designed to block automatic submissions. You need to enter a code which can only be understood by humans -- a set of letters and numbers in random typefaces and sizes and at odd angles. Then you can enter 5 URLs. You can then enter another code and do 5 more, with no limit. Thanks to this process, it now takes an average of just seven days to get into the AltaVista index -- at no cost.
Because of the speed of response at AltaVista, with free submissions, you should submit each and every one of your pages there, rather than wait for the web crawler to follow links and find all your pages. And you should go back and submit whenever you create a new page or significantly change an old one.
Trying to cope with the same problem of search engine spam, Inktomi has begun to charge for prompt and regular additions of pages in their index, which is used by half a dozen of the most popular search sites. You have two choices -- Search/Submit (which you can sign up for through Network Solutions) costs $30 for the first URL (individual page) and $15 for each additional. This gets you into the index within two days and buys you a one-year subscription of having your page checked for new content several times per week. For sites with 1000 or more URLs, you can sign up for Index Connect, which means Inktomi will check all your pages (or all of your pages that you want them to) every two days. You pay an upfront fee and a price based on traffic.
Once your pages get into the index, either for free or by way of either of these paid services, Inktomi's normal unbiased rules of ranking prevail. Content and only content matters, unlike sites like GoTo, where advertisers bid and pay for ranking (as noted in Chapter One).
Create a Web page with a Valentine, birthday, or unbirthday message. As the HTML title, put the recipient's name, with no spaces, followed immediately by his or her birthdate, with no punctuation (e.g., gwendolynjones61779). Put your message in the first couple lines of text. Post this page at your Web site, without making any links to it. Go to AltaVista and submit that page. (It's the speed at which AltaVista adds new pages that makes it the search engine of choice for this exercise.)
Check back at AltaVista over the next week to see if the page is in the index. (Enter the query url: followed by the complete URL of your page to check that, e.g., url:members.nbci.com/rjones5/birthday.html) When the page is in the index, enter as your query the same combination of letters and numbers that you put in the HTML title. Your result list will probably consist of your page and only your page, and your message should appear in the description in that results list.
Now tell your friend to do that search at AltaVista. It should be a fun surprise.
By the way, this would work (and be even more "secret") if, after the page was included in the AltaVista index, you deleted the page from your site. Then the only place that message would reside would be in that description in the AltaVista index.
You could use any unique set of letters and numbers to produce this effect. And you and your friend might want to each agree on a unique identifier and leave messages like this for one another on a regular basis.
You also could use this technique to pass along "secret" information related to an online masquerade party, as a follow up to the exercise you did in Chapter Two.
Elective:
• join an expert service
First, create a signature file that unobtrusively but clearly conveys your message. This approach enables you to present a low-key marketing message, even in environments where marketing per se is taboo -- like many email discussion groups, and also newsgroups (discussed below).
Most email programs have a function for setting your default "signature" -- a few lines, identifying you, that get automatically appended to every message you send. Your first step in personally publicizing your site should be to write a signature that clearly but discretely gets your message across. Include your name (or pen name) and email address (the one you use in connection with your site) and the URL of your site. And, at the end, include a tag line that describes the purpose of your site as a whole. You might also want to highlight one or two particular pages at your site, with their URLs and brief descriptions. But don't let your signature ramble on -- keep it to five lines or less.
If you don't have the ability to create automatic signatures, just do the same thing with a Word file, and whenever you send email, copy and paste that text on at the end.
With such a signature, every single message you send helps spread the word, regardless of the subject matter of the main text, and does so without you 1) having to spend the time to compose something new, or 2) coming across as pushy. And if and when your messages get forwarded, that signature is likely to get forwarded too.
Email discussion lists on the Internet date back to 1975 -- 18 years before the first Web browsers appeared. And email-based "communities" still thrive today, both independent of the Web and in conjunction with it. Many of these email distribution lists use automated software, so you sign on and off with a standard message to a particular address. The audience for a given list might be a few dozen people or a few thousand, and the volume of email generated varies from a couple a week to hundreds per day.
Look for groups that relate to the main topic of your Web site -- for instance, baseball cards or extraterrestrials -- and carefully read the rules/procedures for those groups. If you subscribe, you'll start getting email from the group. If what you see seems useless, unsubscribe and try others. If the discussion catches your interest, actively participate. Every time you send a message to the list be sure to include your "signature," which points them to your site. Actively participating in such a discussion is a great way to become known as an expert or enthusiast in an area related to your Web site, and also a way to make friends and build relationships with others who have similar interests.
