When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
well and fine.

When I type in "Iowa City Hotels" at the Yahoo search screen, however, our
hotel website doesn't appear at all. Well, maybe it's five pages in, but
who's going to bother to look there?

I've studied meta tags, and key words, and I believe I've got things set up
properly for the "robots" to see -- yet the stupid "Weather Underground" and
"Sheraton" sites pops up ahead of our hotel. (And they don't even appear to
be using meta tags...)

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" > said:
>When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
>of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
>well and fine.

Google uses a secret "Page Rank" technology that is mostly based on how
many sites link to yours. If people like your site enough to link to it a
lot, Google will rank it higher. Unfortunately there are people out there
who cheat, or "game the system" if you want to be charitable about it.
What they do is put up thousands of web pages that consist of nothing but
links to their customers, in order to improve their customers "Page Rank".
Google is in a constant battle to find the cheaters and eliminate the
artificial boost they give to their customer's Page Rank, though, so
paying these people is ****ing your money away. Far better would be to
get your friends on this newsgroup to put a link to your site on their
personal pages or blogs.

I'm 70% sure Yahoo is still using Google technology, so what I say about
Google is probably true of Yahoo. But since Google is the only search
engine that matters, I wouldn't worry about Yahoo if they're not using
Google.

--
Paul Tomblin > http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Yes, those of us here have pretty much come to the conclusion that once
you know What's Really Going On and How To Cope With It, you find that
you don't like it much. -- Steve VanDevender

Paul Tomblin wrote:
> In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" > said:
>
>>When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
>>of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
>>well and fine.
>
>
> Google uses a secret "Page Rank" technology that is mostly based on how
> many sites link to yours. If people like your site enough to link to it a
> lot, Google will rank it higher. Unfortunately there are people out there
> who cheat, or "game the system" if you want to be charitable about it.
> What they do is put up thousands of web pages that consist of nothing but
> links to their customers, in order to improve their customers "Page Rank".
> Google is in a constant battle to find the cheaters and eliminate the
> artificial boost they give to their customer's Page Rank, though, so
> paying these people is ****ing your money away. Far better would be to
> get your friends on this newsgroup to put a link to your site on their
> personal pages or blogs.
>
> I'm 70% sure Yahoo is still using Google technology, so what I say about
> Google is probably true of Yahoo. But since Google is the only search
> engine that matters, I wouldn't worry about Yahoo if they're not using
> Google.
>

It must be a pretty exotic algorithm.

In google, when you try "Suites start at" (phrase from the home page),
plus "Alexis", you get 2 hits to a hotel in Seattle, but nothing else.

Does that mean that if nobody links to you, you may never even show up
in an search-list??

Jay Honeck wrote:
>
> Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

My education in this matter is not as good as that of others, but one problem
you have is that Yahoo isn't a pure "web-crawler" type search engine. You need
to register your main site with them. That will get it in the database.

Some search engines build databases by using "web-crawling" tools. These visit
as many web sites as they can find. Some of them search the meta tags and titles
for keywords, and a few search the main text. You've done everything you can to
get into those databases.

George Patterson
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned
no other way.

In article <EC2xb.313373$Fm2.328957@attbi_s04>,
"Jay Honeck" > wrote:

> When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
> of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
> well and fine.
>
> When I type in "Iowa City Hotels" at the Yahoo search screen, however, our
> hotel website doesn't appear at all. Well, maybe it's five pages in, but
> who's going to bother to look there?

Ditto with the same search strings on Google...

> I've studied meta tags, and key words, and I believe I've got things set up
> properly for the "robots" to see -- yet the stupid "Weather Underground" and
> "Sheraton" sites pops up ahead of our hotel. (And they don't even appear to
> be using meta tags...)

Most search engines I use ignore meta tags; Google certainly does.

> Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Depends on whether you want to concentrate on Yahoo or something like
Google, which is a more free-range search engine (I much prefer Google).
Google, for example, doesn't take any notice of meta tags, and your
ranking is almost entirely dependent on how many sites link to your
site; Yahoo uses a combination of paid ranking and other more murky ways
to list you. It's a black art in my experience, and with most of them
the only sure way to influence listings is with money...

