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First, I'm not going to bore you with my life story. I'm sure you could
care less to hear it, and maybe your's is much more interesting thanmine.
However, as far as search engines are concerned, our research and
development team has spent the last six months researching new wayson how
to advertise on the web. I must admit, it wasn't an easy task to break
through the barrier of hundreds of thousands or millions of entriesthat
would come up every time you search for a word or a phrase on Altavistaor
Infoseek. With odds like these it seemed easier at first to win thelottery
than getting a top 10 listing. Then we thought that those people whoalways
come up first must be paying a lot of money for it, like a TV commercial
... the more you pay the more your site gets listed. Even though, some
search engines do charge a fee to get their customers ahead of everyone
else, with a cost of about two thousand dollars and up, by sellingkeywords
through ads. But, this is not the case here. I really do not recommendthat
you pay a penny for your listings. You can get all the hits you needfor
free, and the answer is, of course, what these techniques are all about.
Before we begin, let me assure you that there are no magic tricks to
getting your site atop search engines. The only tricks that I'm awareof
are the ones that are banned by search engines and fit the categoryof
spamming, which I would strongly advise you to avoid for your own good.
This matter will be discussed at the end of this report.
What we are here to talk about is proven methods and techniques whichwith
some effort on your part, will teach you how to get your site to thetop 10
- 20 listings in Search Engines and Directories. First, lets outlinethe
items that we will be talking about supported by variety of links toother
sites which will give you a good prospective on these subjects.
Advertising Your Business on The World Wide Web
Effective Presentation
How to Design your HTML Pages to Achieve a Top Listing
* What is HTML?
* Domain Names, Subsites and Pages (URLs)
* Titles and Descriptions
* How to build your page Titles and Subtitles for maximum results?
* Keywords: What are they and why do you need them?
* How to make a good keyword selection?
* Use of plurals in your keywords.
* Adding your competitors names and products.
* Is keyword repetition good or bad?
* What are Meta Tags and which Engines Support them?
* Relevancy Booster and Link Popularity.
Learning more about Search Engines and Directories
* Search Engines
* Differences between Search Engines and Directories.
* What makes a Search Engine better than the other?
* Is Search Engine size important to you?
* Full-text Search Engines.
* How do Robots and Spiders read and index URLs?
* Web Page Ranking.
Listing Your Pages
* Submitting your pages to Search Engines and Directories.
* How to EXCLUDE or REMOVE your pages from being listed by using:
"noindex" or "robots.txt"?
* Search Engine Freshness.
* Search Engines Chart
* Frequently Changing your Page.
Checking Your Site Status
* How to check your URL Status?
* How to measure your page's Link Popularity?
Spamming (the forbidden word)
* Spamming and Penalties "According to INFOSEEK"
* More on Spamming "origin of the word".
Final Test:
Now Let's Begin ...
1. Advertising Your Business on The World Wide Web
Advertising is always the ticket to promote your products and/or services.
Have you ever imagined how much it will cost you to advertise yourbusiness
on TV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; Say millions of Dollars... That'san
understatement! A 30 second Prime Time TV commercial world wide willcost
over a million dollars and that is depending on the TV station andnumber
of viewers. Web advertising is a major step forward that gives a wholenew
meaning to business advertising. With a little effort and some minor
investment, you can transform your business from a local small timerto a
world wide company selling products on the web. This year, a good numberof
businesses have increased their sale on the Web from a few hundredthousand
a year to over a 100 million dollars and that is because of their
popularity. There are over 50 million Internet users today and dramatically
increasing every day. So, do you see my point? Web advertising is the21st
century way of doing business, and it's for everybody including you.The
problem is, how would you do it... Please read on.
2. Effective Presentation
The first thing you need to do is open your web site and look at itfrom a
customer's point of view; Do you like what you see? There are a numberof
questions that you have to ask yourself while designing your pages.
a. If you had a product for sale on your site, would you feel comfortable
to buy it?
b. How does it stand out among your competition?
c. How interesting is your site?
d. How long would you stay in your site if you visited it for the first
time?
e. Is your material simple to read?
f. Is it easy on the eyes to look at and browse through different topics?
g. Are there different points of interest other than your products?
h. Would you visit your site again?...
Remember, no matter how small your business is, on the Web you can lookas
big as you want to be! It all depends on your presentation.
Now, let's begin with your page layout. First, you need to make yourpages
easy and simple to read. Try to be easy on backgrounds, most peopledon't
like gimmicky backgrounds and too many animations... Don't over doit, keep
it simple, these matters do not only deviate people's attention, butit
also makes your pages load very slowly and that, by itself, is enoughto
turn people away. Keep your pages attractive and don't use too manycolors.
Display the highlights of your products or services up-front. Use the
curiosity factor - don't deny people their most precious gift.....
Curiosity! Offer some FREE information, or maybe some specials. Makeyour
site interesting for everybody. Let's say you're a Car Dealer. It doesn't
hurt to put some Driving Safety tips or some links to DMV locationsin your
area, or maybe links to Car Insurance Agencies. Also, it's always agood
idea to keep checking your competitors' sites and keep up with thechanges.
For more examples: check out our Corporate Web Site:
http://www.ecstec.com/. We know that it is not perfect, but it mightgive
you some ideas.
3. How to Design your HTML Pages to Achieve a Top Listing
* What is HTML
HyperText Markup Language is a programming language composed of a setof
elements that define a document.
