Italy - Italia

9 search engines, 11 directories

[rencke]

Do YOU know the answer behind ANY of the question marks below?
If so, please help make this chart more complete by posting a reply. The chart will be updated periodically. Just hit the reply button below and tell us what you know. If you register as a user, you can subscribe for free to automatic alerts by e-mail when any discussion thread that you are interested in has been updated. Just click on "E-mail notification" at the top of the page.
REMEMBER: EVERY LITTLE PIECE OF KNOWLEDGE HELPS!
As we say in Sweden: Tack!

Italy - Italia
Fact sheet [odci.gov]
Domain(s): it
Online population: 16,8 million (23,3%) (2Q/2001)
Native language(s): Italian, German, French, Slovene
Understanding of English: ?
Hosts in domain: 949.100 (April 2001)
Pages in domain: 8,74 mill (April 2001, all languages)
Pages in language: 9,78 mill (April 2001, all domains)
Local presence required for domain registration: Yes
Multiple domains allowed: No
Professional help: See bottom of page

Known general search engines:

AltaVista Italia [it.altavista.com]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Arianna [arianna.iol.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: 26 mill pageviews/month Local language(s) required: Yes Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Own + world results provided by Direct Hit Meta description used in search replies: No
Things that help ranking: Local language: Mandatory Local domain: Yes Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: No Keyword in meta keywords: No Keyword in header: Yes Keyword in 1st paragraph: Yes Other: Registration abt 30 days. Spider checks indexed pages once a week. Doaes not read meta tags, but checks for keyword relevance anywhere on page. MetaRobots tag not read, only robots.txt. Database of abt 4,5 million pages in Italian - just about 100% of total.

Excite [excite.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Italian WebSPACE [italianwebspace.com]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Jumpy [jumpy.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Google Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: Uses Google's global index. Very popular due to connection with Italy's Channel 5, showing docu soap 'Big Brother' online

Katalogo [katalogo.kataweb.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Lycos Italia [lycos.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

TecnoSeek [tecnoseek.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Voila [it.voila.com]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Keyword in meta keywords: ? Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?

Known general directories:

ABC-Italia [abcitaly.com]
Language interface: Italian, English Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

CVZ [cavarzano.com]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Iltrovatore [iltrovatore.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Ischianet Search [ischianet.com]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Multisoft [search.multisoft.it]
Language interface: Italian, English Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Ragnoitaliano [ragno.plugit.net]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Sharelook [sharelook.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Shinyseek! [shinyseek.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

superEva [supereva.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Virgilio [virgilio.it]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: 25 million page views per month Local language(s) required: Yes Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Own Meta description used in search replies: Yes
Things that help ranking: Local language: Yes, mandatory Local domain: No Keyword in URL: No Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: No Keyword in header: No Keyword in 1st paragraph: No Other: Sites are reviewed and accepted by human editors after submission (approx delay 60 days). Virgilio has its own directory of approx. 100,000 italian sites, but uses ODP (Open Directory Project) data for its world wide directory of non-italian language sites and offers Google search for web pages

Yahoo Italy [it.yahoo.com]
Language interface: Italian Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? No. of categories allowed per site: ? Search method: ?
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: ? Keyword in title: ? Keyword in description: ? Other: ?

Local people who can help with translations and advise:

Ettore Peyrot at [e-mail] translates English, French, Spanish and Russian into Italian and does SEO for the Italian market.

This area will be updated with e-mail and/or web addresses to translators and SEO specialists, who have posted a reply in this discussion. Please state your name, web and/or e-mail address, languages to/from and what you can help out with. Prices and promotional stuff will be edited out.

The easy way to post a reply: Copy from above, click button, paste and change.

Updated 13 June, 2001

(edited by: rencke on 4:09 pm (gmt) on June 13, 2001

[ettore]

Virgilio - NOT a SE but a searchable Directory.

