Please visit our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat
The partnership dance (there are less search engines than you might think):
Google is used by Yahoo and Netscape
Inktomi is used by AOL, MSN, GoTo (when the paid listings don't have a match), HotBot, NBCi, iwon, and others
Excite is used by Webcrawler and Magellan
Fast is used some by Lycos
DirectHit is used by HotBot, AskJeeves, NBCi, Lycos, Yahoo, and Excite as part of their formula for determining the popularity and hence the ranking of Web pages.
AltaVista maintains its own unique index.
Statistics:
In the average month, 60% of people on the Web visit Yahoo.
33% of sessions on the Web involve search engines, but only 6% of the traffic to a Web site, on average, comes from search engines.
AltaVista receives 70 million queries per day.
AltaVista receives 200 million unique queries/month. In other words, many people search for rare words and phrases, instead of "key words". Actually, for full-text search engines (as opposed to directories), "key words" are relatively meaningless.
AltaVista receives 1 million add URL requests a day. 99.9% of those are automated submissions from site submission services and search engine optimization companies. 95% of those are spam.
This avalanche of deliberately misleading submissions clogs search engine submission processes, to the point that many take several weeks or months to include new material, and the quality of the content in the indexes declines.
Software that automatically checks all the major search engines for how particular web sites or pages rank for particular queries (such as WebPosition Gold, TopDog, AdWeb) put a heavy, useless load on search engines. Google, for one, is considering banning such bots
Combatting spam and trying to stay in business:
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. They 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 7 days to get into the AltaVista index -- at no cost.
Other sites are asking sites to pay to be included.
Inktomi -- 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 pages checked for new content several times per week.
For sites with 1000 or more URLs, they offer Index Connect, whereby they 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.
GoTo was a pioneer in charging Web sites for ranking in search engine results. You bid for position for queries that include selected words or phrases; and then you have to pay what you have bid for every time someone does such a search. If you are doing research, the value of such results is dubious, because there is no necessary connection between the search you do and the content on the pages that are high on the results lists. You won't get exact matches, rather general ones. But if you are looking to buy products, this approach isn't bad.
AOL, Lycos, AltaVista, HotBot, Netscape, and Cnet have now partnered up with GoTo, so if you bid on placement at GoTo, you also appear as "sponsored listings" at these other sites.
We see a similar trend in directories.
Yahoo charges $199 for its Business Express, which means your submission gets reviewed within seven days. They still allow free submissions; but if you take that route it could be three months before you get into the directory. Whether free or paid, there is no guarantee that you will be included.
LookSmart 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.
The OpenDirectory, which is used by AOL, Netscape, and MSN, is still both free and fast.
Newsgroup search is becoming very difficult. AltaVista dropped that service over a year ago. Now Deja.com went out of business and was bought by Google, which now has that service in limbo while they decide what to do next.
A few less well known sites still offer newsgroup search, including newsone.net and nooz.net.
Tips for being found by search engines:
Dynamic pages (pages assembled from databases) (e.g., .asp and .cfm) with ? in the URL still present serious problems for search engines. For the most part, do not get indexed. If you submit such a page individually, it may get in the index. But as soon as a crawler encounters a ?, it halts right there and doesn't follow the trail of links, as it normally would. Google, for one, can crawl some dynamic pages (but its does so at a lower priority than ordinary HTML pages, which are far easier to deal with.)
Tables are difficult to get indexed properly.
Google indexes PDF (Acrobat) pages, but the other major search engines don't yet.
Google indexes ALT text (invisible text explanations attached to images), but most of the other major search engines don't.
Google gives more weight to pages its webcrawler finds on its own as opposed to pages that are submitted.
Multiple redirects for a page are bad, but one is okay
Search engines can't follow links in drop down menus (cgi script or java script); so if you use them, you should also have corresponding text links.
Directory listing are essential -- they increase your popularity and hence your ranking at search engines.
Fast and Google don't support metatags at all. Excite only supports the description metatag, not key word metatags. Inktomi and AltaVista index both kinds of metatags, but AltaVista gives them no value at all for ranking. In other words, it's hardly worth the effort to write key word metatags. You are much better off having lots of meaningful static text content on your pages and paying attention to your HTML titles. Put crudely, search engines love big dumb ugly pages. And since such pages usually have lots of useful information, searchers love them too.
Don't try tricks. Sooner or later you will pay for them and pay dearly. Search engines work hard to detect spam and to uncover any means used to submit information to their indexes that differs from what ordinary users see on those pages. When they find spam, they typically kick not just that page, but the entire site out of the index; and it is then very hard to get back in. And remember that 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 and directories; and 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 and how misleading it is.
Rather than pay a search engine submission company
that might engage in such tricks on your behalf (without your knowing it),
it's far easier and more effective to build good useful content and present
it in simple static form.
This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com
Please visit our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat
Return to B&R Samizdat Express
Buy Richard's book Web Business Bootcamp (published by Wiley) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471164194/brsamizdatexpres
<
| Internet Business Showcase: | ||
|
|
|