OT - Search engine question

[Jay Honeck]

Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".

The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
Rapids, IA airport!

How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement, since
it appears along with the rest of the search results.

This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate -- and
annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why doesn't
the Iowa City Airport come up first?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

[Garner Miller]

In article <gbgUe.319519$_o.176759@attbi_s71>, Jay Honeck
> wrote:

> Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
>
> The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
> Rapids, IA airport!
>
> How do they *do* that?

Well, for starters, Eastern Iowa Airport has an official web site, with
airport-related content on the top-level page. Iowa City doesn't, at
least that I can find. The fact that your airport's "page" is a
subsidiary of Iowa City's main page will drive down its search ranking
relative to Cedar Rapids.

It also has commercial traffic, meaning there are probably more web
pages that link TO it, which will also push its ranking up in many
search engines.

> This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate -- and
> annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why doesn't
> the Iowa City Airport come up first?

See above. This may also be of interest:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-14.html

--
Garner R. Miller
ATP/CFII/MEI
Clifton Park, NY =USA=

[Gig 601XL Builder]

First Jay stop using Yahoo. It sucks compared to Google. Second in this case
Google does the same thing. Both use a very complex system of click throughs
and other metrics to rank pages. But it is my understanding that as far as
Google is concerned the biggest factor is pages with the search term that
has links from other pages.

If you Google "Iowa City Airport" in quotes so it is looking for the phrase
not the words your page comes up first.


"Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
news:gbgUe.319519$_o.176759@attbi_s71...
> Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
>
> The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
> Rapids, IA airport!
>
> How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement,
> since it appears along with the rest of the search results.
>
> This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate --
> and annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why
> doesn't the Iowa City Airport come up first?
> --
> Jay Honeck
> Iowa City, IA
> Pathfinder N56993
> www.AlexisParkInn.com
> "Your Aviation Destination"
>

[Jay Masino]

One main reason is that the actual name of the airport is "Iowa City
Municipal Airport". Of course, you have to use the phrase "Iowa City
Muni Airport" to get the right hit. If you don't use the quotes to make
a phrase, you basically get various combinations of the individual words.

--- Jay


--
__!__
Jay and Teresa Masino ___(_)___
http://www2.ari.net/jmasino ! ! !
http://www.OceanCityAirport.com
http://www.oc-Adolfos.com

[Jay Masino]

Gig 601XL Builder <wr.giacona@coxDOTnet> wrote:
> First Jay stop using Yahoo. It sucks compared to Google. Second in this case
> Google does the same thing. Both use a very complex system of click throughs
> and other metrics to rank pages. But it is my understanding that as far as
> Google is concerned the biggest factor is pages with the search term that
> has links from other pages.

I don't know... I've compared the results of yahoo and google searches on
a number of occasions and almost always get basically the same results.

--- Jay



--
__!__
Jay and Teresa Masino ___(_)___
http://www2.ari.net/jmasino ! ! !
http://www.OceanCityAirport.com
http://www.oc-Adolfos.com

[Gig 601XL Builder]

SlashDot had a thread a few weeks back talking about a study done comparing
the two and Google won pretty handily. My personal problem with Yahoo is
their portal page though. It is almost painful to look at. Google's is so
nice and clean.


"Jay Masino" > wrote in message
...
> Gig 601XL Builder <wr.giacona@coxDOTnet> wrote:
>> First Jay stop using Yahoo. It sucks compared to Google. Second in this
>> case
>> Google does the same thing. Both use a very complex system of click
>> throughs
>> and other metrics to rank pages. But it is my understanding that as far
>> as
>> Google is concerned the biggest factor is pages with the search term that
>> has links from other pages.
>
> I don't know... I've compared the results of yahoo and google searches on
> a number of occasions and almost always get basically the same results.
>
> --- Jay
>
>
>
> --
> __!__
> Jay and Teresa Masino ___(_)___
> http://www2.ari.net/jmasino ! ! !
> http://www.OceanCityAirport.com
> http://www.oc-Adolfos.com

[Steve Foley]

I recently gave up on Yahoo. About ten times the last week I used it, I
started typing in my search string, only to have Yahoo decide to select
everything I had typed in, and over-write it with the last few letters.