Language interface: Italian
Traffic volume: 25 millions pageviews/month
Local language required: only italian language sites can be submitted
Local domain(s) only: no, any domain, provided that the site has italian language content
Search technology: proprietary
Meta description used in search replies: no

Things that help ranking
Local language: yes
Local domain: no
Keyword in URL: no
Keyword in title: yes
Keyword in description: yes
Keyword in meta keywords: no
Keyword in header: no
Keyword in 1st paragraph: no
Other: Sites are reviewed and accepted by human editors after submission (approx delay 60 days).
Virgilio has a proprietary directory of approx. 100,000 italian sites; uses Open Directory Project data for its Web Directory of non-italian language sites (actually, it uses ODP RDF dump trimming out World/Italiano category), and offers Google search for web pages.

[rencke]

Buona sera Ettore and welcome to Webmaster World. I hope you will like this forum and the information that you can find here. I am glad that you are joining the effort to map European search engines and also hope that the machine made translation into Italian of the "Moderator's chat room" "La stanza di chiacchierata del moderatore." [webmasterworld.com] is too terrible. If it offends you, I would be happy to change the faulty parts. Just let me know.

Thank you for the information you have provided on Virgilio. I will update the board during the weekend. Looking forward to hearing more from you.

- Jan

[ettore]

Thank you Jan.
I will provide updated information on all other Italian SEs and Directories as soon as possible.

In the meanwhile I am checking the "Moderator's chat room" text, and I will send you the translation (the machine made one is not offending anyone... but made me laugh enough to decide to spend some time for the good of other participants ;) )

As a marketing manager of a major Internet company in Italy I have an interest in SEO and I am following discussions in this board since the very beginning. I will be happy to share my experience with others, and continue to learn from other colleague's experiences. I can of course help in SEO and IMP in the Italian market, as well as in translating from English, French, Spanish and Russian to Italian. I won't post my company URL here not to fall in blatant self-promotion (since we offer also other products and services and not only SEO), but interested people can feel free to contact me via the e-mail shown on my profile page.

I am also a proud ODP editor, and my main areas of activity are World and - of course - World/Italiano. In an effort to better inform Italian language Internet users about ODP I publishedd a website at "ODP Unofficial Italian Web" [girosi.com], where I tried to give general information and suggestions to submitters as well as to people willing to become an editor, all in Italian language.

BTW, I see we will stick with English language even in these geographical areas. Really no local language allowed at all? I am comfortable with English, but unfortunately not many Italian users can easily read and write it...

Ettore

[rencke]

I have updated the info on Virgilio and moved it to directories.

Local language: If someone wants to post here in Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese or any of the Scandinavian languages it is OK. I will machine translate the post and re/post it. (If ettore is not around to correct the machine translation - as he has already done with my introduction in Italian - there is however a risk that you may laugh yourself to death.)

It is assumed that you can read English, so posts in English will not be translated into other languages. If you write in your own language, please construct complete and grammatically correct sentences and avoid local idioms that may not be found in dictionaries. And spell correctly - the translation machine has no spell check.

[ettore]

Arianna [arianna.iol.it]

Language interface: Italian
Traffic volume: 26 millions pageviews/month
Local language required: only italian language sites can be submitted
Local domain(s) only: no, any domain, provided that the site has italian language content
Search technology: proprietary
Meta description used in search replies: no

Things that help ranking
Local language: yes
Local domain: yes
Keyword in URL: yes
Keyword in title: yes
Keyword in description: no
Keyword in meta keywords: no
Keyword in header: yes
Keyword in 1st paragraph: yes
Keyword in page: yes
Other: Registration takes around 30 days. Arianna's proprietary spider checks indexed pages once a week, and doesn't consider MetaTags at all but checks for keyword relevance in the page. MetaRobots tag is not considered, but robots.txt files are. Arianna maintains a proprietary databsase of approx. 4.5 millions of pages italian sites.

[rencke]

Grazie Ettore. I have updated Arianna with your info. With a 100% complete index of pages in Italian and 26 mill pageviews per month, would it be fair to say that this is Italy's leading SE, or is there one even bigger?

PS. I was late in responding to this. The reason is that I have been touring nothwestern Sweden for a couple of days, lecturing local webmasters in the tourism industry on SEO. I learned that Italian tourists are important to those who offer hunting arrangemants, which I understand is a big thing in your country.