Click on and bookmark the following links for a quick reference on HTML:
http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/lynx_help/HTML_quick.html
The following Links will show you a list of HTML Codes that you mayfind
interesting:
http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/www/html/code-index.html
More links if you want to learn HTML:
http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/internal/AUTHORS/primer.htm
http://info.rutgers.edu/newark/web.tutoria
Software Download Link:
http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/intro_tools.html
* Domain Names, Subsites and Pages (URLs)
Many people often miss the value of their URL name, even though it is
difficult to find an unregistered descriptive Domain name such as:
www.forsale.com. However, you can always get more descriptive withyour
Subdomain name and pages. For example, if you sell Computer Memory,it will
be much better to make your URL like this:
www.yoursite.com/computers/memory.html instead of
www.yoursite.com/Johndoe/mypage.html. Names like these are easier to
advertise because they are self explanatory and can be categorizedbetter
by Search Engines. You will greatly increase your "findability" factoronce
you have narrowed it down to Computers and Memory. And at the sametime,
you would have gained two keywords that will increase your site's relevancy
factor. Also, it's easier to remember when people want to visit yoursite
again without having to search.
* Titles, Descriptions and Density Ratio.
Of course, a good name is not nearly enough to be found on the Web.Titles
and Descriptions are the most important factors in your advertising.
Page Title:
Page Title is the one that shows on the top frame of your Microsoft
Explorer or Netscape Browser and the first bold lettered line on Infoseek
or AltaVista's search results.
This is just an example:
USA Today--New device will turn PCs into virtual ATMs
NEW YORK - A group of companies on Tuesday announced they have developed
a new device that can turn almost any personal computer into an automatic
teller machine. Called MoneyClip, ...
26% http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cta219.htm (Size 3.8K)
* How to build your page Titles for maximum results?
Rule # 1. Make your page title clear and straight to the point. Nothingis
worse than a title that does not make sense. Make it concise, do notuse
irrelevant words and do not exceed 72 characters. Otherwise, your statement
is going to be chopped off from the end and look incomplete.
Titles can be listed in Meta Tags which are compatible only with some
Search Engines. Meta tag titles would look like the following:
<title>Memory Sale! Great Prices. Simms and Dimm Memory - FREE
Delivery!</title>
Rule #2. Use a different title for each one of your pages and sub-pagesand
always put some of your best keywords in them as shown in the example
below. Please note: The following two factors are considered the most
important ones that search engines and directories always watch forwhen
indexing a site or a page. The main purpose behind these factors isto
accurately categorize a page in which to be relevant to it's contents,so,
when a person searches for certain information on a subject, get the
correct results instead of a bunch of topics that have no substanceand
totaly irrelevant to their search. This matter by itself can make asearch
engine more popular than another. INFOSEEK is known to be the mostprecise
search engine when it comes to matching subjects with keywords. Also,and
for the same reason YAHOO directory has become the most used amongall
others and that is because of it's subject relevacy.
Factor #1. Most search engines list the Page Title first, and that is
because they consider it the key statement that tells most about apage.
"Read a book from it's own title." But that's not all. They also indexall
the keywords in it and in different combinations in order to give the
searcher more than one choice when looking for this information. Seethe
example below, under the word "Title".
Factor #2. In order for search engines to establish more relevancy toa
page, they do not stop by reading only it's tilte words or phrases;Some
dig in even deeper in the page to see how often these words or phrasesare
being repeated inside, then they will be indexed again according totheir
occurances. That is one of the main reasons, search engines forebid
"spamming" because some people try to cheat by listing their keywordstoo
many times hidden inside the page in one form or another in an attemptto
get more listings. Also, some would place too many words that are
irrelevant to their subject matter in the same manner, in order toget a
bigger audience to their site. There is no harm in putting a smallvariety
of keywords that might not directly relate to you subject in orderto
attract people who might be interested in your products - so long youdo
not over do it. More on this subject is explained below, under thetitles
"Keywords" and "Spamming".
Title:
For example: if I wanted to advertise Computer Memory on my site, mytitle
would look like this.
"Memory Sale! Great Prices. Simms and Dimm Memory - FREE Delivery!"
With a title like this you would have already covered a number of hot
keywords that people usually search for such as: memory sale, memorysimms,
memory dimm, memory, simms memory, dimm memory, memory sale+free delivery.
So you see how search engines index titles now. Sometimes they areeven
matched backward like: great prices+memory sale or great memory sale.Some
Search Engines consider your title and description the most relevantwhen
listing your site. They categorize your page according to its titleand
description just like in a library. Think about it for a second - ifyou go
to a public library to search for books pertaining to a certain subjecthow
would you do it? First, you will find the category of your subject- let's
say Computers. Then, you start reading the titles, then their descriptions
until you find what you need. Deep Search Engines do even more thanthat.
Their Robots or Spiders usually go deep inside a page and they readit all.
They go through all the links in an attempt to evaluate the site andto
establish an accurate assessment of it's relevancy. We will talk moreabout
this a little later.
Rule #3. Your page title is what people see first when searching theWeb.
It is perhaps the most important statement that you make to advertiseyour
site. That's what people click on to get to your site. It is the front
gate, the first impression that will either attract them to your siteor
turn them away. By making a good first impression you will make itthrough
the threshold, then we say, "Congratulations"! you got a new hit anda good
one for that matter. Use a highly descriptive title, make it appealingand
exciting. Use terms like: FREE, GUARANTEED, BEST OF A KIND etc... Your
title appeal will single you out among other listings. To get moreideas on
how to make a good title, do a search on Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com
or AltaVista http://www.altavista.com using statements that fit the
category of your business or product. Take some notes, then put yourtitle
together. Remember one thing though! Some people find it easier tocopy the
same Title off their competitors' page. In doing so you can createa slight
problem. Personally, if I find two sites with the same title, I willmost
likely skip one of them, usually the second one. If this is the case,you
will be taking a 50/50 chance of being skipped. Also, since your competitor
was there first, it is most likely that your title will follow the
original. Why be the scavenger who picks after others if you have the
capability to be the predator yourself? It is better instead, to readtheir
titles and try to make yours more appealing. However, in order to useyour
competitors' name, title and keywords, you need to use what is called
"Subtitles." We will talk more about this later.
