OT - How do search engines work?

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:EC2xb.313373$Fm2.328957@attbi_s04...
When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our


Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
--


Jay .... go to this page:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__S...City/Travel_an
d_Transportation/

At the top right you will see a link "Suggest A Site".

Click it and have your credit card ready. Yahoo and Google are like the
yellow pages. Want to play ... have to pay.


Edward

Edward,

Jay .... go to this page:

I went where you suggested, and found this in the "fine print":

*****
2.4 The current fee for Yahoo! Express for initial consideration in the
Directory is a NON-REFUNDABLE fee of US $299.00 applicable for each web site
submitted that does not include adult content and/or services. You
acknowledge that the payment of this fee is for consideration of your site
AND DOES NOT IN ANY WAY GUARANTEE THAT YOUR SITE WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE
DIRECTORY. Your payment only guarantees that Yahoo! will consider and
respond to your request within seven business days, by either accepting or
not accepting your site
*****

What kind of fool would agree to pay Yahoo, when this is all they offer?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article q%qxb.325424$Tr4.999278@attbi_s03,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

Edward,

Jay .... go to this page:

I went where you suggested, and found this in the "fine print":

*****
2.4 The current fee for Yahoo! Express for initial consideration in the
Directory is a NON-REFUNDABLE fee of US $299.00 applicable for each web site
submitted that does not include adult content and/or services. You
acknowledge that the payment of this fee is for consideration of your site
AND DOES NOT IN ANY WAY GUARANTEE THAT YOUR SITE WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE
DIRECTORY. Your payment only guarantees that Yahoo! will consider and
respond to your request within seven business days, by either accepting or
not accepting your site
*****

What kind of fool would agree to pay Yahoo, when this is all they offer?


Any commercial site wanting to get in will pay.

Yes the fine print seems scary, but it is there so they can refuse porn
sites and "how to make a bomb" type sites.

It is a "yearly" fee ... so you know they want you in, and hope that you
will renew every year. I have developed many sites and none have ever
been refused by Yahoo. They want the cash.

Edward

Edward Todd writes:

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:EC2xb.313373$Fm2.328957@attbi_s04...
When I type in "Iowa City Airport" at the Yahoo search screen, our


Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
--


Jay .... go to this page:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__S...City/Travel_an
d_Transportation/

At the top right you will see a link "Suggest A Site".

Click it and have your credit card ready. Yahoo and Google are like the
yellow pages. Want to play ... have to pay.

Google search does *not* *ever* accept money for search placement.
It's against their most basic, rock-bottom, policy. See item 1 in
"google facts and fiction"
http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: noguns-nomoney.com www.dd-b.net/carry/
Photos: dd-b.lighthunters.net Snapshots: www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: dragaera.info/

"Jay Honeck" writes:

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?

Google is the only search engine that particularly matters, but much
of what I say applies to most search engines anyway. (And Yahoo may
be using google search actually?)

Well. First of all, you're competing with a lot of other hotels in
Iowa city. This is going to make it difficult to get really top
placement for the generic search -- probably essentially impossible.

One thing you can improve is that you don't have any headings marked
on the page -- no h1, h2, etc. tags. Your big title is just
decorated text, not an actual heading. That should help. Words in
headings generally get extra weight.

I see you've already included it in the title, which is good (and I
don't remember seeing it there before).

Google page-rank really likes sites with links to them. You've got
lots of content on your site, which ought to get a lot of people to
link to you; but specifically asking for links from some places can
help. Local historical society? Other fans of the Iowa City airport,
of course. You seem to have 31 links already, which is good.

I dug into the Yahoo results from (and the first page seems to have
identical content to Google, suggesting that it really is google under
the hood still). You're mentioned in a link from a uiowa page on page
3 of the results, and don't seem to turn up in the first *15* pages of
results. That's seriously nasty.

Unlike many of the sites I've worked on, you may be a good candidate
for google ad-words -- buying some of those little ads on the right in
the results. You can play with it pretty cheaply, and set maximums,
and such.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: noguns-nomoney.com www.dd-b.net/carry/
Photos: dd-b.lighthunters.net Snapshots: www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: dragaera.info/

Jay Honeck wrote:

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Check out http://philip.greenspun.com/panda

George Patterson
Some people think they hear a call to the priesthood when what they really
hear is a tiny voice whispering "It's indoor work with no heavy lifting".