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How Search Engines Use Titles for Ranking Web Sites, 4/99
I. Introduction to Search Engine RankingThere are a number of search engines on the web. We reviewed over 20 for this report alone. Unless search engines share internet searching services, like Excite, Netscape, AOL, and Magellan, each engine has their own way of determining which web sites will make the top of their list. As in Meta Tags Report 1 and 2 , we used the term "meta tags" and its variations (meta tag, metatags, metatag) to conduct this survey. We found the following:
II. How Search Engines Review Web SitesThe most common way a search engine will list web sites is by finding pages that have the requested search terms in the closest order by checking the title, description, meta tag keywords, or the web page itself. In the case of ties, they will count the number listing of the key term at their web site. For example, a search for the term "meta tags" will bring up ten sites with "meta tags" in the title, because a typical search engine will find at least 10 sites with that term in its title. However, a search for the term "meta tag" does not seem as common. Therefore, this type of search engine may find 6 sites with this in the title and four sites with this in the description. Or it may find one site with "Meta documents use an invisible Tag to..." in the description. This may be enough for top placement if no other sites in that engine have the terms "meta" and "tag" in closer proximity to one another. Even though this description has four spaces between the word "meta" and the word "tag". You will know it when you run across a site like this because the keywords are usually highlighted in the results. If there are a number of sites with the keywords together in the title, then the search engine robot will count the keywords at each site to determine who gets a higher ranking. The site that uses the word "meta tags" more in the body of its page, description, and keywords will get a higher relevance ranking. The reason for this is obvious. A search engine figures if you use the word a lot in the key portions of your site, it must be a highly relevant document to the intended search. Words contained in graphics will not count unless these same words can be found in your ALT tags. Hot Bot tells you in its introduction to adding your URL that it will index your site by a combination of your title, keywords, word frequency on the page, and meta tags description. Some sites will rely on your site's link popularity to help determine where you will fall in their site rankings. Some sites like Village Links will just randomly pick sites from a big group so you have an equal chance of top site placement. Other sites like Go To will let you pay for top privileges. Places like Search King let the viewers vote which sites are the most relevant. Sites like Mining Co. develop their own directory help pages with links to sites like yours at each topic area. (They use Look Smart for their web search.) Still other sites like GO 2 Net run what is called "meta searches". This means, they categorize their results based on the findings of the best of other search engine results. So you don't need to submit your site to places like that unless they have their own search engine as well like Link Master .
III. Different Ways to Submit Your SiteYou will get a feel for the different systems when you start submitting your site individually to each search engines. (See, Azurii's Search Engine Manual Submissions Page for a helpful list of links for this.) There are two main differences. 1. Some sites just ask for your URL and Email address. Then they go out and search and index your site based on things like your meta tags, titles, page content, size of document, and with places like Mining Co. , staff discretion. Some examples of this are Lycos , Excite , Infoseek , Alta Vista , Web Crawler , MSN , Northern Light , Netscape , Net Find , and Hot Bot . 2. Other sites ask for more involvement from you when you submit your site to their service. These are the ones you should visit special if you do a massive automatic submissions program. (See, Azurii's Page of Submissions Agent Links for a list of links to free, fee, and download auto submissions agents.) Places like Search King , Snap , Scrub the Web , Yahoo , Look Smart , Handi Links , and Keywords ask for new descriptions, keywords, titles, and sometimes even zip codes and area code numbers to help them submit your site. Search King is a great site to submit to. They will let you change anything you need to change and you can see the results of your work instantly. Sites like Look Smart , Snap , and Handilinks can take a while as you need to find each page where your site should be placed and submit an entry at each one. Come prepared for Yahoo's submissions page. They will ask you to list all their categories where your site should be placed in their submissions form. Keywords lets you pick out one unique keyword description. Places like Scrub The Web won't give you much breathing room with only 15 keywords allowed.
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