Page Description:
Page description is the two lines that show under your Page Title when
searching on Infoseek or AltaVista. Following is an example:
"Brand New Memory Simms. All sizes, great prices Guaranteed! Order today
and we will deliver it for FREE anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. Limited
Time Offer."
Your page description is the next best thing after your title. People
almost always read the description before clicking on the link. Todesign
your description properly, you need to follow the same rules as described
above in your Page Title. Page descriptions get listed in many different
ways. The first way is in Meta Tags. Something like this:
<meta name="description"content="Brand New Memory Simms. All sizes>
Today and we will deliver it for FREE anywhere in
the U.S. or Canada. Limited Time Offer.">
You can place a lot of good key statements in your Description whichwill
be listed in Search Engines. You'll be surprised how many different
combinations of keywords are taken from your description.
Density Ratio:
The density ratio is the percentage of words being matched in sequence
according to the words that are being searched for. This ratio is the
percentage % amount that is normally listed under the description lineson
Infoseek search and some other engines. For example: If a person is
searching for "search engines advertising" any match found that hasall
three words in the same order gets a 100% density ratio. all othermatches,
like "search engines" will get may be 80% or 85% matching ratio. However,
this issue is not the most important factor to get you a top listing.There
are number of other factors that are more important.
* Keywords: What are they and why do you need them.
Keywords are the means by which people can find your site. They becomeyour
ticket to be recognized. By using the proper keywords you can targetthe
type of searchers that you want to bring to your site, thereby improving
its productivity. For example: If you were looking for a car on theweb,
what would be the most likely keywords to use. I would say first wouldbe
the Car Make, then the Model. For instance, "Acura Legend" would bea very
specific search. But there are many candidates who might be lookingfor a
car bargain with disregard to the make, so you might also want to list:Car
Dealers, Car Bargains, Automobiles, Vehicles, etc.. Your keywords dictate
the type of visitors you get to your site. Spending enough time putting
your keywords together will always pay.
* How to make a good keyword selection?
1. This may be the most important part of all! A good way to find keywords
that fit your business category is by checking your competitors' sites.Do
a little research of your own. Go to Infoseek, for example:
http://www.infoseek.com type in any keyword that describes your productor
service, then look at the first 10 listings found. Then, on your browser's
menu bar click on View and then Source. Scroll down through the entireHTML
Page and pick all the keywords that are relevant to your business.Do this
as many times as you feel is necessary until you come up with a good
keyword list.
2. To enhance your findability factor, look for other products thatare in
the neighborhood of your actual line. For example: If your main lineis
Women's Clothing, it will be a good idea to include "perfume" or "make-up"
in your list then go check other sites using the same method above,by
doing this, you'll end up with a whole new set to add to your list.
3. To increase the relevancy of your page, you need to include METAtag
keywords and phrases separated by commas. Get all the keywords andphrases
that you put together as I mentioned earlier and sort them out in thebest
way that describes your site or business. Use plurals anywhere that
applies. For example: search engine and search engines. The reasonis to
use the word "engines" is because you'll actually be covering both"engine"
and "engines". I would use both words in any case, to get more thanone
listing for the word. Organized Meta tag keywords can boost your relevancy
as long as you don't do too many repetitions since the overuse of repeated
keywords can actually reduce your relevancy score, and you may evenget
penalized. For more explanation, read the chapter called Spamming.
* Adding your Competitors Names and Products.
We talked earlier about how to find keywords and phrases on you
competitors' pages, and we emphasized on keeping your Title and Description
unique. However, you can use some of your competitor's Keywords, Products,
Description or even their names in hidden subtitles. For example:
This is just an example. Use your own keywords instead.
<meta name="keywords"content="john doe, products, product, best quality
items, john doe, inc., etc..">
Also, you can put more keywords in the body of your page in the formof a
Comment Tag. Something like this:
<!--your keywords and/or phrases--> you can use a few of these tagsin your
page, but always remember not to over do it. After you finish, checkyour
page in a browser and make sure that these tags are not visible inyour
page.
* What are Meta Tags and which Engines Support them?
Only some search engines like Altavista and Infoseek support META tags.
Some search engines such as Lycos read the text placed within the tags,but
it has no control over whether it's a title or a description. Normally,
most search engines read the title of a page and first 2 - 3 linesof the
body as description, and some go in deeper and pick up the words thathave
been repeated more frequently.
Meta tags are useful tools to organize your pages to get a good listing
with some search engines. They can be especially helpful for pagesthat
have little text, which will give you the opportunity to make a proper
Title, Description and Keywords without having them visible on yourpage.
Also, instead of letting the spider that visits your site pick thetitle
and description on it's own discretion, it will give you the chanceto
organize them and get more accurate results. For example: Let's sayyour
page title is "Homes and Gardens" and the header says "Flower of theMonth"
followed by a picture. If you are not using tags some search engineswill
list it like this:
Homes and Gardens
Flower of the Month
Instead you can have tags that describe what you do and give you theimage
you are trying to project without altering your page contents. Also,you
can list some good keywords that makes it possible for people to findyou.
Example:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Homes and Gardens</TITLE>
<META name="description" content="Find out how you can turn yourgarden
into virtual paradise.">
<META name="keywords" content="flowers, gardens, exotic bouquets,red
roses, gardening, plants">
</HEAD>
This way, your listing will read as follows on search engines that support
tags:
Homes and Gardens
Find out how you can turn your garden into a virtual paradise.