[ettore]

>>With a 100% complete index of pages in Italian<<

Not a 100% complete index, since Arianna lists any domain (not only .it TLD), provided that the site has Italian language content.

Arianna and Virgilio are actually considered Italy's leaders. Katalogo and SuperEva are following close, but I'll post details in the next days.

>>Italian tourists are important to those who offer hunting arrangemants<<
Yes, indeed. Being the country of Beretta and Bernardelli we have an established élite of hunters, who are more and more looking for hunting arrangements outside Italy due to hunting restrictions in our Country. :)

[angiolo]

Hi!

It seems that:

[it.yahoo.com...]

is missed in the list.

Niccolo'

[angiolo]

Another one is:

[jumpy.it...]

(Powered by google)

This portal is very popular in these days since it is possible to watch the TV program "Il grande fratello" (The Big brother: italian version).

Ciao,

Niccolo'

[rencke]

Thanks Niccolo. I have updated the main entry for Italy with your information. I also tried Jumpy and notice they seem to use Google's huge global index. I could not find any submit url link, but I guess that if you are in Google, you are in Jumpy automatically? What do you think?

Also noticed that they have a Jumpy in Spain, which was not on our list for Spain, so I will make an update there too.

[angiolo]

Hi Rencke!

Yes, if you are in Google, you automatically show in Jumpy.

I think that the ownership of Jumpy is from the famous private italian TV Mediaset (Berlusconi family, canale 5), but I am not sure.

Niccolo'

[angiolo]

Hi Rencke!

Maybe this address can help you to updated your listing:

[db.alba36.com...]

Sincerely,

niccolo'

[rencke]

Thank you Niccolo! I thought this was such a big piece of news, that I have started a separate discussion for it here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[NFFC]

Arianna [arianna.iol.it]

The Mondo [World?] results are provided by Direct Hit [directhit.com].

[rencke]

The main entry for Italy has now been updated.

[rencke]

Here is the Nielsen/NetRatings top 10 list for November 2000 (unique audience)

1. Seat Pagine Gialle 3,675,959 includes a.o. the Virgilio search engine
2. Infostrada 3,837,371
3. Yahoo 2,491,717
4. Tiscali 2,350,450
5. MSN 2,287,330
6. Lycos 2,266,330
7. Microsoft 1,260,279
8. Katabweb2,140,051
9. Jumpy 1,875,551
10 Dada 1,514,868

Have marked known search engines and directories in bold. Can anyone explain what the #1 site is and where it can be found?

Edited by: rencke

[davide]

ciao rencke.

the #1 is Virgilio+Tin.it+ItalianYellowPages

a merger occurred last year.
a risentirci

davide

[davide]

salve a tutti,

vorrei segnalare a tutti i webmasters italiani la nuova "guida ai motori di ricerca italiana" sviluppata recentemente dalla staff di netserve.

la guida offre descrizioni e caratteristiche dei motori italiani, informazioni sulle meta-tag, link alle pagine add-url dei principali SE, testi informativi sui SE e sulle directories.

entrate nel mio profilo e cliccate sul link indicato. una volta alla home page, cercate il link alla guida (lo trovate sulla colonna azzurra a destra). fateci sapere cosa ne pensate! mandateci una e-mail o utilizzate il ns forum.

English:
hi guys. if you are a webmaster intersted in italian SE and Directories, there is a new 100% italian guide to italian SE. follow the link indicated in my profile and click "guida ai motori di ricerca". 100% italian language

from there you can even link to WmW!

[rencke]

The Italy discussion has been updated with statistics reflecting the increase of Internet use. Almost 1 Italian in 4 is now online. An interesting fact is that as much as 21% of all pages in Italian are in the dot-com domain. This means that Italian search engines will have to accept dot-coms into their indexes.

[sugarkane]

Just an update to the domain registration rules - registration is open to anyone resident in the European Union (or companies based there).

If you can provide a VAT (local sales tax) number or company registration number, you are allowed multiple domains, else you're limited to one.