Liszt is a directory of over 80,000 mailing lists. These include:
• discussion groups, where all subscribers can post their thoughts;
email that you send to the group address automatically goes to everyone
on the list;
• moderated discussion groups, where an editor reads the postings and
only forwards those that he/she deems appropriate; this is often a means
of avoiding spam; and it is also a means of keeping the volume of email
from a given list to a reasonable level;
• discussion group digests, where the editor assembles a select group
of messages to be sent as a single message to folks who have subscribed
to receive the digest only; and
• newsletter or announcement format, where a single writer broadcasts
periodical messages to subscribers.
You can browse by category or search through their list of lists. Their descriptions are very brief, and the search only looks at the titles and descriptions. Be sure to make your search broad enough to get the results you want. For instance, if you are building a Web site related to videogames, a search for that term would yield only one list, while a search for "games" gives you two categories to explore and 11 lists in Liszt Select (discussions that have gone through some minimal degree of editorial review), and 70 unreviewed lists. Those categories put you in touch with dozens more lists that you might be interested in.
Check the help files for tips on searching -- including use of their "junk filter."
Liszt doesn't let you read or post to the groups it lists. It just helps you find out that a list exists, tells you what its focus and purpose are, and lets you know all you need to join. You then join by email, and once you've subscribed, you receive and post messages by email. Before joining, you should take a close look at the information Liszt provides. Many of these lists are not meant for the public or have names that might be misleading. Also, be prepared to receive dozens of messages per day for each of the lists you subscribe to. You might want to open separate free email accounts to receive these messages, without filling your normal email inbox beyond its limit, and perhaps missing an important business or personal message.
Liszt emphasizes that you should not post advertising to email discussion lists. "Send any ads to the mailing lists in Liszt, and demons will come and pull out your toenails." Also, "never, ever send ads to a group unless you've been a member of the group for a long time and know for certain they like ads of that sort (it's pretty unlikely they do)."
But it is appropriate to use a signature file with your URL and a low-key marketing tag line, as described above. For instance, my signature now reads:
Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.comYou also can and should post and respond to controversial messages that give you an opportunity to express viewpoints related to your business, and thereby become known to the community of subscribers.
Internet marketing consultant www.samizdat.com/consult.html
Online discussion at Web Business Bootcamp www.webworkzone.com/bootcamp
The lists at Liszt are extensive, and the best available, but they are automatically generated and are not complete. Liszt collects lists of lists from computers on the Internet that run such email discussion software as major domo, LISTSERV(TM), listproc, maiser, or macjordomo software. Computers running such software will send you a list of all its lists if you send the one-word command "lists." Liszt regularly collates such information from hundreds of servers.
Someone must have submitted the server name to Lizst or it must be publicly available on the Web or in Usenet newsgroups (see the discussion of newsgroups below) to be included. Unlike Web search engines, Liszt does not blindly try to gather information wherever it might be.
Several of my favorite email discussion groups (like print-on-demand@yahoogroups.com) recently migrated to eGroups, which is now owned by Yahoo (groups.yahoo.com). Some of the groups you'll find there are open to the public, while others are for members only, and by invitation only. You can read postings to public groups without subscribing or registering. But if you wish to post on the Web, you need to register; and to participate by email, you need to subscribe to a particular group. You can browse or search through their list of lists; and once you are at the Web page for a particular list, you can search within the messages of that group. You can even restrict your search to a particular month. You can post by email or at the Web site (using the reply command), but to do so you must register (for free) with Yahoo. You can view the list of messages in a given public group by date or by "thread" (the topic of discussion with all its replies and replies to replies). Supported by advertising, the service is free to users. The groups at egroups are not listed at Liszt, and the number of them appears to be growing very rapidly. Their category of Computer & Video Games is very well populated.
Topica has a similar service, which is tied to Liszt. There's a dropdown menu next to the search box at Liszt that lets you choose whether to search through Liszt or Topica. You can also go straight to www.topica.com and browse the categories or search.
At Topica, when you click on an item in a list of search matches, you see a detailed description of the group. From that screen, you can choose to subscribe or read. From the "read" page, you can search through the content of all the postings for a particular group. You need to register to post or to start your own list. When you subscribe to a particular list you can indicate whether you want to receive everything or just "digests" or only read the messages on the Web. They support announcement style, moderated, and open discussion lists. They make it easy to add an automated signature to all your postings. You can post by email or on the Web. You can also put your email subscription on hold while you are on vacation. When you browse or search through their list of lists, you get to see descriptions of the groups, with instructions on how to subscribe.