Hamish (affiliated in a small way with www.googleguide.com)

In a previous article, said:
>Paul Tomblin wrote:
>> Google is in a constant battle to find the cheaters and eliminate the
>> artificial boost they give to their customer's Page Rank, though, so
>> paying these people is ****ing your money away. Far better would be to
>It must be a pretty exotic algorithm.
>
>In google, when you try "Suites start at" (phrase from the home page),
>plus "Alexis", you get 2 hits to a hotel in Seattle, but nothing else.
>
>Does that mean that if nobody links to you, you may never even show up
>in an search-list??

Possibly. Or possibly Google's imperfect algorithms decided that Alexis
Park was page spamming. Alexis Park is definitely indexed by Google - if
you type "Alexis Park" it shows up second, after another Alexis Park
resort in Las Vegas. Strangely enough, typing "Alexis luxury suites" gets
the AirNav listing of Alexis Park as the 6th hit, but the next relevant
link (ie not to the one in Las Vegas) is on the 4th page there is a Yahoo
Travel page.


--
Paul Tomblin > http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
IMAP is just not a very rich protocol.
-- Steve Conn, Exchange Server product manager for Microsoft

There is only one airport and few related sites. There are hunderds of
'hotel guides' with which you are competing for top positioning. If
there was a guarenteed way to get the top spot, everyone would do it,
and of course it would be impossible for everyone to be there. As
others have said, Google does not use meta tags, but instead some of
their own magic having to do with how many are linked to you. You
might find some info at http://searchenginewatch.com/
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.


> When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
> of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
> well and fine.
>
> When I type in "Iowa City Hotels" at the Yahoo search screen, however, our
> hotel website doesn't appear at all. Well, maybe it's five pages in, but
> who's going to bother to look there?
>
> I've studied meta tags, and key words, and I believe I've got things set up
> properly for the "robots" to see -- yet the stupid "Weather Underground" and
> "Sheraton" sites pops up ahead of our hotel. (And they don't even appear to
> be using meta tags...)
>
> Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Jay

Went to Google and searched for "hotel Iowa city".

Got lots of sites that contained the names of Hotels, Motels, pup
tents, etc.

Why don't you go down those sites and contact each one and see what it
takes to get listed on them (probably money????)

Must be a hundred or more sites you could fit into.

Went 8-9 pages looking and didn't find a descrete listing for your
establishment???

If I were coming to Iowa City, I'd search for either "hotels (motels)
iowa city" or "Iowa city hotel". Would guess you should want to fit
into one or both of these descriptions? Don't think your 'name' is
well enough known US wide that you could just use it as a search
index??

Loads of luck and have a good Thanksgiving.

Big John





On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 20:40:25 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
> wrote:

>> >Does that mean that if nobody links to you, you may never even show up
>> >in an search-list??
>>
>> Possibly. Or possibly Google's imperfect algorithms decided that Alexis
>> Park was page spamming. Alexis Park is definitely indexed by Google - if
>> you type "Alexis Park" it shows up second, after another Alexis Park
>> resort in Las Vegas. Strangely enough, typing "Alexis luxury suites" gets
>> the AirNav listing of Alexis Park as the 6th hit, but the next relevant
>> link (ie not to the one in Las Vegas) is on the 4th page there is a Yahoo
>> Travel page.
>
>So how does "Underground Weather" manage to come up "Numero Uno" on a search
>for "Iowa City Hotels"? They CERTAINLY aren't a hotel, and they CERTAINLY
>aren't in Iowa City!
>
>This whole thing is so stupid. 95+% of the hotels located in Iowa City are
>NOT coming up when you type in "Iowa City Hotels"! What kind of a stupid
>search engine would exclude the ONLY websites that matter to the person
>searching for a hotel?

