OT - How do search engines work?

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??

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

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

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?

("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-g3...wa-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.

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