Dating back to 1979, newsgroup distribution (AKA usenet news) depends on volunteer arrangements among participating companies and institutions. Messages get posted not just to one but to thousands of news servers around the world -- archives where they remain accessible for weeks, days, or months, depending on the whim of the person managing that server. Many Internet Service Providers (ISP) offer newsgroup access to their customers. Those customers set up their browser, their email program, or special newsreader software to access the news server their ISP uses. If you don't have that setup, in the past, your best way to read and post newsgroups messages was by way of Deja.com's Web-based service. As mentioned in Chapter One, Deja.com was recently purchased by Google.
There are tens of thousands of newsgroups, each devoted to a different, very narrowly defined subject area -- everything imaginable: from chess and sports to every variety of computer hardware and software to every variety of sexual activity. The largest newsgroups have hundreds of participants who regularly post messages and tens of thousands of readers. The discussions are "threaded," where the subject line makes it clear which message is a response to which other message. The most useful messages often get posted to multiple newsgroups, forwarded over email distribution lists, and eventually are posted on the Web by fans, sometimes at multiple Web sites. Once you post a message to a newsgroup, it could wind up anywhere -- so be careful what you say. And if you have a flair for writing, do your best to craft the kinds of postings that others will want to widely disseminate.
Because of the volume of the traffic, and sometimes because of the subject matter, most ISPs offer just a subset of newsgroups -- very few provide all of them. You could, however, get all of them by way of Deja.com. Google's delay in getting Deja restarted derives from the immensity of the Deja archive -- over 500 million messages -- "a terabyte of human conversation dating back to 1995".
If you have newsgroup access through your ISP, you can use Liszt.com to search through descriptions of over 30,000 newsgroups, which will help you to decide which to "subscribe" to. But Liszt does not let you read the individual postings or to post items of your own.
As mentioned in Chapter One, as an interim measure, today you can read and post to a subset of newsgroups from such services as newsone.net and nooz.net. But if and when Google's new service becomes available, that's the one you'll want to use. They have a beta version running now, that lets you browse, search, and read messages posted over the last six months or so; though you still can't post there. You can get to the beta version by way of www.deja.com or groups.google.com.
If you are serious about promoting your Web site online, you definitely should check out the related newsgroups. Here you're likely to encounter very different demographics than at the more recent Web-based discussion areas. Here more of the participants are techie and more have been using the Internet longer than the typical AOL-style general populace consumers who frequent Web-based chat rooms.
Newsgroup addresses are arranged in a hierarchy. As Google describes
them, the top level includes:
• alt. Any conceivable topic.
• biz. Business products, services, reviews...
• comp. Hardware, software, consumer info...
• humanities. Fine art, literature, philosophy...
• misc. Employment, health, and much more...
• news. Info about Usenet news...
• rec. Games, hobbies, sports...
• sci. Applied science, social science...
• soc. Social issues, culture...
• talk. Current issues and debates...
For example, under rec., you'll find rec.games, rec.nude, etc. And under rec.games, rec.games.computer. And under that, rec.games.computer.quake. And under that, rec.games.computer.quake.playing.
While Liszt only lets you search through their brief descriptions of the groups, Deja/Google lets you search the messages themselves -- either their entire archive of messages, or messages posted to a particular subset of the hierarchy, or messages posted to a particular group. These messages are the candid comments of individuals on every subject imaginable. Here is where you can find out what people are saying about you, your company, and your products, or about your partners or competition. Here, too, you can get helpful advice of all kinds.
A few newsgroups allow and even encourage you to talk about and promote your own products and services. But most do not. Before posting to any group, read lots of recent postings to get a feel for what is appropriate. Tailor your messages for the audience. Don't post messages that are inappropriate for a given group or that have already been asked many times recently, or you may prompt angry responses, known as "flaming." Start by responding to previous postings -- get involved in the existing dialogue, begin to act and feel like a member of the newsgroup community. And include your "signature" at the end of every one of your messages.
The format often looks very much like what you see at Topica and eGroups (Yahoo). But here the main means of distribution is the Web, rather than email. Here, too, the discussions are usually hosted on the servers of the companies running the discussions, each of which sets the topics, establishes its own rules, and may moderate the discussion (deleting off-topic items; and blocking access to people who seriously misbehave).
