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As we say in Sweden: Tack!
Germany - Deutschland. Search engines.
Fact sheet [odci.gov]
Domain(s): de
Online population: 15,9 million (July 2000)
Native language(s): German
Understanding of English: Very high
Hosts in domain: 1,9 million (Jul 2000)
Pages in language: 9,9 million (Sep 2000, all domains)
Pages in domain: 9,6 million (Sep 2000, all languages)
Local presence required for domain registration: Yes
Multiple domains allowed: Yes
Professional help: See bottom of page
Known general search engines:
Abacho [abacho.com]
Language interface: German 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: ?
Abadoor [abadoor.com]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: yes
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: Onle one page per domain, will not spider others. Similar to directory. Other: Max url length: 42 characters. Maximum 12 pages per domain.
Acoon [acoon.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: NO Search technology: Own Meta description used in search replies: Yes
Things that help ranking: Local language: yes Local domain: No Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: No Other: Keyword density is the most important factor. Flooding and repetition observed to be accepted.
Altavista Deutschland [de.altavista.com]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: AltaVista
Meta description used in search replies: YesThings that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: Yes Keyword in 1st paragraph: Yes Other: Link popularity. Theme based indexing. Date: Older better.
AOL [aol.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 3,9 mill page views/month 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: ?
Belissima - see Abacho
Columbus finder discontinued.
Crawler.de [crawler.de] see Abacho
Excite [excite.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 15 mill page views/month 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: ?
Fireball [fireball.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 10,8 mill pageviews/month (research)/30 mill (own figures) Local language(s) required: Yes Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Altavista
Meta description used in search replies: Yes Things that help ranking: Local language: Mandatory Local domain: No Keyword in URL: Yes, big. Keyword in title: Yes, boost if title=url. Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: No Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: No Other: Fireball reads additional meta tags indication a.o. language, audience and subject. Found in help pages. Likes high keyword density. and newer pages before older. Links and link text important.
Infoseek [infoseek.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: Germany's #1 search engine with 30.8 mill page views/month + traffic from T-online Local language(s) required: Yes Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: ? Meta description used in search replies: Yes, and keywords too.
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: ? Keyword in URL: Yes Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Not much Keyword in meta keywords: yes Keyword in header: yes Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: Also on main page of T-online, Germany's öeading portal with 47,6 mill unique visitors/month.
Lotse - see Speedfind
Nathan [nathan.de]
Language interface: German 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 Deutschland [lycos.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 36,6 mill page views/month Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Direct Hit + Fast Meta description used in search replies: No
Things that help ranking: Local language: ? Local domain: no 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: Kwd on ALT-tags. Kwd location: High preferred. First three results from own directory, following 5-6 from DirectHit, rest from spidered index, a change to Fast is expected, but not implemented per Dec 1, 2000.
MSN [msn.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: 3,4 million page views/month Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Inktomi 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: ?
Speedfind [speedfind.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: No Local domain(s) only: No Search technology: Own Meta description used in search replies: Yes, one line description, one line keywords, several line text from page.
Things that help ranking: Local language: Yes Local domain: Yes Keyword in URL: No Keyword in title: Yes Keyword in description: Yes Keyword in meta keywords: Yes Keyword in header: ? Keyword in 1st paragraph: ? Other: ?
Tigersuche [tigersuche.de]
Language interface: German Traffic volume: ? Local language(s) required: ? Local domain(s) only: ? Search technology: Oen spidered index supplemented by secondary results from Altavista, Fast, Fireball and 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: ?
Local people who can help with translations and advise:
Ulrich Wisser, luna-park GmBH. Traffic analyses, SEO and translations into German. u.wisser@luna-park.de 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 Jan 26, 2001
Edited by: rencke
Good to see information about german search engines !
I have to comment the fact-sheet about germany though. I would not consider the germanīs "Understanding of English" Very high.
Rather medium but thats just a side note.
Hope to be able to give some input too once in a while.
take care
All Germans I have ever met, quite a lot, spoke excellent English. The Queen of Sweden speaks the language perfectly. That is why I put "very high" in the fact section above. English is your first foreign language, right? And it is mandatory in schools, or???? But I could be wrong and have no basis for this except my personal experience. Do you think you could find me some figures?
So far, your countrymen Wisser and oLeon have made substantial contribution to this discussion (see thread #1), but there are still many questionmarks left and we haven't even started with the other German discussion - German Directories. So your input would be very much appreciated. Hope to hear a lot from you. (And don't forget to read in other foras, WmW is like a Search Engine Optimization University.)
Well germans and their english....
There are a lot which speak english very well but not as many as a lot of other europeans.
Smaller countries like denmark,sweden, finland,norway, belgium, netherlands and puuh forgive me the ones I forgot , do speak a much better english for sure. They grow up with the language in TV, movies , media and more.
Bigger countries like france,germany, spain...and the others donīt because everything is dubbed so we
donīt have the language in our daily life at all.
Language interface: German
Traffic volume: 36,6 mill page views/month
Local language(s) required: ?
Local domain(s) only: no
Search technology: directhit (?)
Meta description used in search replies: no
Things that help ranking: Local language: ?
Local domain: no 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: keywords in <img alt>; the more the keyword is above, the better.
As I posted in the danish forum:
The first three results from their own directory, the next five/six (probably) from DirectHit, then from their own spidered Index.
Abadoor:
- URL-length only 42 characters
- max. 12 pages per Domain
Blitzsuche, Columbus-finder, Aladin, Crawler, Eule, Spider, Bellissima are owned by Abacho.
That means: the same indexes, same results - but Bellissima has its own portal (focus on women-issues) and a seperate addURL; Blitzsuche, Crawler and Columbus-finder have their own appearances and a seperate addURL without their own portal (they are just searchengines); Eule, Spider, Aladin donīt exist anymore.