Meta tags are always good to have in a page. They don't guarantee youa top
10 listing, but they will give your site a relevancy boost with somesearch
engines. Meta tags can also help your site to get closer to the topif you
include a good keyword selection that people normally use when searching
for those words. Of course, there are many other tags that are usedfor
various reasons, like "robots" tag which is used to exclude a pagefrom
being indexed but the most important ones are those of your title,
description and keywords. Remember, it is a combination of things thatget
your site a top 10 listing and Meta tags is one of them.
The following is a list of helpful links that will teach you more about
META Tags:
A Dictionary of HTML META Tags
http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/
Dr Clue's HTML Guide - Meta Tags
http://users.abac.com/cgi-bin/drclue/F1.cgi/HTML/META/META.html
HTML Writers Guild meta tag page
http://www.hwg.org/faqs/metaFAQ.html
WDVL's META Tagging for Search Engines
http://www.stars.com/Search/Meta/Tag.html
Excite's Getting Listed page
http://www.excite.com/Info/listing.html
Meta Medic
http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html
Meta-Tag Generator
http://www.websitepromote.com/resources/meta/
Meta Tags Can Index, Organize Your Web Pages
PC Week, 1/97
http://www.pcweek.com/ir/0113/13jia.html
* Relevancy Booster and Link Popularity.
Search engines can determine how popular a page is by analyzing thelinks
that refer to it from other pages. Some engines go through all thelinks
and list those pages accordingly. This can create a problem sometimesif
you have a page that you don't want people to see unless they go through
another page, or maybe some restricted information that you only wantto
show under certain conditions. This is where you need to use "Robots"tag
for engines that supports it and "Robots.txt" for engines that don't.Some
engines also, evaluate these links and give a relevancy boost to apage
according to it's popularity.
* Frequently Changing your Pages.
Many search engines measure how often pages change. When they find asite
that changes often they will visit it more frequently. Those that don't
change often are visited less. It will be a good idea if you keep modifying
your page maybe every month or two. It's not only good for more frequent
listings but it will also keep your pages more interesting for peopleto
visit often.
Important: It is unlikely for a Robot or Spider to visit your site unless
you were listed in their database or have some links to your site on
someone else's page that is listed. You must submit your URLs through
normal search engine submission channels before you can hope to bevisited
by their robots/spiders.
4. Learning more about Search Engines and Directories
* Search Engines.
The most common way search engines update their databases, is by using
what's called "Spiders" or "Crawlers". The spider's job is to constantly
search the web for new pages and catalog them according to it's
pre-programmed queries. Spiders normally visit pages using the URLsthat
are already indexed in their database for the purpose of updating their
information so they remain fresh. After a spider visits a page, itfirst
reads the title, then the first 2-3 lines of the body as a description,or
if a search engine supports Meta tags, then it reads the title and
description tags to see if there were any changes in content. If changes
are found it then re-indexes that page in a new listing. Some engines,such
as "Deep Search Engines" usually read the entire page they visit andall
linked subpages, then they index all words and phrases that are relevantto
the title and description of the page. Of course, this varies witheach
search engine. Some engines consider the most frequently repeated wordsor
phrases as most relevant to the page and they're index with higher
relevancy than other words, and some consider the words that are closerto
the top of the page as most relevant or maybe a combination of these
mentioned factors. But the most common between all search engines isthat
they all follow links, and through these links they visit new pagesand do
the same routine again.
Please Note: The following paragraphs are collected from different sites
and research agencies and brought to you in their original format;followed
by their own copyright and a link to their owner's page. These paragraphs
are quoted as they are for the sole purpose of comparison in whichto give
our readers a wider prospective on this subject.
The following information is quoted from:
Internic Directory and Database Services
Link: http://ds2.internic.net/tools/web-search-text.html
" Alta Vista (Web search)
Alta Vista provides simple and advanced searches on the largest Webindex:
31 million pages found on 1,158,000 servers, and 4 million articlesfrom
14,000 Usenet news groups. Because of the extensiveness of its database,
Alta Vista excels at finding obscure bits of information virtuallyanywhere
on the web.
Excite
Excite tracks down information by searching for concepts, not justby
keywords using a search technology called Intelligent Concept Extraction.
It claims to search the full text of 50 million web pages, 60,000
categorized Web site reviews, and thousands of recent Usenet postings.
Excite is among the best of the search engines at staying current.
HotBot
A joint venture between Inktomi and Hotwired, HotBot is a full-textsearch
engine powered by the Inktomi parallel-processing search engine. HotBot
claims to index over 54 million Web pages and promises to index 100%of the
Web and Usenet news and mailing lists. HotBot offers the ability tosearch
by date, resource (Java, Shockwave, VRML, etc.) and location. It supports
Boolean AND/OR/NOT and phrase searching. In addition, it provides relevance
feedback with each retrieval. Below is the simple search form for HotBot,
you can go to the original site for additional search options.
Infoseek Guide
Infoseek offers two distinct search services: Ultrasmart and Ultraseek.
Both services are powered by Infoseek's Ultra technology and allowusers to
choose the appropriate search mode depending on the level of assistance
they need. Ultrasmart lets users to find sites, topics, news and more.
Ultraseek offers what claims to be the fastest, most comprehensiveand
accurate search engine on the net.
Lycos
Lycos is one of the oldest Web search sites, and one of the best Internet
search engines in both quality of information and relevancy of hits.It is
a comprehensive catalog of Internet with more than 50 million URLs.Lycos
is a unique search site because it has large number of binary filesin its
database, including GIF, JPEG, wav, and MPEG files. It also indexesFTP
archives and Gopher menus, giving its index greater depth than mostother
search engines.
