Test Your Search Engine IQ

Dan Thies

The year 2001 saw dramatic changes in the search engine world.
Major players have either folded or stopped crawling the web,
pay-per-click services like Goto/Overture have become much more
prominent, and "theme-based indexing" has firmly taken root.

Website owners who don't understand what these changes mean for
them are missing out on tremendous opportunities to boost their
site's search engine traffic.

This little "Search Engine IQ Test" will help you find out how
much of what you know about search engines is still true today.

1. Which search engine provides "web page" results for Yahoo?
A - Altavista
B - Excite
C - Google
D - FAST/AllTheWeb
E - Inktomi

2. Which of these search engines uses "theme-based indexing?"
A - Altavista
B - Hotbot
C - Google
D - FAST/AllTheWeb
E - All of the above

3. Which search engines use META tags in ranking sites?
A - Hotbot
B - MSN
C - Google
D - FAST/AllTheWeb
E - Altavista

4. Which of the following search engines uses its own database
of web sites to provide its primary results?
A - MSN
B - Hotbot
C - Lycos
D - Excite
E - None of the above

5. In order to achieve top search engine rankings, you must
submit your site to the major search engines:
A - Once
B - Every Day
C - Every Week
D - Every Month
E - Every Year

6. True or False: Ranking in the top ten for your favorite
search phrase means you'll get lots of traffic.
A - True
B - False

Answers:
1. C
Google now provides "web page" matches for Yahoo!, which
accounts for a good percentage of the website referrals that
come from Yahoo! These used to be provided by Inktomi.

2. E
All of these major search engines now uses "themes" to rank and
categorize websites. Failing to understand how themes affect
ranking is one of the biggest reasons websites rank poorly, or
fail to get any search engine traffic at all.

3. A
While you should be aware that most search engines could care
less what your META tags say, the Inktomi database that feeds
Hotbot, MSN, and other search engines does consider them. This
means you can't ignore them, even though META tags have become
less and less important every year.

4. E
None of these search engines uses its own database of websites:
MSN & Hotbot use Inktomi, Lycos gets its results from FAST, and
Excite was recently sold Infospace, the owner of Dogpile. Among
the so-called major search engines, only Altavista, FAST,
Google, Inktomi and Northern Light still crawl the web.

5. A
But this is a trick question. Most websites get found and added
to the major search engine indexes within 2-6 weeks even if they
are never submitted. The only proven way to get in faster is
"paid inclusion," which is available at Altavista and Inktomi.

6. B
My 'Website Promotion Central' site has had top ten rankings for
"website promotion" for over a year, but most of my referrals
don't come from that single phrase. Because of "themes," I see
hundreds of 3, 4 and 5 word search phrases in my logs - these
are much more important than my primary keyword phrase.

How did you do? If you got less than half of these answers, you
probably need a refresher course in search engines. Don't feel
badly, though. Thanks to "themes," search engine optimization
has gotten easier for the do-it-yourself webmaster, not harder.

I wish you success...

About the Author

Dan Thies has been helping his clients (and friends) promote
their websites since 1996, and has become a respected authority
on search engine positioning. His latest book, "Search Engine
Fast Start," is available at http://www.cannedbooks.com
To subscribe to his free weekly search engine optimization
newsletter, send a blank email to subscribe@cannedbooks.com

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