I also got sick of clicking on a news story, only to be brought to another
page with two sentences on it, and the rest advertising. Now I have to click
on the headline again to read wht whole story.

I looked for a 'feedback' link to let them know why I changed my home page,
but couldn't find one.

"Gig 601XL Builder" <wr.giacona@coxDOTnet> wrote in message
news:3FiUe.40197$7f5.25959@okepread01...
> SlashDot had a thread a few weeks back talking about a study done
comparing
> the two and Google won pretty handily. My personal problem with Yahoo is
> their portal page though. It is almost painful to look at. Google's is so
> nice and clean.
>
>
> "Jay Masino" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Gig 601XL Builder <wr.giacona@coxDOTnet> wrote:
> >> First Jay stop using Yahoo. It sucks compared to Google. Second in this
> >> case
> >> Google does the same thing. Both use a very complex system of click
> >> throughs
> >> and other metrics to rank pages. But it is my understanding that as far
> >> as
> >> Google is concerned the biggest factor is pages with the search term
that
> >> has links from other pages.
> >
> > I don't know... I've compared the results of yahoo and google searches
on
> > a number of occasions and almost always get basically the same results.
> >
> > --- Jay
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > __!__
> > Jay and Teresa Masino ___(_)___
> > http://www2.ari.net/jmasino ! ! !
> > http://www.OceanCityAirport.com
> > http://www.oc-Adolfos.com
>
>

[George Patterson]

Jay Honeck wrote:
> Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
>
> The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
> Rapids, IA airport!
>
> How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement, since
> it appears along with the rest of the search results.
>
> This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate -- and
> annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why doesn't
> the Iowa City Airport come up first?

Well, Yahoo *is* paid in different amounts by subscribers, and you can see that
Eastern Iowa Airport has paid to subscribe (note the "category" tag). That's why
they're at the top of the results list despite having nothing to do with the search.

Try Ask Jeeves or Google instead. As a searcher, you will be better pleased with
the performance. As a businessman, you can only make persistent use of the word
"google" and hope everyone takes the hint.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

[George Patterson]

Jay Masino wrote:
>
> If you don't use the quotes to make
> a phrase, you basically get various combinations of the individual words.

With Yahoo, that seems to be what's happening even if you do use quotes. The
Eastern Iowa Airport site doesn't contain the phrase "iowa city" anywhere, even
in the source. In fact, it doesn't contain the word "city" at all. In the old
days, using the plus sign immediately before a word would block any page that
did not contain that word. It seems that this is not true with Yahoo.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

"Jay Honeck" > writes:

> Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
>
> The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
> Rapids, IA airport!
>
> How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement, since
> it appears along with the rest of the search results.
>
> This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate -- and
> annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why doesn't
> the Iowa City Airport come up first?

Yeah, it's annoying when funny things come up first. Why, on Google,
the first link I get searching for "Iowa City Airport" is from some
darned *motel*! :-)

Went back and tried the Yahoo search, and I can't see any signs of
"spoofing". I think the problem really is that Yahoo isn't paying
enough attention to the location of the words relative to each other
on the page -- noting that the sequence "Iowa City" doesn't appear in
the source for that page *at all*! I can't see any legit reason for
it to rank so high for that query. I haven't been following Yahoo
search engine carefully, but I think all the majors (Google, Yahoo,
and MSN are what I mean by that at the moment) carefully separate
advertising hits from real hits; I don't think there's any way to "pay
for placement" of real search results on any of the major ones.