> >Does that mean that if nobody links to you, you may never even show up
> >in an search-list??
>
> Possibly. Or possibly Google's imperfect algorithms decided that Alexis
> Park was page spamming. Alexis Park is definitely indexed by Google - if
> you type "Alexis Park" it shows up second, after another Alexis Park
> resort in Las Vegas. Strangely enough, typing "Alexis luxury suites" gets
> the AirNav listing of Alexis Park as the 6th hit, but the next relevant
> link (ie not to the one in Las Vegas) is on the 4th page there is a Yahoo
> Travel page.

So how does "Underground Weather" manage to come up "Numero Uno" on a search
for "Iowa City Hotels"? They CERTAINLY aren't a hotel, and they CERTAINLY
aren't in Iowa City!

This whole thing is so stupid. 95+% of the hotels located in Iowa City are
NOT coming up when you type in "Iowa City Hotels"! What kind of a stupid
search engine would exclude the ONLY websites that matter to the person
searching for a hotel?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" > said:
>So how does "Underground Weather" manage to come up "Numero Uno" on a search
>for "Iowa City Hotels"? They CERTAINLY aren't a hotel, and they CERTAINLY
>aren't in Iowa City!

No, but lots of people link to them, and they do have links to hotel
listings on the page.

>This whole thing is so stupid. 95+% of the hotels located in Iowa City are
>NOT coming up when you type in "Iowa City Hotels"! What kind of a stupid
>search engine would exclude the ONLY websites that matter to the person
>searching for a hotel?

Because the first couple of pages of hits are almost entirely hotel guides
and travel agencies. It makes sense that people who travel to more than
one place will link to a guide or an agency rather than to one particular
hotel.


--
Paul Tomblin > http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Sometimes, when a luser makes an unreasonable demand, the best thing
to do is let them have exactly what they ask for.
-- Joe Zeff

> Because the first couple of pages of hits are almost entirely hotel guides
> and travel agencies. It makes sense that people who travel to more than
> one place will link to a guide or an agency rather than to one particular
> hotel.

Until I got into this biz, I had no idea what a total sham those on-line
hotel listings were. Most people don't realize that hotels must PAY to be
on those so-called "impartial" hotel guides! Worse, services like "Orbitz"
and "Travelocity" are nothing but giant scams. They demand 15% of whatever
a hotel charges for each room! This means that any consumer can always get
a MUCH better deal simply by calling the actual hotel, and speaking with
their local reservation desk.

The absolute best way to find a hotel on-line is to check the local
convention and/or visitor's bureau website. Almost every city has one, and
virtually every hotel/motel/B&B belongs to it -- so you get a true and
accurate listing of area hotels, not just the ones who decided to pay for
their position.

BTW: I just tried entering "Iowa City Inn" and **BINGO**, there we are! I
guess the Yahoo search engine is only seeing the title at the top of our
webpage, not the meta-tags I so carefully selected... Time to put "hotel"
in our name, I guess! :-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

>When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
>of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
>well and fine.

Google rules. Google is God. All else is a pale imitation of Google.

Google works this way: the more sites link to yours, the higher your
rating is. The higher a site's rating is, the more credit you get for
its being linked to you.

This works far better than even the guy who dreamed it up could have
hoped or expected or dreamed. It works wonderfully well. It is Adam
Smith's Invisible Hand turned loose on information.

If you don't have a Google tool-bar installed on your browser, your
life is slower, more complicated, and less rewarding than it might
otherwise be.

Besides, Google has the simplest, most elegant home page on the web.
It consists of 38 words. Go look: www.google.com


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put CUB in subject line)

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

> Besides, Google has the simplest, most elegant home page on the web.
> It consists of 38 words. Go look: www.google.com

True, but I like having Yahoo as my home page, because of their
up-to-the-minute news coverage.

A throw-back to my newspaper days, I guess. I knew I'd have to add
newspapers to our order when I saw a big story hit in Yahoo!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay then make news.google.com your home page or keep Yahoo and get the
Google tool bar.


"Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
news:R59xb.117245$Dw6.540124@attbi_s02...
> > Besides, Google has the simplest, most elegant home page on the web.
> > It consists of 38 words. Go look: www.google.com
>
> True, but I like having Yahoo as my home page, because of their
> up-to-the-minute news coverage.
>
> A throw-back to my newspaper days, I guess. I knew I'd have to add
> newspapers to our order when I saw a big story hit in Yahoo!
> --
> Jay Honeck
> Iowa City, IA
> Pathfinder N56993
> www.AlexisParkInn.com
> "Your Aviation Destination"
>
>

Jay Honeck wrote:
>>Besides, Google has the simplest, most elegant home page on the web.
>>It consists of 38 words. Go look: www.google.com
>
>
> True, but I like having Yahoo as my home page, because of their
> up-to-the-minute news coverage.
>
> A throw-back to my newspaper days, I guess. I knew I'd have to add
> newspapers to our order when I saw a big story hit in Yahoo!

also see
http://news.google.com/



WW

> Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Posting your question to a bunch of pilots? ;^)

Why not ask Google directly?

Jay Honeck wrote:
>>Besides, Google has the simplest, most elegant home page on the web.
>>It consists of 38 words. Go look: www.google.com
>
>
> True, but I like having Yahoo as my home page, because of their
> up-to-the-minute news coverage.
>
>

Google has news. And the "news" tab is much easier to find than yahoo's.

Cub Driver wrote:

>
> Besides, Google has the simplest, most elegant home page on the web.
> It consists of 38 words.


Absolutely!

Does google have pop-ups (on its home page or its returned list-pages)?
My system suppresses them, so I don't know if it has them or not. I
was pretty sure that Yahoo was awash in them, or is that not correct???

(Gotta insert here that the Alexis in Seattle is one whiz-bang,
top-of-the-line hostelry).

Bob Gardner

"Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
news:CC8xb.316648$Fm2.331014@attbi_s04...
> > Because the first couple of pages of hits are almost entirely hotel
guides
> > and travel agencies. It makes sense that people who travel to more than
> > one place will link to a guide or an agency rather than to one
particular
> > hotel.
>
> Until I got into this biz, I had no idea what a total sham those on-line
> hotel listings were. Most people don't realize that hotels must PAY to
be
> on those so-called "impartial" hotel guides! Worse, services like
"Orbitz"
> and "Travelocity" are nothing but giant scams. They demand 15% of
whatever
> a hotel charges for each room! This means that any consumer can always
get
> a MUCH better deal simply by calling the actual hotel, and speaking with
> their local reservation desk.
>
> The absolute best way to find a hotel on-line is to check the local
> convention and/or visitor's bureau website. Almost every city has one, and
> virtually every hotel/motel/B&B belongs to it -- so you get a true and
> accurate listing of area hotels, not just the ones who decided to pay for
> their position.
>
> BTW: I just tried entering "Iowa City Inn" and **BINGO**, there we are! I
> guess the Yahoo search engine is only seeing the title at the top of our
> webpage, not the meta-tags I so carefully selected... Time to put
"hotel"
> in our name, I guess! :-)
> --
> Jay Honeck
> Iowa City, IA
> Pathfinder N56993
> www.AlexisParkInn.com
> "Your Aviation Destination"
>
>

("Jay Honeck" wrote)
<snip>
> This whole thing is so stupid. 95+% of the hotels located in Iowa
City are
> NOT coming up when you type in "Iowa City Hotels"! What kind of a
stupid
> search engine would exclude the ONLY websites that matter to the
person
> searching for a hotel?


I typed:

"Iowa City" + hotel

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g38020-Iowa_City_Iowa-Hotels.html

Iowa City hotels: Read Iowa City hotel reviews including resorts ...
.... Sponsored links. Iowa City hotel and vacation packages *. ...
General price range: US$
35-50. Holiday Hotel @ Iowa City, Iowa City, Compare prices with:
QuickCheck, ...
www.tripadvisor.com/ZipFinder-z52240.html - 65k - Nov 25, 2003 -
Cached - Similar pages

Your Inn is # 2 once I open the page.