Crawler.de is powered by Abacho.de and uses its index.
It seems that Columbus-finder.de doesn`t exist anymore.
Do you have any good ranking German pages in there oLeon?
After some month of heavvy SE work I might have some news.
### witch.de.###
you get listed within two days.
Use two times your keyword/phrase in the title,and
meta,body,url...you are number one.
witch.de is one of the first engines metager.de crawls, so its quite important because metager.de
has high traffic, hasnīt it?
so high listing in witch means high listing on metager.de if there is nothing in yahoo for that keyword.
( I did not test that thoroughly though !!!!)
### www.spray.net ###
I do get a few hits from spray as well.
At first I thought their search results are by fast (they say "powered by fast" on their page)
but the results for the same keyword are not the same as on the fast site.
They might have their own database?
### google ###
someone ask about google.
I do get a lot of hits from google ( .com and .de ).
My keyword is multilingual though.
I am actually not getting so much from google itself,
but my keyword cant be found within yahoo and then yahoo redirects the search to google.
So if you lucky you may have a big traffic boost because you are NOT listed with yahoo ;) (ok maybe you would get more if you are listed)
----------------------
Mhhh a lot of that above is actually "How to get a high listing" maybe even worth a new thread.
something to the page title.
I dont know if this is known but
it DOES matter a lot if you keyword/phrase is the first thing of the title.
I dont know if this differs from engine to engine
but they all like it a lot.
thats it for now,
the post is a bit unstructured but I am bit "hyper" today.
bye bye
wintermute
wintermute: Witch.de appears to be a business oriented searchable directory. We have nothing about it in the discussion about German Directories [webmasterworld.com] and I have not seen it or Matager in any statistical report. Does anyone now?
>it DOES matter a lot if you keyword/phrase is the first thing of the title
There are several discussion here at WebmasterWorld where this has been mentioned at one time or another and I believe the consensus is that it is good practise to do as you suggest. As you say, it seems to work in most engines. Some engines will give you a big boost if the same keyword or phrase is also in the url. So big that it might well put you into the #1 spot.
Re: Spray. There seems to be more than one Fast index around. Have you compared Lycos.de to Spray.de? I think they use the same Fast index and Spray.de will be shut down and merged with Lycos according to the latest info.
Its not a directory.
My site would not have got in if reviewed by a person.
well search for "livecams" on metager.de.
You will get results from witch.
It does not seem to work for all searchterms but it does for mine.(its not livecams ;)
RE: spray .. my site is not listed with fast, not with lycos but with spray.
"gesetzeswidrigem oder anstössigem Inhalt" ? Well now Wintermute. Naughty, naughty! ;)
There are thousands of automatic directories around the world, where no humans review contents. (You can even find lots of freeware and shareware for such directories and set one up yourself) The rather long legal disclaimer, the request for a description, the possibillity to give a page ranking and the fact that an expiration date has to be set for the entry, points to Witch.de being an automated directory, rather than a search engine with a spidered index.
Spray is definitely using a version of Fast's main index. It returns almost the same number of pages, but with a different ranking order with .de and German language first. If you make an advanced search in Fast for your domain and with the offensive contents filter set to "off", does it not show up? Fast spiders on its own initiative, so if there is one single link pointing to you, you will get into their index. If you submitted to Spray, it ended up with Fast.
Lycos, on the other hand... Well, we shall have to rely on oLeons research for that. I got just 2/3 of the search replies from Fast and Spray. Can't figure out what they are using, but it is supposed to be Fast.
after a little walk outside my mind is cleared and you are right.
witch.de is such an automatic directory, you have to fill in title,description and so on.
My site would have not been reviewed not because of "gesetzeswidrigem oder anstössigem Inhalt" but of being considered spam.
Its interesting that witch does not have a kind of spam filter and is playing an important part (obviously for some searchterms only ) at metager.de
You are also right with fast.
Is their offensive filter on by default at simple search? shiiiiit! I thought the scandinavians are very sexual liberal folks ;)
It could be, that Google checks your IP, because the first time I searched for something I only got german results without clicking that option. That can be a reason for that some germans on Google.com got german pages.
BTW: I couldnīt find Ina-netz.de anymore...;-(
I think that Dwight D. Eisenhower, president of USA 1952-60 was the last person to believe that. We earned the reputation because of a film in the 1950ies where half a breast of a woman was actually shown on screen for about 2 seconds. In the same movie a man and a women (the same one with half a breast shown) were seen from behind going skinny dipping in a lake, the sunlight shining straight into the camera so that they were nothing but black outlines. That was considered outrageous 50 years ago.
Today - in the few Swedish newspapers that still carry porn ads - the selling argument is usually something like "Hard core American pornography 1 m + 2 w" Times change don't they? Glad that Ike and Mamie didn't live to see that.
Re Fast: It looks as if the offensive contents filter is set to "On" for standard searches. Did my search standard once, switched to Advanced with filter off and got about 2500 pages more (+1%) for the same search.
Re: Google. Interesting observation, oLeon. Could you make some tests? I get Swedish interface as default, but have to click the radio button to limit the search to Swedish pages. I doubt if they would be capable of doing a reverse DNS lookup and determine location in the short time it takes them to give you an answer - typically <0,5 seconds. What do you think? My guess is browser or PC language setting.
Re: Ina-netz.de Can't find it either. Will remove it from the list.
As to Mr Becker: That must have been the most expensive quickie in history. 6 million DEM was it?
Added: That Lycos vs Google thing. Is that for exactly the same keywords?
Edited by: rencke
