Re: UKNM: Frames and Search Engines

[Tom Hukins]

Ally Shuttleworth wrote:

> No-one ever knows the 'exact' criteria really. Search engines are quite

> secretive about their algorythms, they sometimes say they rank one

> way...then do it completely the opposite. It's basically to stop people

> from being able to spam them, even worse than they do already.


Jo Chipchase replied:

> I certainly do not know by which criteria Yahoo! ranks sites.  The entire

> process appears to be hit-and-miss.  I submitted three sites to Yahoo! (UK)

> on the same day.  They subsequently registered one of the sites (not the

> best / most valuable of the three, I hasten to add) and not the others.

> E-mail enquiries about their procedures failed to elicit any response...


Jo, from a marketing perspective, I think it's a bad idea to think

of Yahoo as a search engine. Marketeers should distinguish between

computer-managed search engines and human-managed directories.


It's easy to get your site included in Alta Vista, Hotbot, Google,

Lycos and all the other search engines which are managed by

simple algorithms. The indexing and searching processes are designed

to be consistent and predictable.


Yahoo, along with other directories such as Looksmart and the Open

Directory, does not use such algorithms. Yahoo is edited by humans.

Humans are not always consistent or predictable.


I think of it this way: If you send out press releases, you might

have a rough idea of which publications will be interested and how

much publicity each will generate. You'll get a few surprises,

though. Yahoo editors, like newspaper editors, have huge amounts of

material to sift through whilst attempting to provide a useful,

usable resource.


Regards,

Tom 

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