Open Text
Open Text claims to be a large database with 10 billion words and phrases
indexed. It offers an excellent combination of power search optionsand
ease of use. It is arguably the best-designed search site on the Web.Open
Text offers two search options: Simple Search and Power Search.
Web Crawler
Webcrawler builds on the philosophy: keep the database lean and displaya
clean list of results. To compile its database, WebCrawler surveysthe
entire Web, evaluating the popularity of each site and storing onlythe
contents of pages that seem well traveled. It currently covers about
500,000 Web pages. WebCrawler returns the title of the Web page, but
without a summary of description.
" End of quote
The following information is quoted from:
GIS Web Site
"Link: http://www.cs.uga.edu/~burson/gis/search.html#HDR1
Web Search Tools - A Comparison
This document is a comparison of four widely used search engines onthe
World Wide Web. They are:
* OpenText Index
* Alta Vista
* Excite
* Magellan
The analysis is divided into two parts - the objective analysis in which
all four engines are judged by the same set of seven criteria, andthe
subjective analysis in which each search engine is subjected to thesame
sequence of queries and evaluated based on the results.
[Image]
The Objective Analysis
The four search engines will be evaluated by seven criteria:
1. Distribution of Resources
2. Heterogeneity of searched material
3. Use of Metadata
4. Composability of Results
5. Synchronization
6. Efficiency
7. Effectiveness
[Image]
OpenText Index
Distribution: Indexes about 10 billion words of text on same cluster
Heterogeneity: Text, HTML, SGML
Metadata: Keeps track of words searched for most often and which pagesare
returned most often. Indexes every word of every page. Indexer creates
summaries.
Synchronization: add and update over 50,000 per day by robots
Efficiency: crawler brings in URL and every word is indexed so largeamount
of space required. claim that almost all queries take under 2 seconds.
Effectiveness: high recall but moderate precision
[Image]
Alta Vista
Distribution: Composed of 5 different servers - Main, Web Indexer, Scooter,
News Indexer, News Server. Company claims robot software to push "world's
fastest spider", Indexer Software can crunch 1 GB of text per hour.Serves
multiple queries in parallel.
Heterogeneity: Text, HTML, SGML, Newsgroups
Metadata: provides "near" operator, must maintain association of words,
ranks based on frequency, maintains update information for files
Synchronization: Updated constantly by Web robot, Indexer can index1 GB of
text per hour.
Efficiency: Total hard disk of 281 GB - 8 billion words, over 16 million
Web pages. Index over 13,000 Newsgroups updated in real time.
Effectiveness: high recall, low precision
[Image]
Excite
Distribution: Run on 8-CPU SparcCenter 1000. Indexer, index, crawleron
same filesystem
Heterogeneity: Text, HTML, Newsgroups, Reviews(local)
Metadata: Provides concept search. Maintains data on semantic association.
Summaries derived from dominant themes .
Synchronization: Index rebuilt approximately once a week by Spider
Efficiency: Indexes about 1.5 million pages
Effectiveness: high precision, moderate recall
Note: I wrote the people at Excite(Architext Software) to obtain more
information. Here is what i got.
[Image]
Magellan
Distribution: Powered by Silicon graphics workstations and servers
Heterogeneity: Text, HTML
Metadata: Maintains ratings for sites - content descriptive
Synchronization: company claims to have "planned, frequent updates"
Effectiveness:low recall, moderate precision
[Image]
The Subjective Analysis
The subjective analysis is based on a set of queries on three subjects.
1)Information on the new planet found recently:
* new planet (and)
* planet discover (and)
* new planet identif (and)
2)The latest economic forecast for Japan:
* Japan econom (and)
* Japan
3)A recent picture of the space shuttle
* space shuttle (and)
* nasa
The queries were run on each search engine and the results obtainedwere as
follows.
[Image]
OpenText Index
new planet: Found 3000 - very imprecise, no obvious links
planet discover: Found 2000 - very imprecise, no obvious links
new planet identif: Found 1500 - very imprecise no obvious links
Japan econom: Found 74 - most seemed unrelated, no obvious links
Japan: Found 37,000 - able to use "Webservers in Japan" to locate the
Economic Planning agency
space shuttle: Found 14 - most seemed unrelated, no obvious links
nasa: Found 57,000 - use "NASA homepage" to locate some pictures
Comments: The search was conducted using a Simple Search (the PowerSearch
simply allowed chaining with boolean operators). The and operator was
selected for all searches.
The Bottom Line: OpenText returns very large numbers of documents, butwith
very little precision. It would work well for searches of limited
complexity, that is queries that do not require any conceptual
interpretation.
[Image]
Alta Vista
new planet: Found 200,000 - very imprecise, no obvious links
planet discover: Found 100,000 - very imprecise, one related link, wasn't
working
new planet identif: Found 3,000 - very imprecise, no obvious links
Japan econom: Found 700,000 - what can i say?
Japan: Found 500,000 - very imprecise
space shuttle: Found 2000 - very imprecise but probably a usable one
somewhere
nasa: Found 700,000 - NASA was not in the first 20
Comments: The searches were performed using the and operator. The company
claims to place the "best matches first" but doesn't define "best".
The Bottom Line: I found these results to be similar to the OpenText
results. There is a very high recall but the documents are generallynot
relevant. I would suggest a very precise query to get good results.