If I add an "s"
"Iowa City" + hotels
I then get Weather Underground site.

--
Montblack

Jay Honeck wrote:
>
> This whole thing is so stupid. 95+% of the hotels located in Iowa City are
> NOT coming up when you type in "Iowa City Hotels"!

Are you literally typing in "Iowa City Hotels", complete with quotes? Are you
typing in Iowa City Hotels with no quotes? The first will get you a listing of
only those sites that have something very close to "Iowa City Hotels" somewhere
on the site; you're searching for the string. The second would get you a listing
of sites that have the word Iowa, the word City, or the word Hotels. The more
of these words they have, the higher in the list they are. If you type in +Iowa
+City +Hotels, you'll get a list of all web pages that have all three words on
the page.

None of these is likely to be what you want. No search engine is going to do
what I think you want.

If I want to find hotels in a city, I will either use the Yahoo menus to get a
list of hotels in that city, or I will use the Maps feature of Yahoo to get a
map of the town and pick out hotels from the "nearest business" feature menus.

George Patterson
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can
be learned no other way.

Let's not start Google-beater pilots now, ok?
Pat Thronson ( also "Google desk bar" comes in handy)

"Cub Driver" > wrote in message
...
>
> >When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our
"History
> >of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is
all
> >well and fine.
>
> Google rules. Google is God. All else is a pale imitation of Google.
>
> Google works this way: the more sites link to yours, the higher your
> rating is. The higher a site's rating is, the more credit you get for
> its being linked to you.
>
> This works far better than even the guy who dreamed it up could have
> hoped or expected or dreamed. It works wonderfully well. It is Adam
> Smith's Invisible Hand turned loose on information.
>
> If you don't have a Google tool-bar installed on your browser, your
> life is slower, more complicated, and less rewarding than it might
> otherwise be.
>
> Besides, Google has the simplest, most elegant home page on the web.
> It consists of 38 words. Go look: www.google.com
>
>
> all the best -- Dan Ford
> email: (put CUB in subject line)
>
> see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
> and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

> My system suppresses them, so I don't know if it has them or not. I
> was pretty sure that Yahoo was awash in them, or is that not correct???

I see no pop-ups when I open Yahoo.com.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Google? Yuporamma! Waste all day in Google, or save time with Excite.

Have a great one!

Bush

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 14:18:12 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
> wrote:

>When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
>of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
>well and fine.
>
>When I type in "Iowa City Hotels" at the Yahoo search screen, however, our
>hotel website doesn't appear at all. Well, maybe it's five pages in, but
>who's going to bother to look there?
>
>I've studied meta tags, and key words, and I believe I've got things set up
>properly for the "robots" to see -- yet the stupid "Weather Underground" and
>"Sheraton" sites pops up ahead of our hotel. (And they don't even appear to
>be using meta tags...)
>
>Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

The search engines are run by some christian fundamentalists and know if you
have been naughty or nice. Clearly after the last thread you started about
bible smackers they are ****ed.


"Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
news:EC2xb.313373$Fm2.328957@attbi_s04...
> When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our
"History
> of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is
all
> well and fine.
>
> When I type in "Iowa City Hotels" at the Yahoo search screen, however, our
> hotel website doesn't appear at all. Well, maybe it's five pages in, but
> who's going to bother to look there?
>
> I've studied meta tags, and key words, and I believe I've got things set
up
> properly for the "robots" to see -- yet the stupid "Weather Underground"
and
> "Sheraton" sites pops up ahead of our hotel. (And they don't even appear
to
> be using meta tags...)
>
> Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
> --
> Jay Honeck
> Iowa City, IA
> Pathfinder N56993
> www.AlexisParkInn.com
> "Your Aviation Destination"
>
>

Marty, Marty, Marty

My new sig line. Thank you.

