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Web Site Promotion Techniques

 
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Written by: Imad Hamdan

 
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Web Site Promotion Techniques for Top Search Engine Listings

First, I'm not going to bore you with my life story. I'm sure you could care less to hear it, and maybe yours is much more interesting than mine. However, as far as search engines are concerned, our research and development team has spent the last two years researching new ways on 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 entries that would come up every time you search for a word or a phrase on AltaVista or Infoseek. With odds like these it seemed easier at first to win the lottery than getting a top 10 listing. Then we thought that those people who always 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 selling keywords through ads. But, this is not the case here. I really do not recommend that you pay a penny for your listings. You can get all the hits you need for 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 aware of are the ones that are banned by search engines and fit the category of 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 which with some effort on your part, will teach you how to get your site to the top 10 - 20 listings in Search Engines and Directories. First, lets outline the items that we will be talking about supported by variety of links to other 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

Learning more about Search Engines and Directories

Listing Your Pages

Checking Your Site Status

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 your business on TV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; Say millions of Dollars... That's an understatement! A 30 second Prime Time TV commercial world wide will cost over a million dollars and that is depending on the TV station and number of viewers. Web advertising is a major step forward that gives a whole new meaning to business advertising. With a little effort and some minor investment, you can transform your business from a local small timer to a world wide company selling products on the web. This year, a good number of businesses have increased their sale on the Web from a few hundred thousand 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 the 21st century's 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 it from a customer's point of view; Do you like what you see? There are a number of questions that you have to ask yourself while designing your web pages.

a. If you had a product for sale on your site, would you feel comfortable buying 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. Are your material simple to read?
f. Is it simple to read and navigate through different topics?
g. Are there different subjects 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 look as big as you want to be! It all depends on your presentation.

Now, let's begin with your site's layout. First, you need to make your pages easy and simple to read. Try not to use complex backgrounds, white background is always more appealing, most people don't like gimmicky backgrounds. Also, be careful with animated images... Don't over do it, keep it simple, these matters do not only deviate people's attention, but it also make your pages load very slowly, that by itself is enough to turn people away. Keep your pages attractive and don't use too many colors. Display the highlights of your products or services up-front. Use the curiosity factor - don't deny people using their most precious gift... Curiosity! Offer some FREE information, or maybe some specials. Make your 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 locations in your area, or maybe links to Car Insurance Agencies. Also, it's always a good idea to keep checking your competitors' sites and keep up with the changes. For more examples: check out our Corporate Web Site: http://www.corporatewebworks.com I know it is not perfect, but it might give you some ideas.

3. How to Design your HTML Pages to Achieve a Top Listing

HyperText Markup Language is a programming language composed of a set of 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 may find interesting: http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/www/html/code-index.html

http://info.rutgers.edu/newark/web.tutoria

Software Download Link:

http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/intro_tools.html

Most website owners often dismiss the value of their URL's name when they register a new website. Even-though it is difficult to find an unregistered descriptive Domain name such as: www.forsale.com. However, you can always get more descriptive with your Sub-domain 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 categorized better by Search Engines. You will greatly increase your website findability factor once you have narrowed it down to Computers and Memory. And at the same time, you would have gained two keywords that will increase your site's relevancy factor. Also, it's easier to remember your page when people want to visit your site again without having to search for it.

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.

For Example:

The following is only 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)

Rule # 1. Make your page title clear and straight to the point. Nothing is worse than a title that does not make sense. Make it concise, do not use irrelevant words and do not exceed 72 characters. Otherwise, your statement is going to be chopped off from the end and looks incomplete.

Titles can be listed in Meta Tags which are compatible only with some Search Engines. Meta tag titles would look like the following:

"You will find more details about meta tags later in this document."

Rule #2. Use a different title for each one of your pages and sub-pages and 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 where search engines and directories always watch for when indexing your page. The main purpose behind these factors is to allow search engines to accurately categorize your pages to be relevant to their contents. Therefore, when a person tries to find certain information on a particular subject gets the correct results instead of a bunch of topics that have no substance and totally irrelevant to their search - this matter by itself can make a search engine more popular than another. INFOSEEK is known to be the most precise search engine when it comes to matching subjects with keywords. Also, and for the same reason YAHOO directory has become most popular among all others and that is because of it's subject relevancy.

Factor #1. Most search engines list the Page Title first, and that is because they consider it the key statement that tells most about a page. But that's not all. They also index all the keywords in it and in different combinations in order to give the searcher more than one choice when looking for this information. See the example below, under the word "Title".

