Transcript search engine lecture

Search Engines and Listings
• describe the difference between search engines
and search indexes
• describe the components of a search engine
• design web pages that are friendly to search
engines
• request that a web site is added to a search
engine
• monitor a search engine listing
• describe other web site promotion activities
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Popular Search Engines
& Search Indexes
According to
Nielsen/NetRatings
(reported at
http://searchenginewatch.
com/reports/netratings.ht
ml):
Yahoo & Google! are the
two most popular sites
used for searching the Web
during a recent month
Search Index
(also called Search Directory)
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Popular Search Indexes:
• Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com
• Open Directory http://www.dmoz.org
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Each site is reviewed by an editor before
being added to a search index
The search index maintains a hierarchical
category of topics and places web site
listings into these categories.
When visitors use a search index they
have the option of immediately typing in a
search term or "drilling" down into the
hierarchy for relevant sites.
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Search Engine
Components
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Popular Search Engines:
• Yahoo http://yahoo.com
• Google http://www.google.com
• MSN http://msn.com
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Search engines use the following
components:
• Robot
• Database (also used by search indexes)
• Search form (also used by search
indexes)
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Search Engine Robot
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A robot (sometimes called a spider or bot):
• A program that automatically traverses the hypertext
structure of the Web by retrieving a web page document and
following any hyperlinks on the page.
• Moves “like a robot spider” on the Web, accessing and
documenting web pages.
• The robot categorizes the pages and stores information about
the web site and the web pages in a database.
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Typically access and may store the following sections
of web pages: title, meta tag keywords, meta tag
description, and some of the text on the page
(usually either the first few sentences or the text
contained in heading tags).
Visit the “Web Robots Pages” at
http://www.robotstxt.org for more info about web 5
robots.
Search Engine
Database
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A database is a collection of
information organized so that its
contents can easily be accessed,
managed, and updated.
Database Management Systems
(DBMSs) such as Oracle, SQL Server,
or DB2 are used to configure and
manage the database.
The web page that displays the
results of your search has obtained
the information from the database
used by the search engine site.
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Search Engine Search Form
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The part you are most familiar with!
The search form is the graphical user
interface that allows a user to request a
word or phrase to search for. It is usually
just a text box and a submit button.
The visitor to the search engine types
words (called keywords) related to their
search into the text box.
When the form is submitted, the data
typed into the text box is sent to a serverside script that searches the database
using the keywords you have entered.
The search results (also called a result set)
is a list that contains information such as
the URLs for web pages that meet your
criteria.
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Search Engine
Results Page (SERP)
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This result set is formatted in a web page that
contains a link to each page along with additional
information that might include the page title, a brief
description, the first few lines of text, or the size of
the page.
Next, the web server at the search engine site sends
the search results page to your browser for display.
The order the pages are displayed in the results page
may depend on paid advertisements, alphabetical
order, and link popularity (more on this later).
Each search engine has their own policy for ordering
the search results.
Be aware that these policies can change over time.
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Designing Web Pages
for
Promotion
Keywords
• Brainstorm about terms and phrases that people may
use when searching for your site.
• They should be words or phrases that describe your web
site or business.
• These terms and phrases are your keywords.
• Create a list of them and don't forget to add common
misspellings of your keywords to the list
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Description
• What is special about your web site that would make
someone want to visit?
• With this in mind, write a few sentences about your web
site and/or business.
• This description should be inviting and interesting so
that a person searching the Web will choose your site
from the listing provided by a search engine or search
directory.
• Some search engines will display your description in
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their search engine results.
XHTML
<meta> tag
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The meta tag
A stand alone tag
Placed in the header section
Attributes:
• name
• content
<meta name="value" content="value" />
 Meta tags used by search engines:
• name=“keywords”
• name=“description”
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Keywords & Description
Meta Tags
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The keywords and description meta tags for a web
site about a web development consulting firm called
“Acme Design” could be configured as follows:
<meta name="keywords" content="Acme Design web
development e-commerce ecommerce consulting consultation
maintenance redesign Akme” />
<meta name="description" content="Acme Design, a premier
web consulting group that specializes in E-commerce, web site
design, web site development, and web site re-design." />
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Listing in a Search Engine
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Wait until your site is finished – don’t
submit “under construction” web sites!
Visit Search Engine and look for “Add
URL” or “Submit your Site”, or “Add your
Site”, etc. link.
Follow the directions and fill out the form.
There is a trend towards fees for listing
(called paid inclusion), or for express
submission.
A spider from the search engine will visit
your web site and index it.
Allow several weeks and test the search
engine to see if your site is listed.
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Preferential Placement
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Promotions vary
• Google’s AdWords
• Yahoo’s Sponsor Results
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Check search engines for current
preferential placement options
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Questions
1.
Describe the difference between a
search engine and a search
directory. Provide an example of
each.
2.
Describe the three components of
a search engine.
3.
Is it beneficial for a business to pay
for site submission? Is it beneficial
for a business to pay for
preferential listing? Explain.
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Monitor
Search Engine Listings
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Manual Check
Analyze web site logs
Run an automated tool to track and15
analyze keywords
Link
Popularity
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Link popularity is a rating determined by
a search engine based on the number of
sites that link to a particular web site
and the quality of the sites that the links
are from
For example, a link from a well known
site such as Oprah’s site,
http://oprah.com, would be considered
a higher quality link than one from your
friend’s home page on a free web server
somewhere.
The link popularity of your web site can
determine its order in the search engine
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results page.
Checking Link
Popularity
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Analyze your log file.
Visit a link popularity checking service web
site
• http://linkpopularity.com or
http://linkpopularitycheck.com
• Report which checks link popularity on a number
of search engines.
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Visit particular search engines and check
for yourself.
• At Google and AltaVista type
“link:yourdomainname.com” into the search box
and the sites that link to yourdomainname.com
will be listed.
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Other Site Promotion
Activities
Affiliate Programs
Banner Ads
Banner Exchange
Reciprocal Link Agreements
Newsletters
“Sticky” Site Features
Blogs
RSS Feeds
Personal Recommendations
Web Rings
Newsgroup and Listserv Postings
Traditional Media Ads
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Leverage Existing Marketing Materials
Questions
1. Are the results returned by
various search engines really
different?
• Choose a place, music group, or
movie to search for.Enter the
same search terms, such as “Door
County” into the following three
search engines: Google, Yahoo!,
Ask.com.
• List the URLs of the top three
sites returned by each.
• Comment on your findings.
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Questions
2. How can you determine if your
web site has been indexed by a
search engine? How can you
determine which search engines
are being used to find your site?
3. List four web site promotion
methods that do not use search
engines. Which would be your
first choice? Why?
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