The technology used here was developed mainly for "collaboration" -- online discussions among business colleagues and partners. And the vast majority of forums are closed to outsiders.
To find the thousands of public forums where you can participate, go to www.forumone.com/index, for their "Online Community Index". Enter the topic you are interested in the search box. Then click on "Everything" or a specific topic. If you don't specify, your results will be just a small subset of what's available -- the sites that ForumOne recommends. Click on a link in the results list, and you'll go straight to the forum in question. In many cases, these forums will require you to register before reading or posting.
To participate in a forum, you don't need any plug-ins or special software. All you need is a Web browser. They typically allow you to post a comment as a new topic or as a reply to a previous one, so over time a "thread" of discussion grows. Sometimes you can request email alerts when someone posts a reply to a message of yours or a message that you are particularly interested in.
Proceed carefully in this space. You are a guest in someone else's territory.
These discussions tend to be less active and more focused than email distribution and newsgroups. But if the topic interests you or involves the leaders in your field, you'll want to be there both to learn from what's said and also to become better known. Once again, use a signature file to unobtrusively let the others know about your Web site.
I run a forum called "Web business bootcamp" at www.webworkzone.com/bootcamp. Feel free to read and post there, using that space to become familiar with how forums work and also as a way to get answers to questions related to this book. [author note: no longer in existence]
In chat, the discussion is live. To participate, you need to connect when the others do.
Some chat rooms are spontaneous and unplanned and are open all the time, with people dropping in and out.
Others are set up for planned discussions at prearranged times with invited guests and moderators.
Still others are planned as closed meetings.
The earliest chats on the Internet, pre-dating the Web, used technology called Internet Relay Chat (IRC). That style still flourishes -- with over 37,000 "channels" (the equivalent of "chat room") available at any time and searchable from Liszt.com. Just like you have to have software for email and software for browsing the Web, you need separate software for this style of chatting. For Windows, Liszt.com recommends mIRC from www.mirc.com.
Download and install the software. Find a channel that looks interesting. And dive in. The dialogue tends to be very fast paced, with lots of one-line messages. The messages are ephemeral -- automatically erased from the servers; though individuals may choose to personally save some of the traffic on their hard drives.
Here you can't use a "signature." (Actually, your signature is probably far longer than the average message). But you can meet people with similar interests and become known as a guru in a field where you have special knowledge and are willing to help others.
Many popular Web portals, like Yahoo, offer a different, Web-based style of chat that doesn't get indexed by Liszt.com. Typically, you have to register and sign in with a password. Sometimes your browser software suffices. At other sites, you have to download a special chat plug-in. The instructions are usually clear and simple -- intended for a non-technical audience of consumers. Just dive in -- read and react. It won't take long for you to get the drift of how it works.
Typically, you type your messages into a form, and see what you and others have been saying in a separate viewing area. You'll probably see buttons you can click to submit what you've typed and/or to change the look-and-feel of your page. Check the Help files, or ask your questions about how this particular chat works in the chat room itself.
Some of these Web sites have unstructured chat rooms open all day, every day, with random visitors talking about whatever is on their mind. Often, you'll go into such a chat room, and no one is there. Others hold scheduled events with experts and celebrities as guests. For example, Yahoo might have talks about fitness or heart disease, and chats with soap opera stars.
I've been running weekly chat sessions about Business on the Web since June 1996, and post the transcripts at my site, where they provide valuable content, attracting lots of visitors (see www.samizdat.com/chat.html). We'll talk further about that approach to buildling an audience in Chapter Seven. [author note: I no longer do these chat sessions; for an explanation of why, see the chat farewell article at www.samizdat.com/chatfarewell.html ]
Experts volunteer their services for the benefit of becoming known as experts, and also to make contact to potential customers, and to spread the word about their Web sites.
Connect to AllExperts, look for me (I've been an expert there for the last year), and, as an experiment, post a question for me.
Then check Abuzz, Infomarkets, and Smallbusiness.com Post more questions. Maybe get involved in related forum-style discussions at those sites. If you like what you see at any of these sites, and if you believe that you would qualify in as an expert in an area that's related to your Web site, volunteer.
If you are accepted, they will post your bio and credentials, including information about your Web site. Your experience as an expert in such an environment can be important not just for the contacts and the reputation, but also giving you practice in answering a wide range of questions in your field, learning what really matters to the folks who are the target audience for your Web site.
Please post your comments at our blog, http://www.samizdat.com/blog/?cat=10
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