BTW, what does SCNR stand for? :-)

--
Montblack
http://lumma.de/mt/archives/bart.gif



("Martin Hotze" wrote)
> > Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
>
> short answer? --> http://lumma.de/mt/archives/bart.gif
>
>
> SCNR. (*hehe*)

I personally have a page with all the search engines and if one
doesn't get me what I want I go to another.
http://pad39a.com/engines.html But if most people are using Google,
it's most important for his listing to show up on Google.
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.



> Google? Yuporamma! Waste all day in Google, or save time with Excite.
>
> Have a great one!
>
> Bush
>
> On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 14:18:12 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
> > wrote:
>
> >When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
> >of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
> >well and fine.
> >
> >When I type in "Iowa City Hotels" at the Yahoo search screen, however, our
> >hotel website doesn't appear at all. Well, maybe it's five pages in, but
> >who's going to bother to look there?
> >
> >I've studied meta tags, and key words, and I believe I've got things set up
> >properly for the "robots" to see -- yet the stupid "Weather Underground" and
> >"Sheraton" sites pops up ahead of our hotel. (And they don't even appear to
> >be using meta tags...)
> >
> >Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

> The search engines are run by some christian fundamentalists and know if
you
> have been naughty or nice. Clearly after the last thread you started
about
> bible smackers they are ****ed.

Well, it beats having Satan ****ed at me, I guess. ;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

> "Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
> news:EC2xb.313373$Fm2.328957@attbi_s04...
> > When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our
>
> >
> > Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
> > --


Jay .... go to this page:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/Iowa/Cities/Iowa_City/Travel_an
d_Transportation/

At the top right you will see a link "Suggest A Site".

Click it and have your credit card ready. Yahoo and Google are like the
yellow pages. Want to play ... have to pay.


Edward

Edward,

> Jay .... go to this page:

I went where you suggested, and found this in the "fine print":

*****
2.4 The current fee for Yahoo! Express for initial consideration in the
Directory is a NON-REFUNDABLE fee of US $299.00 applicable for each web site
submitted that does not include adult content and/or services. You
acknowledge that the payment of this fee is for consideration of your site
AND DOES NOT IN ANY WAY GUARANTEE THAT YOUR SITE WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE
DIRECTORY. Your payment only guarantees that Yahoo! will consider and
respond to your request within seven business days, by either accepting or
not accepting your site
*****

What kind of fool would agree to pay Yahoo, when this is all they offer?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

("Martin Hotze" wrote)
> > BTW, what does SCNR stand for? :-)
>
> I will use google before asking dumb questions *bg* ... but:
> http://www.acronymfinder.com/
> http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=SCNR
>
> SCNR = Sorry, Could Not Resist


Ok. Next post, *you* get to be the straight man :-)

It's all about ....


timing.

--
Montblack
http://lumma.de/mt/archives/bart.gif

In article <q%qxb.325424$Tr4.999278@attbi_s03>,
"Jay Honeck" > wrote:

> Edward,
>
> > Jay .... go to this page:
>
> I went where you suggested, and found this in the "fine print":
>
> *****
> 2.4 The current fee for Yahoo! Express for initial consideration in the
> Directory is a NON-REFUNDABLE fee of US $299.00 applicable for each web site
> submitted that does not include adult content and/or services. You
> acknowledge that the payment of this fee is for consideration of your site
> AND DOES NOT IN ANY WAY GUARANTEE THAT YOUR SITE WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE
> DIRECTORY. Your payment only guarantees that Yahoo! will consider and
> respond to your request within seven business days, by either accepting or
> not accepting your site
> *****
>
> What kind of fool would agree to pay Yahoo, when this is all they offer?


Any commercial site wanting to get in will pay.

Yes the fine print seems scary, but it is there so they can refuse porn
sites and "how to make a bomb" type sites.

It is a "yearly" fee ... so you know they want you in, and hope that you
will renew every year. I have developed many sites and none have ever
been refused by Yahoo. They want the cash.