Most of the claims about "search engine optimization" magic are
untrue. There aren't ways to do many of the things unscrupulous
practitioners claim to be able to do -- and getting caught trying can
sometimes get you permanently downrated on Google, which is a pretty
severe punishment. And the search engines are understandably somewhat
tight-fisted with information about how their systems work. And they
change little details pretty often.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, >, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>

[David Dyer-Bennet]

George Patterson > writes:

> Jay Honeck wrote:
> > Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
> > The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the
> > Cedar Rapids, IA airport!
> > How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid
> > advertisement, since it appears along with the rest of the search
> > results.
> > This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a
> > deliberate -- and annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the
> > search engine. Why doesn't the Iowa City Airport come up first?
>
> Well, Yahoo *is* paid in different amounts by subscribers, and you can
> see that Eastern Iowa Airport has paid to subscribe (note the
> "category" tag). That's why they're at the top of the results list
> despite having nothing to do with the search.

No accusation of "pay for placement" fraud has ever been substantiated
against any major search engine to my knowledge. Do you have any
evidence Yahoo is currently doing this? (They all distinguish
carefully between advertisements and search results).

I think the category tag just means they got a hit in the their
semi-manual directory; but that may well explain the high ranking.

I see nothing suspicious on the page suggesting the www.crairport.org
is a paid result. The results at the right and the two above it are
clearly labeled "sponsor results" and set off by a different
background and a rule.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, >, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>

[George Patterson]

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>
> I think the problem really is that Yahoo isn't paying
> enough attention to the location of the words relative to each other
> on the page -- noting that the sequence "Iowa City" doesn't appear in
> the source for that page *at all*!

It's worse than that. The word "city" doesn't occur on that page at all.

The only thing I can think of is this -- search engines work by building a
database of keywords and phrases that occur in documents. When you run a search,
they're looking in the database. I think the contents of that page changed and
the database has not.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

[Icebound]

"Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
news:gbgUe.319519$_o.176759@attbi_s71...
> Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
>
> The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
> Rapids, IA airport!
>


Bottom line is:

If you use google, and type in "Iowa City Airport" in quotes (to preserve
searching for the phrase, not the individual words), then the top of the
list is the Alexis Park Inn's "Iowa City Airport History" page, just as you
would want and expect.

[Jay Honeck]

> Bottom line is:
>
> If you use google, and type in "Iowa City Airport" in quotes (to preserve
> searching for the phrase, not the individual words), then the top of the
> list is the Alexis Park Inn's "Iowa City Airport History" page, just as
> you would want and expect.

Actually, I want the Iowa City Airport to be listed first, ahead of the
Cedar Rapids Airport -- without the stupid quotations marks that maybe
0.001% of the population knows to use.

*Then* our history page could be listed, but (in real life) our FBO might be
listed next?

Search engines drive me nuts.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

[Martin Hotze]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 04:21:41 GMT, Jay Honeck wrote:

>Actually, I want the Iowa City Airport to be listed first, ahead of the
>Cedar Rapids Airport -- without the stupid quotations marks that maybe
>0.001% of the population knows to use.

hopefully they don't go back and redesign the net to acomodate the other
99% idiots. Besides, google gains too much influence, IMHO. Even Cerf is
now working there.

#m

--
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed,
most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we
come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
-- Nathaniel Borenstein

[Bushleague]

First hit on Excite is http://www.icgov.org/airport.htm. Excite
compiles and sorts the search engines in order of relevance.

Bush

On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:34:04 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
> wrote:

>Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
>
>The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
>Rapids, IA airport!
>
>How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement, since
>it appears along with the rest of the search results.
>
>This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate -- and
>annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why doesn't
>the Iowa City Airport come up first?

[Hilton]

Jay,

FWIW: I went to clusty.com and your hotel was number 1 on the list.

Hilton


"Jay Honeck" > wrote in message
news:gbgUe.319519$_o.176759@attbi_s71...
> Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
>
> The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
> Rapids, IA airport!
>
> How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement,
since
> it appears along with the rest of the search results.
>
> This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate --
and
> annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why
doesn't
> the Iowa City Airport come up first?
> --
> Jay Honeck
> Iowa City, IA
> Pathfinder N56993
> www.AlexisParkInn.com
> "Your Aviation Destination"
>
>

[Jay Honeck]

> FWIW: I went to clusty.com and your hotel was number 1 on the list.

Well, that's cool -- but wrong.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"