Disclaimer: my registration hasn't actually gone through yet, but this was the information I was given ;)

[angiolo]

Hi Rencke!

I have this statistic (March 2001 AcNielsen):

Top 20 Dominion (Unique visitors x 1000 and pages x 1000)

Virgilio.it
3630 and 146664

iol.it
3602 and 180163

microsoft,com
2728 and 27441

tiscalinet.it
2542 and 76177

msn.com
2069 and 110060

supereva.it
2052 and 106606

kataweb.it
1903 and 69100

tin.it
1715 and 36026

yahoo.it
1697 and 90009

msn.it
2584 and 54309

yahoo.com
1416 and 29965

geocoties.com
1385 and 19630

passport.com
1277 and 31003

xoom.it
1250 and 15048

inwind.it
1197 and 44808

tripod.it
1148 and 13008

napster.com
1017 and 9232

it.altavista.com
906 and 16669

xoom.com
854 and 3936

jumpy.it
840 and 26050

Probably I will be at the London meeting too!

See you.

Angiolo

[rencke]

Great stuff Angiolo! Mimmo listed iol.it as a leading search engine in a separate discussion. Could you explain what it is?

Looking forward to seeing you in London. It seems that a lot of people are going.

[angiolo]

Hi Rencke!

iol.it is a property of Infostrada (something like Telecom etc.).

The search engine of iol.it is arianna:

[arianna.iol.it...]
to submit to this search engine the add url is.
[arianna.iol.it...]

I do not know if they have their own index (for Italy); for international searches they use Askjeeves.com.

Doing a search on Arianna restricted to the Italian web seems that they have their own index: mostly .it dominions but .com dominions too.

With reference to
tiscalinet.it
it is similar to Infostrada or telecom etc.
Their search engine is
www.janas.it
and the add url is:
[janas.tiscalinet.it...]

Sumbission tips:
if you are in the index, you will receive a message segnaling the mistake.

To score fine on Janas, you shoul have the keywords on what a surfer can see: metatags are not so important.

Angiolo

[ettore]

Tiscali is undergoing some changes on pages.

The new URL of Janas is [janas.tiscali.it...]

and the submission page moved to
[janas.tiscali.it...]

From their help page at [janas.tiscali.it...]
Janas visit sites every 15 days extracting information from page text and doesn't look at MetaTags.

[wolfy]

Hi rencke!!
regarding online poulation there is
INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS FOR THE MONTH OF
MAY 2001, Italy from Nielsen that says we are 16,840,090

Bye
wolfy

[agerhart]

I know this doesn't have to do with the thread.....but I couldn't resist. I am so excited, I am leaving for Italy tomorrow! It will be my first time to this beautiful country!

[rencke]

Re: Janas. Thanks Ettore. It seems we haven't got anything on Janas before in the Italy overview, so I will make a new entry for it. As I understand it, Tiscali is an ISP operating in several countries with Janas as the engine on their portal page. They have recently merged with WorldOnline, which has Fast search on their portal pages. Do you think they will be consolidating their search engine around either Janas och Fast in the future? Can you shed any light on this?

Re: Online population. Thanks Wolfy. Have updated the overview accordingly.

Re: Vacations in Italy. Have a nice trip, agerhart. Have you learned the necessary phrases yet? Only 38% of the Italians understand English. Here are two: Sono amerikano (I am American). Scusi, dove il una cabinetto? (Excuse me, where is the toilet?) The possible answers are: a destra (to the right, a sinistra (to the left) or al fondo (straight ahead). If they answer anything else, you are in trouble. :)

Sorry about the spelling, Ettore and Wolfy

[Eric_Jarvis]

agerhart: "I know this doesn't have to do with the thread.....but I couldn't resist. I am so excited, I am leaving for Italy tomorrow! It will be my first time to this beautiful country!"

while since I've been, but I will be going back first chance I get

remember the simple rules..."ciao" is safe at either end of a conversation..."prego" is almost never the wrong word to say...and NEVER drink cappucino after midday

[agerhart]

thanks for the tips guys,

I can't wait to get there......and unfortunately, I don't know any Italian. :(