Edward

> So how does "Underground Weather" manage to come up "Numero Uno" on a
search
> for "Iowa City Hotels"? They CERTAINLY aren't a hotel, and they
CERTAINLY
> aren't in Iowa City!
>
> This whole thing is so stupid. 95+% of the hotels located in Iowa City
are
> NOT coming up when you type in "Iowa City Hotels"! What kind of a stupid
> search engine would exclude the ONLY websites that matter to the person
> searching for a hotel?

Possibly because the word "Hotels" doesn't appear on your page. I bet the
word "Hotel" does though.
Didn't try it out though.
Paul

"Jay Honeck" > writes:

> When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
> of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
> well and fine.
>
> When I type in "Iowa City Hotels" at the Yahoo search screen, however, our
> hotel website doesn't appear at all. Well, maybe it's five pages in, but
> who's going to bother to look there?
>
> I've studied meta tags, and key words, and I believe I've got things set up
> properly for the "robots" to see -- yet the stupid "Weather Underground" and
> "Sheraton" sites pops up ahead of our hotel. (And they don't even appear to
> be using meta tags...)
>
> Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Google is the only search engine that particularly matters, but much
of what I say applies to most search engines anyway. (And Yahoo may
be using google search actually?)

Well. First of all, you're competing with a lot of other hotels in
Iowa city. This is going to make it difficult to get really top
placement for the generic search -- probably essentially impossible.

One thing you can improve is that you don't have any headings marked
on the page -- no <h1>, <h2>, etc. tags. Your big title is just
decorated text, not an actual heading. That should help. Words in
headings generally get extra weight.

I see you've already included it in the <title>, which is good (and I
don't remember seeing it there before).

Google page-rank really likes sites with links to them. You've got
lots of content on your site, which ought to get a lot of people to
link to you; but specifically asking for links from some places can
help. Local historical society? Other fans of the Iowa City airport,
of course. You seem to have 31 links already, which is good.

I dug into the Yahoo results from (and the first page seems to have
identical content to Google, suggesting that it really is google under
the hood still). You're mentioned in a link from a uiowa page on page
3 of the results, and don't seem to turn up in the first *15* pages of
results. That's seriously nasty.

Unlike many of the sites I've worked on, you may be a good candidate
for google ad-words -- buying some of those little ads on the right in
the results. You can play with it pretty cheaply, and set maximums,
and such.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, >, <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <noguns-nomoney.com> <www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <dragaera.info/>

Icebound > writes:

> Paul Tomblin wrote:
> > In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" > said:
> >
> >>When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our "History
> >>of the Iowa City Airport" webpage pops up second on the list -- which is all
> >>well and fine.

> > Google uses a secret "Page Rank" technology that is mostly based on
> > how
> > many sites link to yours. If people like your site enough to link to it a
> > lot, Google will rank it higher. Unfortunately there are people out there
> > who cheat, or "game the system" if you want to be charitable about it.
> > What they do is put up thousands of web pages that consist of nothing but
> > links to their customers, in order to improve their customers "Page Rank".
> > Google is in a constant battle to find the cheaters and eliminate the
> > artificial boost they give to their customer's Page Rank, though, so
> > paying these people is ****ing your money away. Far better would be to
> > get your friends on this newsgroup to put a link to your site on their
> > personal pages or blogs.

And they'll sometimes retalliate pretty massively if they really get
peeved -- like block all listing of a site. It's best *not* to try
for quick-fix rules-lawyer solutions to this problem.

> > about
> > Google is probably true of Yahoo. But since Google is the only search
> > engine that matters, I wouldn't worry about Yahoo if they're not using
> > Google.

> It must be a pretty exotic algorithm.
>
> In google, when you try "Suites start at" (phrase from the home page),
> plus "Alexis", you get 2 hits to a hotel in Seattle, but nothing else.

That's a bizarre result (which I reproduced; it really does happen).
I'm afraid Jay may be getting bitten by Frontpage; the way that
"suites start" banner is put in may not be a way google parses and
understands (although I find alt text on an image saying that, and
google *is* supposed to pick that up).