[Image]
Excite
new planet: Immediate hit! - found two different articles on first page,
new planet1, newplanet2
planet discover: not necessary
new planet identif: not necessary
Japan econom: all links relevant! - found several including Economic
Planning agency
Japan: not necessary
space shuttle: Found 14 - all relevant including> NASA link
nasa: not necessary
Comments: The searches were done using the concept option, rather thanthe
keyword option. The results were very impressive. Only one query wasneeded
for each subject.
The Bottom Line: Excite is the most useful search engine that I havefound.
Using the concept search, it seems to return very precise results and
orders them according to relevance. It should be noted that Excitefound
everything relevant that the other search engines found and more.
[Image]
Magellan
new planet: Found 1000 - nothing relevant in first 30
planet discover: Found 7 - seem unrelated
new planet identif: Found 0
Japan econom: Found 26 - several somewhat related links, none obvious
Japan: Found 261 - including "Webservers in Japan"
space shuttle: Found 0
nasa: Found 232 - including NASA link
Comments: The searches were done using the and operator and the "searchfor
related words" option.
The Bottom Line: There was not a high rate of recall, as there was with
OpenText and Alta Vista and the results were not extremely precise.
[Image]
Conclusion
In conclusion, I've found all of these tools to be powerful and useful
search engines. It seems important to mention that all of these searches
and results could be largely attributed to chance. It therefore seems
likely that all of the tools would yield different results for different
queries, which makes it hard say that one search tool is "better" than
another. However, the results of this analysis seem to suggest thatExcite,
while a relatively new site, provides excellent results with high
precision. The evidence here is definitely in support of the "concept
search" for accurate results. OpenText and Alta Vista return largenumbers
of documents making it very difficult to locate the precise hits ifany are
returned. Magellan simply did not provide a high return or precisionwhen
compared to the others. Excite clearly yielded the best results forthese
queries.
"End of Quote
The following information is quoted from:
Kathryn Paul, Information Services Librarian, University of Victoria.
"Link: http://burns.library.uvic.ca/searchengineanalysis.html
Ongoing Search Engine Analysis
[last updated June 23, 1997.]
Compiled by Kathryn Paul, Information Services Librarian, Universityof
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
"End of Quote
The following search tips are quoted from:
"
http://www.stark.k12.oh.us/Docs/search/default.html
Major Internet Search Engines
by Judy Birmingham
Updated Feb. 18, 1997
HotBot
Indexes Web keywords, Usenet News
Classification By Subject
Boolean Search for all the words, any of the words, person's name,
or using Boolean AND, OR, NOT
Wildcards Can search for exact phrase
Notes Fast! Can limit search to media type as indicated by file
extension (e.g., .gif)
Yahoo
Indexes Title, comment words, and subject category keywords of
Internet Sites (not just Web sites)
Classification By Subject
Boolean + (require keyword). - (keyword must not be present).
Wildcards * (on right hand side of word). Exact phrases in double
quotes.
Notes Headline News, Yellow and white pages, Weather, Stock
quotes and Maps also!
InfoSeek
Web Pages, Usenet News, News Wires, Premier News (7 major
Indexes news sources: CNN, NYT, etc.), Email addresses, Company
Profiles, FAQs, Images
Classification By Subject (Infoseek Topics)
Boolean + (guarantees keyword will match)
- (eliminates documents with this keyword)
Wildcards Use double quotes to search for a phrase. Capitalize
proper names.
Notes Large Subject Directory
Alta Vista
Indexes Web documents, Usenet
Classification No subject classification
+ guarantees the keyword will match.
Boolean - eliminates documents with this keyword
Advanced Query: AND, OR, NOT, NEAR.
Weighted keyword searching.
Wildcards * at the end of keyword, Use double quotes to search for a
phrase.
Notes Digital Equipment Corporation
Excite
Indexes Web documents, last two weeks of Usenet, Reviews, Usenet
Classified Ads
Classification By Subject (Net Directory)
May use AND, AND NOT, OR, and parentheses. + (require
Boolean word). - (require word not be present). Repeat word to
emphasize its importance
No wildcards, so use multiple forms of a keyword. Will
Wildcards automatically search for synonyms and related terms. Use
capitals for names.
Notes Also has current news, city guides, yellow pages
Lycos
Indexes Web keywords, subjects, sound files, images
Classification By Subject
Boolean - (word must not appear)
Wildcards Automatically searches for plurals, variant forms of word.
Period to match word exactly. $ (on right side of word).
Notes Offers Reviews of Web pages (Top 5%), News, City Guides,
and Stock Quotes
Magellan
Indexes Submitted and reviewed web pages
Classification By Subject
Boolean AND, OR, NOT, NEAR/n, ADJ, W/n
Wildcards + (keyword must appear)
- (keyword must not appear)
web pages are rated (1-4 stars)
Notes [green light icon] indicates kid safe pages
WebCrawler
Indexes Web page titles and summaries
Classification By Subject
Boolean AND, OR, NEAR (within 25 words of), NOT, ADJ, and
parentheses.
Wildcards Exact word match. Use double quotes for exact phrase
match.
Notes
EINET Galaxy
Indexes Web and telnet resources
Classification By Subject
Boolean AND, OR, NOT
Wildcards * at the end of words
Notes Resources approved for inclusion. Target audience:
Professionals
Open Text Index
Indexes web documents
Classification No subject classification scheme
Boolean Power Search: AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, FOLLOWED BY
Weighted Search allows you to weight keywords
Wildcards No wildcards, so use multiple forms of a keyword
Notes
Reference.Com
Indexes Usenet Newsgroups, Listservs, Mailing Lists, and Webforums
Classification Only by newsgroup hierarchy so far.
Boolean AND, OR , NOT, or NEAR with OR being the default
All keyword searches will default to finding all words
Wildcards with the same word stem. * represents one or more
characters. Use single quotes for exact phrases.
