Just how do Alta Vista, HotBot, . . . , work?! Here is what some of the major engines have to say about how they work: Alta Vista What information does Alta Vista actually index off of a Web page? Basically, we index all the HTML information on a page: all text, ALT text for images, links (hrefs and images), anchors, title, description and keyword meta-tags, applet and ActiveX object names, the page’s URL, its host name (www.foo.com), and its domain name (com). The treatment of UseNet postings is similar but with different keywords. We do not index HTML comments. How do I control what is indexed? You can control what is indexed by effectively using meta-tags for keywords and descriptions. We strongly recommend that you check out the Advanced Help page to learn more details for effective design techniques with title, dates, and contents, among other methods. When should you use Advanced search? Advanced search is for very specific searches, not for general searching. Almost everything you need to search for can be found quickly and with better results using the standard search box, where the Alta Vista search service sorts the results by placing the most relevant content first. However, if you need to find documents within a certain range of dates or if you have to do some complex Boolean searches, there isn’t a more powerful tool on the Web than Alta Vista Advanced search. What’s the difference between Search and Advanced search? Words and phrases work the same in Search and Advanced search. You can also choose to search UseNet or refine your search using either tool. The include (+) and exclude (–) features are not available in Advanced search; instead, you can use the more powerful Boolean commands to customize your search. Another difference is that you can choose to see results without having our system rank the material for you. What do you mean by the term “ranking”? Usually, the search service sorts, or “ranks,” the contents of your search according to relevance. The higher the ranking, the more relevant the content. However, in Advanced search you can view “unranked” results by just using the Boolean Operations section rather than the regular Search box. Why did my site become lower in the results? When surfers search for broad topic areas using one or two keywords, the search engine sometimes finds multiple pages containing equal or similar amounts of relevant content. The ranking of these pages can change over time. Note: We do not sell result rankings to individuals or companies. You can contact our advertisers if you wish to purchase advertising space in the ad banner above specific results pages. How can I ensure a good ranking for my Web site? The best way to improve the ranking of your Web site is to be more specific about the content by using synonyms or locations in meta-tags within your HTML document. It’s not a good idea to use duplicate words multiple times, use keywords excessively, or include keywords that do not relate to the content of your document. InfoSeek We are often asked, “Could you share the secret formula for improving my site’s relevancy?” Our reply is the same to our users as well as our partners: Use a highly descriptive title, include a meta-tag description, and create meta-tag keywords that contain comma-separated phrases. Use an assortment of synonyms that accurately describe your site, but don’t try to boost the site’s relevance by repeating keywords. The overuse and repetition of keywords may result in a lower relevancy score and possible ommision from InfoSeek’s index. Excite Search results are listed in decreasing order of relevance. The percentage sign to the left of each result is the relevance rating. The closer the rating is to 100, the more confident Excite is that the document will fit your needs. The relevance ratings are automatically generated by our search engine, which compares the information in the site against the information in your query. What is a relevance rating? Excite lists search results using a scored relevance rating–the higher the percentage, the more confident we are that the site listed matches your search query. The rating is generated by an algorithmic equation, which measures the site against the concept described in your query. The search results page lists the title, URL, and a brief summary of each site. To the left of each title is the relevance rating (a percentage), which will help guide you to the information most closely matching your query. Improving your site’s ranking. Suppose you want users searching for Hawaiian Bed and Breakfasts to find your site among the first 20 sites retrieved. What’s the trick? How can you do it? Can Excite help? Simply adding, removing, or changing a few sentences may alter the way our spider indexes you. When designing or redesigning your site, think about the search queries you want people to use to find it. Then create a site that will be responsive to those queries. Our design tip is simple: Relegate unrelated topics to subsidiary pages. If you’re advertising your Hawaiian bed and breakfast, don’t use the home page to emphasize how the ocean looks from a bedroom window. Instead, emphasize bed, breakfast, Hawaii, and weeklong getaways. We appreciate creative design, and we’re not telling you how to design your site, but you may want to keep in mind that if you include a few lines of poetry on that Hawaiian bed and breakfast home page, the Excite spider will consider them as noteworthy as every other line on the page. They become part of your concept, and they might even dilute the main topic of “Hawaiian Bed and Breakfasts.” For the same reason, don’t put price lists on the home page. The spider may read the prices as important bits of text and your page may not appear as high on the list of results as you would like. Does Excite use meta-tags? In general, our spider doesn’t honor meta-tags. The only exception to this is site summaries, which appear in the search results. For these summaries we do look for the “meta-description” tag. Even though we can use this information for summary purposes, we DO NOT index this information, so it will not influence the site’s ranking in the search results. We believe our decision protects our users from unreliable information. A couple of examples: A site included this in meta-tags: META HTTP-EQUIV="keywords" CONTENT="This site offers high quality information about how to buy residential real estate. Our experts can help beginner home buyers save money." But it wasn’t aimed at educating home buyers at all. It was instead an advertisement for a large real estate firm that simply wanted to lure potential home buyers to its site. Another site sold children’s clothing. Yet one of the first sentences in the meta-tags declared: META HTTP-EQUIV="keywords" CONTENT="This site can help parents concerned about child care." The author figured that queries about child care were more frequent than queries about children’s clothing. By dishonestly using meta-tags, the author hoped to increase the number of potential customers visiting the site. Our spider is programmed to grab as much information as it can from your site by taking the exact words on the page. If the user can’t see or use it, we don’t bother to index it or search on it. HotBot How do I improve my site’s ranking? HotBot’s search results are based solely on comparing the user’s search query to the content of millions of Web pages. There is no list matching certain search terms or keywords with special results. Basic factors affecting a page’s ranking are: the words in the title, keyword meta-tags, word frequency in the document, and document length. Although there seems to be significant variation among these methods, all characterizations are too vague to know just what any of them really do! Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch is a good place to look for additional information about meta-tags.