Factor #2. In order for search engines to establish more relevancy to a page, they do not stop by only reading it's title keywords or phrases; Some even go deeper in the page to see how often these keywords or phrases are being repeated, then they will be indexed again according to their occurrences. That is one of the main reasons, search engines forbid spamming because some people try to cheat by listing their keywords too many times; hidden inside the page in one form or another in an attempt to get indexed more. Also, some would place too many words that are irrelevant to the subject matter in order to get a bigger audience to their site. There is no harm in putting a small variety of keywords that might not directly relate to you subject in order to attract people who might be interested in your products - so long you do not over do it. More on this subject is explained below, under the titles "Keywords" and "Spamming".

Title:

Example: If you were to advertise Computer Memory on your site, your title should look something 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, memory simms, memory dimm, memory, simms memory, dimm memory, memory sale+free delivery. So you see how search engines index titles now. Sometimes they are even matched backward like: great prices+memory sale or great memory sale. Some Search Engines consider your title and description the most relevant when listing your site. They categorize your pages based on the words of its title and description similar to the methods used in libraries. Think about it for a second - if you go to a public library to search for books pertaining to a certain subject, how 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're looking for. Deep Search Engines go even further, their Robots or Spiders usually go deep inside a page and read every single word. They go through all the links in an attempt to evaluate the site and to establish an accurate assessment of it's relevancy. We will talk more about this a little later.

Rule #3. Your page title is what people see first when searching the web. It is perhaps the most important statement that you make to advertise your 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 site or turn them away. By making a good first impression you would have already made it through the threshold.. Then we say, "Congratulations"! you got a new hit and a good one for that matter. Use a highly descriptive title, make it appealing and exciting. Use terms like: FREE, GUARANTEED, BEST OF A KIND etc... Your title appeal will single you out among all other listings. To get more ideas 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 your title together. I found that some people find it easier to copy the title of their competitors' page and use it as it is, this practice often creates a problem. Personally, if I find two sites with the same title, I will most likely skip one of them, usually the second one. In 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 be next. Why be the scavenger who picks after others when you have the ability to be the predator yourself? It is better instead, to read their titles and try to make yours more appealing.

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. To design 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 (without the outside quotes):

" <meta name="description"content="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."> "

You can place a lot of good key statements in your Description which will 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 lines on Infoseek search and some other engines. For example: If a person is searching for "search engines advertising" any match found that has all three words in the same order gets a 100% density ratio. all other matches, 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 become your ticket to be recognized. By using the proper keywords you can target the 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 the web, what would be the most likely keywords to use. I would say first would be the Car Make, then the Model. For instance, "Acura Legend" would be a very specific search. But there are many candidates who might be looking for 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.

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 product or 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 entire HTML 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 that are in the neighborhood of your actual line. For example: If your main line is 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 META tag keywords and phrases separated by commas. Get all the keywords and phrases that you put together as I mentioned earlier and sort them out in the best way that describes your site or business. Use plurals anywhere that applies. For example: search engine and search engines. The reason is 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 than one 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 even get penalized. For more explanation, read the chapter called Spamming.

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 (without the outside quotes). Use your own keywords instead.

" "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 form of a Comment Tag. Something like this:

you can use a few of these tags in your page, but always remember not to over do it. After you finish, check your page in a browser and make sure that these tags are not visible in your page.

 

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 lines of the body as description, and some go in deeper and pick up the words that have 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 pages that have little text, which will give you the opportunity to make a proper Title, Description and Keywords without having them visible on your page. Also, instead of letting the spider that visits your site pick the title and description on it's own discretion, it will give you the chance to organize them and get more accurate results. For example: Let's say your page title is "Homes and Gardens" and the header says "Flower of the Month" followed by a picture. If you are not using tags some search engines will list it like this:

Homes and Gardens
Flower of the Month

Instead you can have tags that describe what you do and give you the image you are trying to project without altering your page contents. Also, you can list some good keywords that makes it possible for people to find you.

Example (without the outside quotes):

"<title>Web Site Promotion Techniques for Top Search Engine Listings</title>"

" <meta name="description"content="Find out how you can turn your garden into virtual paradise."> "

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 you a top 10 listing, but they will give your site a relevancy boost with some search engines. Meta tags can also help your site to get closer to the top if you include a good keyword selection that people normally use when searching for those words. Of course, there are many other tags that are used for various reasons, like "robots" tag which is used to exclude a page from being indexed but the most important ones are those of your title, description and keywords. Remember, it is a combination of things that get 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

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

Search engines can determine how popular a page is by analyzing the links that refer to it from other pages. Some engines go through all the links and list those pages accordingly. This can create a problem sometimes if 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 want to 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 a page according to it's popularity.

Many search engines measure how often pages change. When they find a site 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 people to 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 be visited by their robots/spiders.

