AltaVista(http://www.altavista.digital.com)

AltaVista determines relevance by keywords taken from your Meta Tags. In the absence of Meta Tags, the robot will use your home page, URL, and Title. Alta Vista searches 3 levels deep (three pages into your site). The following was extracted from the AltaVista web site on 6/13/97:

The META tag: Controlling how your Web page is indexed by AltaVista

In the absence of any other information, AltaVista will index all words in your document (except for comments), and will use the first few words of the document as a short abstract. It is however possible for you to control how your page is indexed by using the META tag to specify both additional keywords to index, and a short description. Let's suppose your page contains:

AltaVista will then do two things:

1. It will index both fields as words, so a search on either poodles or dog will match.
2. It will return the description with the URL. In other words, instead of showing the first couple of lines of the page, a match will look like the following:

    	 We specialize in grooming pink poodles.
    	 http://pink.poodle.org/ - size 3k - 29 Feb 96

Lycos

Lycos' robot pulls keywords and a description directly from your web page. This is done automatically with no human interaction involved. It is very important that you have an abundance of your chosen keywords in the text of your page. If your home page is comprised entirely of graphics such as is the case with an image map, no information will be picked up and your site will not be indexed.

Lycos does not recognize Meta Tags at this time. Lycos also bases relevance on how many times someone clicks on your entry, so the more popular your web page, the more relevant it becomes. Lycos searches 3 levels deep.

WebCrawler

WebCrawler relies predominantly on the title of your web page. Make sure that you have listed your primary keywords in the <TITLE> field of your web page. The search will return a description of your site from the summary found in the the text of the document, and will also base its search function on the words extracted.

WebCrawler also determines relevance, to a lesser extent, based on linked text and popularity of your site as determined by the number of click-throughs. WebCrawler searches 1 level deep.

This search engine is VERY sensitive of and is programmed to penalize web developers who try to "Spamdex" their page. Please read the following paragraph extracted from WebCrawler's web page on 8/7/96:

My page seems to have disappeared from WebCrawler. Why?

We have been noticing recently that more and more Web publishers have been "spamming" -- including unsolicited, extra, or irrelevant information on their pages, usually in the form of word lists -- to make search engines display them at the top of their listings. We strongly discourage this practice. Our aim is to provide the best index to the Internet that we can, and spamming actively interferes with that goal.

To create a better searching environment, and to foster a more level playing field for everyone, we have started removing offending pages from our index and screening new submissions. If you think that your page may have disappeared from or didn't get into WebCrawler for this reason, we hope that you will remove the spam from your page and resubmit your URL to us so that we can index it properly.

Hot Bot/Inktomi

The following was extracted from HotBot's web site on 8/6/96:

How does HotBot rank my search results?

Each document which matches the requirements of a search is assigned a score. HotBot considers a number of factors when computing these scores.

Some of the most basic factors affecting query result scoring include:

1. Word frequency in document --- In general, the more often a query word occurs in the document, the higher the score. However, the obscurity of the word also has impact. Common words like "the" contribute less to the score than rare and discriminating words like "tiki".
2. Search words in title --- Pages that use your search terms in the title will be ranked significantly higher than documents that contain the search term in the text only.
3. Search words in keywords --- Pages that use your search terms in the "keywords" META tag, will be weighted more highly than text words, but less highly than title words.
4. Document length --- When the search words appear frequently in a short document, the page will be ranked higher than when the words appear in a long document.

HotBot claims to update all pages about once a week.

Infoseek

Infoseek supports both keyword and description Meta Tags. Your description can include up to 200 characters while your keywords can include up to 1000 characters. Infoseek searches 2 levels deep. The following was extracted from Infoseek's web page on 6/14/97:

Using META Tags to Create the Summary Description The META tag description field can be used to specify an exact description of your site. The META tags you use will not display on your Web page. However, it will determine the summary description when your site is retrieved as a search result. Make sure that your description adequately summarizes the contents of your site. Your description can include up to 200 characters of text. If you do not use META tags to describe your site, the Web page description will be derived from the first 200 characters in the HTML <BODY> field.

In your main HTML file (the file containing the <FRAMESET> tags), use the <META> tag within the <HEAD> element as follows:

<META name="description" content="Write your description here">

Do not use any HTML tags within the description or content part of the META tag.