Notes This search engine will locate webforums, which are the
newest form of collaboration on Internet.
L-Soft's Catalyst
Indexes Public listserv lists on Internet
Classification Search by host, country, listname, or list title
Boolean Exact phrase match. Use a comma (,) as an OR between
words.
Wildcards No wildcards
Notes Updated daily. Currently at 12,000+ lists
Liszt: Directory of E-mail Discussion Groups
Indexes List of listservs, listprocs, majordomo and independent
mailing lists plus Newsgroups
Classification By subject
Boolean AND implied between keywords, may also use OR, NOT, and
parentheses ()
Wildcards Keywords treated as substsrings. * is wildcard.
Use quotes (") to match phrases.
Notes Indexes listservs, listproc, and majordomo mailing lists.
Some will be private.
List of Lists
Indexes Mailing lists run with LISTSERV, LISTPROC, MAJORDOMO, and
MAILBASE software
Classification None
Boolean Implied AND between all keywords
Wildcards No wildcards
Notes This is the classic list of mailing lists from early
Internet days.
List of Listservs
Indexes Mailing lists run with LISTSERV software
Classification By List Name, Subject, Keyword, Host Country, Host
Organization, and by Number of Members
Boolean Implied OR between all keywords
Wildcards No wildcards
Notes Does not include LISTPROC and MAJORDOMO mailing lists
Publicly Available Mailing Lists
Indexes Mailing lists (email discussion groups)
Classification Alphabetical, by Name and Subject Keyword
Boolean None
Wildcards None
This is an alphabetical list of mailing lists (discussion
Notes groups). These are public, but they are not necessarily
automated like listservs.
DejaNews
Indexes USENET news postings
Classification None
| (or)
& (and)
Boolean &! (and not)
( ) (for nesting)
{car cat} Alphabetical range of words between car and cat
Allows author, subject, date filters
Wildcards * as wildcard
Notes Defaults to the last several weeks of articles. Can select
last two years worth.
USENET FAQS
Indexes FAQs which are posted to news.answers
Classification By Subject, Newsgroup Name
Boolean You may search for newsgroup name, archive name, or
keyword
Wildcards Exact word matching
Notes Maintained at Ohio State
Whowhere?
Indexes Personal or Organizational Names and email addresses
Classification No classification scheme
Boolean Supply personal name and if possible, his organization
Wildcards Fuzzy Search will approximate name spellings
Notes None
Four11
Indexes Personal name, domain, city, state, country
Classification No classification scheme
Boolean All fields are optional
Wildcards Smart Search will approximate name spellings, equate "Bob"
with "Robert" etc.
Notes Updated daily; addresses verified yearly.
Finger Gateway
Indexes Personal name, username, computer host names
Classification No classification scheme
Boolean Simply enter username and host.domain in the blanks
Wildcards Can supply just a portion of the person's name
Notes Returns the user's identity, email address, and often
other information.
Netfind
Indexes Locates people when you don't know the host computer
Classification List of Netfind Servers
Boolean Must enter user's last name plus a few keywords indicating
geographical or organizational location
Wildcards Login as "netfind" at the prompt, and follow onscreen
instructions
Notes Select "Seed Search" to search for an organization
Metasearch Sites
Metacrawler
Search.Com
Savvy Search
All In One Search
Yahoo's List of Search Engines
Reference Collection
Ohio Colleges
A list of 130 universities and colleges in Ohio.
General Reference (Yahoo)
Lists of dictionaries, encyclopedias, fact books, etc. on Internet.
General Reference (EINET)
Lists of dictionaries, encyclopedias, fact books, census data, etc.on
Internet
Internet Public Library
A virtual library: reference works, young adult links, services for
librarian, interactive internet instruction and online courses, etc.
Carrie: Full Text Electronic Library
General Reference, Electronic books, Electronic Newspapers and
Magazines, Government Documents, etc.
USENET FAQ Archive
Archive of current USENET newsgroup Frequently Asked Question files.
Libraries on Internet
Index to academic, school, and public libraries and library resources
on the Net.
Organization for Community Networks and Freenets
Community based systems providing local information resources, limited
access to Internet, and k12 programs such as The Academy Program.
Electronic Texts
Texts and Hypertexts of thousands of classics available on the
Internet.
Sites for Educators
A short list of interesting sites of interest to K-12 teachers, such
as ERIC and Classroom Connect.
" End of Quote
The following information is quoted from:
"Link: http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/MayOL/zorn5.html
Advanced Searching: Tricks of the Trade
by
Peggy Zorn, Mary Emanoil, and Lucy Marshall
Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research Library
and
Mary Panek
United Technologies Research Center
ONLINE, May 1996
Copyright Online Inc.
"End of Quote
Very informative links:
Press Release from:
http://www.positionagent.com/prparsch.htm
http://www.state.wi.us/agencies/dpi/www/search.html
http://www.altavista.digital.com/
http://www.altavista.magallanes.net
http://altavista.skali.com.my
Excite
http://www.excite.com/
Excite Power Search
http://www.excite.com/search/options.html?a-opt-t
Excite offers custom search tools
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,11353,00.html
Infoseek Industry Watch
http://industrywatch.infoseek.com
LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com/
LookSmart Site Submission Form
http://www.looksmart.com/h/info/submsite.html
WebCrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com/
WebCrawler Add URL Help Page
http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/
Help/GetListed/HelpAddURL.html
WebCrawler Add URL Page
http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/
Help/GetListed/AddURLS.html
* Differences between Search Engines and Directories.
[Image] http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Dlife
/Search/ss02.html
* Web Page Ranking.