 

4. Learning more about Search Engines and Directories

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 URLs that are already indexed in their database for the purpose of updating their information so they remain fresh. After a spider visits a page, it first 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 and all linked sub-pages, then they index all words and phrases that are relevant to the title and description of the page. Of course, this varies with each search engine. Some engines consider the most frequently repeated words or phrases as most relevant to the page and they're index with higher relevancy than other words, and some consider the words that are closer to the top of the page as most relevant or maybe a combination of these mentioned factors. But the most common between all search engines is that they all follow links, and through these links they visit new pages and 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 which to 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 Web index: 31 million pages found on 1,158,000 servers, and 4 million articles from 14,000 Usenet news groups. Because of the extensiveness of its database, Alta Vista excels at finding obscure bits of information virtually anywhere on the web.

•Excite
Excite tracks down information by searching for concepts, not just by 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-text search 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 to search 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 allow users 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 comprehensive and 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 files in its database, including GIF, JPEG, wav, and MPEG files. It also indexes FTP archives and Gopher menus, giving its index greater depth than most other 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 options and 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 display a clean list of results. To compile its database, Webcrawler surveys the entire Web, evaluating the popularity of each site and storing only the 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 on the World Wide Web. They are:

The analysis is divided into two parts - the objective analysis in which all four engines are judged by the same set of seven criteria, and the subjective analysis in which each search engine is subjected to the same sequence of queries and evaluated based on the results.

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

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 pages are 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 large amount of space required. claim that almost all queries take under 2 seconds.

Effectiveness: high recall but moderate precision

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 index 1 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

Excite

Distribution: Run on 8-CPU SparcCenter 1000. Indexer, index, crawler on 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

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

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 obtained were as follows.

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 Power Search simply allowed chaining with boolean operators). The and operator was selected for all searches.

The Bottom Line: OpenText returns very large numbers of documents, but with very little precision. It would work well for searches of limited complexity, that is queries that do not require any conceptual interpretation.

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 generally not relevant. I would suggest a very precise query to get good results.

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 than the keyword option. The results were very impressive. Only one query was needed for each subject.

The Bottom Line: Excite is the most useful search engine that I have found. Using the concept search, it seems to return very precise results and orders them according to relevance. It should be noted that Excite found everything relevant that the other search engines found and more.

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 "search for 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.

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 that Excite, 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 large numbers of documents making it very difficult to locate the precise hits if any are returned. Magellan simply did not provide a high return or precision when compared to the others. Excite clearly yielded the best results for these 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, University of 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
Indexes Web Pages, Usenet News, News Wires, Premier News (7 major 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
Boolean + guarantees the keyword will match.
- 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)
Boolean May use AND, AND NOT, OR, and parentheses. + (require word). - (require word not be present). Repeat word to emphasize its importance
Wildcards No wildcards, so use multiple forms of a keyword. Will 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)
Notes web pages are rated (1-4 stars)
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
Wildcards All keyword searches will default to finding all words 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
Notes This is an alphabetical list of mailing lists (discussion groups). These are public, but they are not necessarily automated like listservs.
DejaNews
Indexes USENET news postings
Classification None
Boolean | (or)
& (and)
&! (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

 

  • Differences between Search Engines and Directories.

http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Dlife/Search/ss02.html

 

Here are some good links that will give you wealth of information on Web Page Ranking and other beneficial topics.

http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

http://searchenginewatch.com/

http://www.iglou.com/sgrant/hit/

 

Webmasters are always faced with the need to exclude certain pages or a whole site from being automatically indexed by search engines for many reasons. If you have a page/s that you need to exclude from search engines, such as: pages that are restricted to a certain audience, or maybe pages that can only be viewed with subscription, etc. You will need to consider the following options:

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

Please follow this link for details:

http://searchenginewatch.com/features.htm

 

7. Spamming (the forbidden word)

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 referred to 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 •Use of keywords that do not relate to the content of the site •Duplication of pages with different URLs


Repetitive submission of spammed pages may result in a permanent exclusion from Infoseek's index.

Click here for more in-depth information on Spamming

 

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 exactly as shown; otherwise, the text becomes visible inside your page. Always check 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 HTML and do your changes there.

Use of Title, Description and Keywords within the head of your HTML page.

" Title: Do not exceed 72 characters in your title including spaces."

"Description: Do not exceed 200 characters in your description including spaces."

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

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 ">

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 where you will find all the resources needed to list and test your URLs. Thank you for your patience, and GOOD LUCK!

P.S. To further help you advertise your site, Click Here to obtain a FREE Lifetime Website and set it up as a mirror site to your own.

Disclaimer

The information in this report is provided on an "as is" basis.  Corporate Webworks  makes no guarantee whatsoever as to the performance or the results.
Most of the techniques used in this report are substantially current and 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 encouraged to read and understand this information.  Results may take 30 days or more to become apparent.

 

This document is Copyright © 1998-2001 by Imad Hamdan, Corporate Webworks. No portion of this  publication may be reproduced or reprinted electronically or otherwise in whole or part without prior written permission from the publisher.
All supporting documents and trademarks on this page and their copyrights are the sole property of their respective owners.