Use GoTo for Undiluted Inktomi Rank?

[tedster]

I just got fascinated today with using GoTo for Inktomi results. My thinking is that GoTo has little or no attention on the Ink section of their results (after the bid terms), so it should be a pretty good spot to watch for Inktomi gyrations.

I've been very frustrated trying to monitor iWon, MSN, HotBot etc., since they seem to tailor the results so much.

I know that Ink offers several options to their partner sites (four, I think I read somewhere), but my guess right now is that GoTo is pretty vanilla Inktomi. Anyone else ever watch GoTo for this purpose?

[WebGuerrilla]

Actually, GoTo's Ink results always seem to be way out of wack when compared to other Ink Partners.

If GoTo uses the standard default Ink Algo, then all the other partners seem to have selected the same custom options.

I just ran a quick check on a three word term that Ink indexed through the paid plan. Here is what I found.

MSN - #14 (four were directory results, and there were six duplicate listings from Go.com. That put the actual Ink listing at #4)

HotBot - #13 (first 10 were directhit. Actual placement #3)
Iwon - #5
Canada.com - #5

Running the same search at Goto showed no results. The biggest difference I can see is that GoTo rarely lists anything other than the home page. This includes listing far fewer subdomains. They seem to make an exception for About.com sites, but other than that, they rarely show up.

It could be a case of them having a link pop option turned up quite a bit.

If I had to choose one or two engines to analyze for the proper Ink page, I think I would stick with either HotBot results from #11 on or Canada.com

[makemetop]

I agree that GoTo results are often way out and irregular on Inktomi. I now tend to use HotBot UK (www.hotbot.co.uk) for checking unfiltered Inktomi results as there is no influence from any directory or Direct Hit in their results and (currently) no filtering of any sort. Results are similar to Iwon but without any pop-ups etc.

[tedster]

Thanks, webguerilla. That's exactly the kind of input I need right now.

I have a client who ranks like this (single keyword, paid page):

GoTo - #1
iWon - #9
HotBot - #25
MSN - #78
Canada - beyond #200

It's making me crazy, and I really want to get a handle on this. My other clients are not quite so chaotic, but this is especially tough.

<added later>
makemetop, thanks for the hint. hotbot.co.uk returns a #9 for my problem page, same as iWon.

[stcrim]

Ted,

What INK does and how it plays out in the INK partner portals are two very different things. I use to spend hours crawling all over Anzwers.com for their pure INK results. Anzwers results were within a hair of INK.yahoo also.

Now we watch MSN for our middle of the road INK. Tweak a page to do well in MSN (regardless of the directory listing) and you will at least do fair with the other INK partners. Once you hit that middle of the road, then you can start tweaking out your pages for the other INK partners.

I use to get a large amount of "free" GOTO/INK traffic - not anymore. Their PPCs rule.

-s-

[tedster]

Steve, I appreciate your advice.

The page used to hold a #7 on MSN and then the bottom fell out somewhere over the last week or two. Now I see four results in the top ten that come from lord-knows-where, complete unknowns on other search engines. Not our normal companions, you know?

What factors do you think might be making such a big difference between an MSN rank at #78 and a rank at iWon and HotBotUK at #9?

MSN rank means a whole lot more traffic to this site than rank on the other Ink partners, and that alone is enough reason to focus there.

[stcrim]

Since my primary target is MSN I let the other INk partners fall where they may. (You can't win them all, so go for the most traffic)

We use exactly the same pages that ranked well a year ago (before all this PTP stuff) And we use them for our "find me if you can" and "ptp" INK projects.

These are also the same pages that did great in INK.YAHOO

-s-

[Marcia]

tedster, I am experiencing the identical results at canada.com as msn, except for the absence of the directory listings coming before - matter of fact, the paid page (the root index page) is now coming up at canada under the main search term for the unpaid page /directory/index.html

I see no dilution there with anything but Ink results, and it does not seem to be taking very long, even with the unpaid.

[skibum]

Taking out all directory results and paid listinging, one site I focus on in Inktomi (low-moderately compeitive 2 word phrase) is #1 GOTO (after all bids) #1, on iWon #1, on Canada.com, #1 Sprinks, #19 Hotbot (though I can 't tell if there is something other than Inktomi coming first) sort looks like 10 direct hit, then 8 sites with ODP cats listed, then this one, which is in ODP but Hotbot doesn't show a category for it. #1 Anzwers, and #1 on MSN after all directory results. It's a very limited sample size, but there seems to be some consistancy.

It is an index.htm page and PositionTech has not been used.

[tedster]

On another thread webguerilla pointed out one factor I wasn't paying attention to -- by default MSN doesn't cluster pages from the same domain.

Once I set the option to "one result per domain" everything makes sense -- the site is still at #7 instad of #78.

My other clients' pages seem much more well-behaved. But this site, for some reason, is a very hyperactive one on many search engines, not just Ink.

[Brett_Tabke]

I always like to use Iwon and Canada.com, and ICQit.

ICQit, although little traffic, always seemed purer to real ink than even Aol or yahoo used too.

[Robert Charlton]

I just ran the same search on a bunch of Inktomi sites, checking for a relatively new site that's been doing well on MSN, HotBot, GoTo, etc for about 6 weeks now. To make things super simple, I searched for our prime search term, and also for the company name.

MSN, HB, GoTo (allowing for paid, directory, and DH) are pretty much identical...

It took me a while to figure out what was happening with ICQit... they don't tell you that the first results they deliver are directory results. You have to click the little pointing finger down below to make that happen (makes you wonder why we try so hard to get search position).

The site doesn't appear at all on Canada.com or iWon. The results on Canada and iWon are the same and look very old.

On MSN in very popular categories, by the way, it's possible to get completely buried by LookSmart results. I just did a test search there for an area I'm working on and got 93 directory results preceding any search results. Again, makes you wonder why we put in all this effort....

[WebGuerrilla]

Yes, there is a definite difference in the frequency Ink partners refresh their data. Canada.com seems to be the slowest. It's one of those facts that doesn't make it out of the fine print in the paid inclusion program. Re-spidering every 48 hours doesn't equal a new listing every 48 hours.

[Robert Charlton]

Iwon is also doing something that very frequently is crashing my browser.

ICQit doesn't show urls in their web results, which makes it tough to use for researching other sites, unless you know all their titles. Also, if there are a lot of directory listings, it takes forever to get to the option to do a web search.

Any other suggestions?