     Example:

     Suppose the HTML at the top of your Web page looked like: 


     <HEAD>

     <TITLE>The Kids In The Hall Home Page</TITLE>

     <META name="description" content="Home page for The Kids In The Hall, Canada's funniest
     comedy group.">

     </HEAD>


     The following title and description would appear when your page is displayed as a 
     search result:

     The Kids In The Hall Home Page 
     Home page for The Kids In The Hall, Canada's funniest comedy group.

When a site is added to Infoseek's index, all the words on the page are included with the exception of any text within a <Comments> field. The META tag keyword field can be used to specify additional key words or synonyms that describe the contents of your site. META tag keywords are used in the indexing process but will not display on your Web page. The keywords can include up to 1000 characters of text. Be sure that the key words you choose are relevant to the contents of your page.

     Example:

     <META name="keywords" content="Write your keywords here, in a comma separated list"< 

     For example, if the HTML at the top of your Web page looked like:
          <HEAD>
          <TITLE>Landing Venture Capital</TITLE>
          <META name="description" content="Tips on obtaining venture capital for your hi-tech
          start-up.">
          <META name="keywords" content="asset based lending, capital enterprise funding,
          equity funding, expansion capital, funds for growth, growth financing, underwriting,
          venture investment">
          </HEAD> 

Javascript, Frames & Images

If your Web page uses JavaScript functions within the first 200 characters of the site you should use <META> tags to provide a description for your page.

For sites using Netscape Frames, the file containing the <FRAMESET> tag should include a META tag description summary of all the frames on that particular page.

If your site mainly consists of graphics, you can also use the HTML ALT attribute to describe your page.

     Example:

     Infoseek indexes the ALT attributes in the <IMG> tag.

     <IMG SRC="/images/nukedtwinkie.gif" ALT="picture of a microwaved twinkie">

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 your site's relevance by repeating keywords. The overuse and repetition of keywords may result in a lower relevancy score and possible omission from Infoseek's index.

Changing the Title and Description:

    
    If you want to change the title or description of your web 
    page, make the changes on your page and they will automatically 
    be incorporated into Infoseek Guide the next time the 
    Web index is updated.



Excite(http://www.excite.com)

Excite does not recognize Meta Tags.  The automatic 
robot will visit your web site and looks for common words 
and themes.  It then selects sentences to use as the 
summary.

Of all the search engines, this is the one that provides you 
with the least control over your site's listing.  The best 
thing that you can do is to make sure that you have lots of 
relevant text on your home page, in all fields.  Remember, 
graphics and image maps will have no impact on your site's 
relevance when it comes to getting indexed.


Note:  If your site utilizes frames, provide a non-frames version
as well.  Otherwise your site will NOT be indexed!

Excite searches 3 levels deep.




Open Text
(http://www.opentext.com)


Open Text does not support Meta Tags.  This search 
engine's robot visits your web site and indexes the entire 
text.  It then uses this text as keywords when a user 
performs a search.  Your best bet for getting properly 
indexed on Open Text is to use plenty of keywords in all 
fields of your home page.  Open Text searches one level deep.



How to search for your listing on specific search 
engines

The best way to find your listing on the various search 
engines on the Internet is to look at the methods of indexing 
that we have described in this report, then determine which 
of the factors from your page you need to address in using 
that particular search function. 
 

For example, if you want to find your site on Alta Vista, 
you would need to take into consideration the earlier 
passage describing its indexing technique: 

    "AltaVista determines relevance by keywords taken from  
    your Meta Tags.  In the absence of Meta Tags, the robot will 
    use your home page, URL, and Title."

Your first search should therefore primarily focus on the 
keywords in your Meta tags.  If this method fails, your next 
best option would be to search the actual URL and Title of 
your site.


A final example can be seen in a successful search on 
Lycos.  According to our research, Lycos indexes sites 
according to "keywords and a description directly from your web page".  


This means that you need to search for the most related and 
prevalent keywords that are actually in your page's text.  
This site's method is a very strong prompt for all web 
developers to carefully plan out the copy of their text before 
putting it up on the web.  Make sure that the message you 
put out will allow your site to be found by this engine as 
successfully as possible.


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