Here are some good links that will give you wealth of information onWeb
Page Ranking and other beneficial topics.
http://www.iglou.com/sgrant/hit/
* How to EXCLUDE or REMOVE your pages from being listed by using:
"noindex" or "robots.txt"?
Webmasters are always faced with the need to exclude certain pages ora
whole site from being automatically indexed by search engines for many
reasons. If you have a page/s that you need to exclude from searchengines,
such as: pages that are restricted to a certain audience, or maybepages
that can only be viewed with subscription, etc. You will need to consider
the following options:
To exclude a page from being indexed with search engines that utilizeMeta
tags, you can use a tag such as:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX"> in the <Head> of your HTMLpage that
you want to exclude.
For example:
<html>
<head>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
<meta name="description" content="Your Page Description ....">
<titleYour Page Title ...</title>
</head>
<body>
To exclude a page and all the links that are in it, then you need touse
the following tag
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
For example:
<html>
<head>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
<meta name="description" content="Your Page Description ....">
<title>Your Page Title ...</title>
</head>
<body>
Additional info.:
http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/
robots/meta-notes.html
As for search engines that do not support tags, then you need to use
"robots.txt"
Here's some example links:
http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/
robots/exclusion-admin.html
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Search/9605-Indexing-
Workshop/Papers/Frumkin@Excite.html
#Complex_directory_structures
http://info.infoseek.com/robots.txt
http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/
robots/robots.html
* Search Engines Chart
Please follow this link for details:
[Image]
http://searchenginewatch.com/features.htm
7. Spamming (the forbidden word)
* Spamming and Penalties "According to INFOSEEK"
Quoted as is from Infoseek forum:
http://www.infoseek.com/Help?sv=IS&
lk=noframes&pg=meta_tag.html#RESTRICTIONS
What is Spamming?
Please note that some Web authors use techniques to artificially inflate
the relevance scores for their sites. This practice is often referredto as
spamming. Infoseek's index detects common spamming practices and penalizes
pages that use them. Unfortunately, in some cases this may cause valid
pages to be penalized as well.
For best results, the following Web publishing techniques should be
avoided:
Overuse or repetition of keywords. Use of meta refresh faster than the
human eye can see Use of colored text on same-color background Useof
keywords that do not relate to the content of the site Duplicationof
pages with different URLs
Repetitive submission of spammed pages may result in a permanent exclusion
from Infoseek's index.
8. Final Test:
Now its time to put your page together using what you've learned
Here is a sample page to guide you through the process: Make sure to
replace the words within the Bold lettered TAGS, your own Title,
Description and Keywords that you put together according to my instructions
earlier on this page. Also, make sure that the tags are used exactlyas
shown; otherwise, the text becomes visible inside your page. Alwayscheck
your pages using a browser before publishing to verify their integrity.
The following procedure needs to be done inside your HTML page by clicking
on View in your FrontPage Editor or similar editors, then go to HTMLand do
your changes there.
Use of Title, Description and Keywords within the head of your HTMLpage.
<head>
" Title: Do not ecceed 72 characters in your title including spaces."
<title>Search Engines Secrets and Website Promotions - Guaranteed
Hits</title>
"Description: Do not exceed 200 characters in your description including
spaces."
<meta name="description"content="Discover The Most Powerful and Proven
strategies used to give your website a Top 10 - 20 Search Engine Listing.
The Best FREE Website Promotion Tool for guaranteed hits...">
Keywords: Do not repeat same keywords more than 7 times
<meta name="keywords"
content="website, promotions,promotion,search, engines, results,
advertising, businesses, advertising, websites, marketing,promotions,
promoting, searches, engines, listings, opportunities, search, listings,
search, engine,web site, traffic, homepages, hits, generating, website,
traffic, yellow, pages, classifieds, advertising, promotional, strategies
">
</head>
Additional Keywords sample that can be used
inside the body of your HTML page:
<body>
<!--Website Promotion. website, promotions,promotion,search, engines,
results, advertising, businesses, advertising, website,
marketing,promotions, promoting, searches, engines, listings,
opportunities, search, listings, search, engine,website, traffic,
homepages, hits, generating, website, traffic, yellow, pages, classifieds,
advertising, promotional, strategies -->
<!--Robots and Spiders - Search Engine Secrets, Listings and Positioning.
Website Promotion. Guaranteed Results! Discover Powerful And Proven
strategies that Really Work To get you a TOP Search Engine Listing.
Free Advertising, Free advertising Free reports, Free Web Site Promotion,
Free Web Site Submission, Free Web Site Marketing, Free Web Site Placement,
Free Web Site Services, Free Advertising, Free Internet Advertising,Free
Website Placement, Free Internet Publishing, Free information, Freeon-line
business Advertising -->
<body>
5. Listing Your Pages
* Submitting your pages to Search Engines and Directories.
Now the final moment has come and you're ready to list your pages with
Search Engines.
Please click on the following link to move to the listing page whereyou
will find all the resources needed to list and test your URLs. Thankyou
for your patience, and GOOD LUCK!
Submitting your pages to Search Engines and Directories.
Disclaimer
The information provided in this report is on an "as is" basis. ECS
Computer Technologies, Inc. makes no guarantee whatsover as to the
performance or the results.
Most of the techniques used in this report are substantially currentand
adequate to achieve good results with search engines if used properly.
However, some of this information may change due to the ever-changing
nature of the Internet, search engines, and other factors.
In order to achieve optimum results, customers are strongly encouragedto
read and understand this information. Results may take 30 days or moreto
become apparent.
This document is Copyright 1997 by Imad Hamdan, ECS Computer
Technologies, Inc.
All referring documents on this page and their copyrights are the sole
property of their original owners.
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