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??

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