Exercise 23

Exercise 23: Searching mechanisms

1. What is a spider? What does it do?
Webopedia (2009) states that a spider is a program that automatically fetches Web pages. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. It's called a spider because it crawls over the Web. Another term for these programs is webcrawler. Because most Web pages contain links to other pages, a spider can start almost anywhere. As soon as it sees a link to another page, it goes off and fetches it. Large search engines, like Alta Vista, have many spiders working in parallel.

2. What is a meta-search engine? Provide some examples.
Wikipedia (2009) explains that a meta-search engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source. Metasearch engines enable users to enter search criteria once and access several search engines simultaneously. Metasearch engines operate on the premise that the Web is too large for any one search engine to index it all and that more comprehensive search results can be obtained by combining the results from several search engines. This also may save the user from having to use multiple search engines separately.

The examples of meta-search engine are listed in the following:
a.) Chofter meta-search engine (http://www.chofter.com/)
b.) Dogpile meta-search engine (http://www.dogpile.com/)
c.) Ixquick meta-search engine (http://www.ixquick.com/)

3. How can you get your site listed at major search sites; and how could you improve your site ranking?

We can get our site listed at major search sites by following methods:

a.) The website named AllTheWeb (http://www.alltheweb.com/) that is owned by overture. It also provides results for Lycos. And it provides a free submission. You can add your web site's URL by this link http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php.

b.) The website named Altavista (http://www.altavista.com/) that is owned by overture. It also provides a free submission. You can add your web site's URL by this link http://www.altavista.com/addurl/new.

c.) The website named Google (http://www.google.com/) that is the top choice for searchers. It's search engineresults also appear in Yahoo and AOL. You can add your web site's URL by this link http://www.google.com/addurl.html.

We can improve our web site ranking by the following methods.

a.) Place keywords in your web pages by following Isitebuild(2006) 's suggestion.

• Title Tag - This tag should contain your most important keyword phrase. Make the title interesting enough to grab the visitor's attention. Only use 5 to 6 words in your title with your most relevant keyword in the beginning.
• Description Meta Tag - The search engines often use this tag when they display the description of your web site in the search results. Try to make the description inviting for your visitors. The length should be less than 200 characters, including spaces.
• Keyword Meta Tag - This tag will contain a listing of your keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your page and enable a Search Engine to find you.Here are some things to remember: (1) Don't use the same keyword more than 3 times. (2) Use keywords that occur in your Title Tag and Description Tag. (3) Use only 200 characters for all your keywords. (4)Use different keywords for all your pages. (4) Only use keywords that are relevant to your site. (5) Use lower case letters. (6) Use the single and plural forms of your keywords. (7) Use commas or spaces between your keywords or keyword phrases.
• Heading Tags - These tags hold separate topics between paragraphs and range from h1, which is very large and bold to h6, which is very small and bold. Your page heading should contain your most important keywords or keyword phrase.
• Alt Tag - This tag is used to add text in place of the image. The user may haveturned off reading the graphics to make the page load faster. Therefore he will read the ALT Tag text instead.Add short keyword rich text to your graphic links. Make sure theALT text describes the link destination.
• Hypertext Links - Include your keywords or keyword phrase in your link text.
• Content - Search Engine spiders put more weight on keyword richcontent that is higher up on the page rather than in the middleor lower sections. Insert your keywords and keyword phrases inyour text at least three times.
• Types of Sites that won't get indexed by Search Engines. - Flash and Frame Sites - pages created this way will be avoidedby the Search Engines spiders. Dynamic Pages - any web address that contains a question mark(i.e. ASP, Perl, Cold Fusion), will not be indexed by thespiders. Password Protected Pages - Search Engines Spiders will not indexany area that is protected by a password.
• Use Meta Tag Generators - These are tools that can be used to automatically generate yourkeywords. Here are some resources you can use:http://www.bcentral.com/products/metatags.asp

References:

Webopedia(200). "Spider". Received 6th May, 2009 from URL - http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/s/spider.html

Wikipedia (2009). "Metasearch engine". Received 6th May, 2009 from URL -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasearch_engine

Isitebuild (2006). "How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Sitefor Search Engines-Part 2 ".Received 6th May, 2009 from URL - http://www.isitebuild.com/keywords2.htm