Transcript All About Search Engines

All About Search Engines
Search Engines use tools called Spiders to discover
what a web site is all about for ranking purposes
Spiders are automatically sent out by Search Engines to
catalog every web page in the world every few weeks
Spiders cannot see any Graphics, Flash, or Script – only
Text, and the Google Spider is the smartest of all
Search Engine Spiders often somewhat ignore web site
content inside of Frames, especially Google & Yahoo
Say Thanks To Google!
The old game was based on META tags that “faked
out” the Search Engine Spider by duplicating key words
to make a web site appear more relevant
Thanks to Google, the new game is based on real
Organic Relevance where web sites are now primarily
cataloged based on the actual content and Popularity
of the web site (ie…links, clicks, visits, revisits, time,)
Contrary to what many “Search Engine Optimization”
experts say, the big name Spiders do not pay much
attention to META tags any more (80% and growing)
The Rise Of Google…
50%
45%
40%
35%
Google
30%
Yahoo
MSN
AOL NetFind
25%
CompuServe
Netscape
Ask Jeeves
20%
Other
15%
10%
5%
0%
1999.5
2000
2000.5
2001
2001.5
2002
2002.5
2003
2003.5
Search Engine Traffic…
May 2004, Com Score (http://sewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431)
Let’s Visit The Matrix…
This tool allows you to see real-time Google Popularity
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
It shows the actual real-time
Popularity of web site links
Links from your web site only
help other web sites
Input the following web sites:
www.google.com
www.reyrey.com
Search Engine Rankings
All Search Engines index text and follow links, and some
measure Popularity and Organic Relevance (Google)
Search Engines start with the URL, then the title of
pages, and then the top of a web page working down
“below the fold” to the bottom looking for text and links
As a general rule, if you cannot highlight “text” on a web
page, then it is a Graphic, and Graphics are ignored by
Spiders because they cannot read Graphics
If a web site is 100% Flash, then only the URL and page
titles are indexed now that META tags are not important
Search Engine Success
What are the factors that influence Popularity?
Search Engine Success
Google’s Spider is so smart that it can easily recognize
changes in fonts, bold, colors, indents and text layout
formatting to determine the true intention of a web page
Location, location, location…Spiders look for location
information about where a business can be found
For example, you would not want to use a text link on a
web page such as “Our Office” when you could use a
more descriptive link such as “Our San Diego Office”
File names and URL query strings should be separated
by hyphens and underscores to be cataloged correctly
Search Engine Success
Google Ranking
due to file name
with hyphens
Splash & Flash = Trash
Web sites with 100% Flash-oriented Splash pages are
virtually unreadable to Search Engine Spiders…
These type of web sites were “all the rage” until Google
changed the rules by eliminating META-tags as a way
for Flash developers to cheat the system since Spiders
cannot read even 1% of Flash code
Web developers that insist on building this type of “Eye
Candy” web site have little regard for their best interests
Organic Relevance is what has the most impact on
search engine rankings…
Don’t Play The Frame Game
Frames are used on many web sites today, but most
Spiders discontinue indexing when they encounter one
WebMakerX uses absolutely no frames in our sites, but
Cobalt uses frames extensively in Nitra
AutoMark web sites all use frames except for the Home
Pages, so we have implemented a temporary fix with
titles and key phrases embedded within most frames
Most competitors including Cobalt heavily use frames
Spiderization
Our SpiderMAZE tool has the ability to use behind the
scenes “spider vision” glasses to look at some of our
competitor’s web sites just like a Spider would see them
What you see on these screen-shots is similar to what a
Search Engine Spider will see that will help or harm web
site ranking on Search Engine results
First let’s visit the following web site for our experiment:
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
Spiderization
To use this free
public tool, simply
input the URL here.
Please note that
you must include
the http:// prefix in
front of the “www”
to make it work!
Spiderization
#4…Dealer.com: www.longbeachhonda.com
Human View
Spiderization View
Spiderization
#3…Cobalt Group: www.huffinesdodge.com
Human View
Spiderization View
Spiderization
#2…AutoMark: www.cogginauto.com
Human View
Spiderization View
Spiderization
#1…WebMakerX: examplepitstop.site.webmakerx.net
Spiderization View #1
Spiderization View #2
Search Engine Summary
A web site may still have excellent rankings on Search
Engines even if they use 100% Flash because the web
site was registered before META tag changes
Through time, these web sites will likely have a severe
degradation of ranking unless they re-write their tools
Search Engine placement can also be influenced through
the purchasing of key word phrases
Go to www.google.com and type in “Third Coast Media”