> Does that mean that if nobody links to you, you may never even show up
> in an search-list??

No. I've gotten lots of pages listed that aren't linked to. But they
don't rank as high as pages on similar topics that *are* linked to.
It's also somewhat at the site level, rather than the page level,
sort-of. I mean, it's secret, so we're all kinda guessing, based on
what we've seen over the years. And it may have changed a few times,
just to confuse things.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, >, <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <noguns-nomoney.com> <www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <dragaera.info/>

"Jay Honeck" > writes:

> > >Does that mean that if nobody links to you, you may never even show up
> > >in an search-list??
> >
> > Possibly. Or possibly Google's imperfect algorithms decided that Alexis
> > Park was page spamming. Alexis Park is definitely indexed by Google - if
> > you type "Alexis Park" it shows up second, after another Alexis Park
> > resort in Las Vegas. Strangely enough, typing "Alexis luxury suites" gets
> > the AirNav listing of Alexis Park as the 6th hit, but the next relevant
> > link (ie not to the one in Las Vegas) is on the 4th page there is a Yahoo
> > Travel page.
>
> So how does "Underground Weather" manage to come up "Numero Uno" on a search
> for "Iowa City Hotels"? They CERTAINLY aren't a hotel, and they CERTAINLY
> aren't in Iowa City!

Weather underground has a *bazillion* (that's a very large number)
incoming links, because of people (like me) who use their weather
forecast image on their pages. Thus an immense page-rank, I'd guess.

Frankly I think google ought to find and compensate for that sort of
situation, not to punish Weather Underground, who are not doing
anything wrong, but simply because that particular mode of operation
gives immense link counts that misrepresent the general relevance of
the stie. They should rank high on *weather* searches, but not on
*every* search.

> This whole thing is so stupid. 95+% of the hotels located in Iowa City are
> NOT coming up when you type in "Iowa City Hotels"! What kind of a stupid
> search engine would exclude the ONLY websites that matter to the person
> searching for a hotel?

A search engine that doesn't actually understand English, and is
simply using some rules about matching occurrences of words.

In general search engines are better at finding rare and unusual
things than they are at finding common, widespread things. The word
"hotel" occurs in the web page of ever conference, for example, and in
lots of fiction, and in all sorts of other places.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, >, <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <noguns-nomoney.com> <www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <dragaera.info/>

Hamish Reid > writes:

> Most search engines I use ignore meta tags; Google certainly does.

They say otherwise on their webmaster guidelines page, and my
experience has been that they do index meta tags.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, >, <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <noguns-nomoney.com> <www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <dragaera.info/>

Edward Todd > writes:

> > "Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
> > news:EC2xb.313373$Fm2.328957@attbi_s04...
> > > When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our
> >
> > >
> > > Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
> > > --
>
>
> Jay .... go to this page:
>
> http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/Iowa/Cities/Iowa_City/Travel_an
> d_Transportation/
>
> At the top right you will see a link "Suggest A Site".
>
> Click it and have your credit card ready. Yahoo and Google are like the
> yellow pages. Want to play ... have to pay.

Google search does *not* *ever* accept money for search placement.
It's against their most basic, rock-bottom, policy. See item 1 in
"google facts and fiction"
<http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html>.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, >, <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <noguns-nomoney.com> <www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <dragaera.info/>

Jay Honeck wrote:
>
> Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Check out http://philip.greenspun.com/panda

George Patterson
Some people think they hear a call to the priesthood when what they really
hear is a tiny voice whispering "It's indoor work with no heavy lifting".

Icebound wrote:
>
> In google, when you try "Suites start at" (phrase from the home page),
> plus "Alexis", you get 2 hits to a hotel in Seattle, but nothing else.

Most search engines ignore banner text. If "suites start at" were in plain text
on Jay's site, some of the web crawlers would pick it up in a week or two.

George Patterson
Some people think they hear a call to the priesthood when what they really
hear is a tiny voice whispering "It's indoor work with no heavy lifting".