Forum Moderators: bakedjake
hotbot has always puzzled us, and although we pay for a number of pages to be included (inktomi), they never show up where they should in the hotbot.com index.
yet when you do a search 'worldwide' (i.e. using the international db, and not regional specific) in any regional hotbot (co.uk, de, es) we are #1 for our top keywords.
in one of the searches, a sub page of a directory appears at #10, the actual home page of that directory is nowhere, but ranks #1 in all regional hotbots, google, av, etc.
it seems as though the ppi pages are being deliberately penalised in the hotbot.com. even in www.about.com (other inktomi engine) we are #1 for our main keyword. but hotbot.com is useless ;)
has any had any similar experiences? trying to right to inktomi doesn't work, cos they give a standard answer about not having any say in how each engine ranks, and hotbot just send us to their page with tips on ranking? maybe we have to try harder to contact hotbot?
cheers
However, keep in mind that all the INK partners can tweak their algo to suit what they want to display for their users...see how Overture and MSN use the INK backfill differently?
Hotbot does the same thing. Of course, who uses Hotbot, anyway?
In many ways, Hotbot has been dead for a while, at least the .com I don't know anybody who uses the engine, and desipite getting a lot of traffic from my paid INK pages in MSN, I've yet to see referral #1 from Hotbot (even though they are top ranked for many different keyword phrases).
Hope this helps. :)
come to think of it, that is true, who uses hotbot anyway ;-))))
we too get some good referrals from msn / inktomi pages, but have yet to see one from hotbot.
thanks for putting mind at rest :)
Here's a link from 2000: WebmasterWorld Pay for spidering forum, Inktomi conversation [webmasterworld.com]
Either way, the forum to check out for information on INK is here [webmasterworld.com]
