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These pages have been spidered on a regular basis but without a change for 2 plus years.
I love a well aged wine - but search engine listings...
-s-
The reason we did this is we were seeing a lot of flash or graphics bound pages where ODP using search engines were producing a title and description and we were not.
Seems to me you shouldn't mess with the BOW, Tim. Certainly not to pick up a few (hundred thousand) flash pages.
Just a bit dusty - wouldn't you say?
>>>flash or graphics bound pages
Less that 1/10th of 1 percent have a completely graphic home page.
I have a site that had very current and applicable Titles/Descriptions but find those Titles being reduced to 5 or 6 words with the Descriptions dissapearing altogether.
The pages in question are less than 2 years old and are not listed individually in ODP. Where is this stuff coming from? Why do I go to the bother of providing useful titles/descriptions if engines ignore them and put in their own stuff from I don't know where?
Of course referrals are now slipping due to less *meat* for the indexing engine to chew on. That affects me - dissapointing.
But more importantly, the searchers are not getting as good results as there is "less *meat* for the indexing engine to chew on." That affects the engine - adverserly, and in the long term, drastically.
<shakes head>
Onya
Woz
That's for sure. I have a site that, as of a year ago has nothing to do with the ODP description and can't for the life of me get them to change it or the category after at least 5 requests. No editor!
It was also listed in Looksmart long before paid inclusion came into play. As it is a free site and produces no income for me, I was not about to pay to have it reviewed.
So now Ink has picked up the old description from both sources ... which is entirely irrelevant. Not a good move for Ink considering how many people can't seem to get the ODP to change anything and you have to pay LookSmart to change it. So much for search results quality.
In fact, I've come to realize that a very clever way to manipulate listings is to wait until you get an ODP description and then optimize for other (related) keywords. That way you get hits on both! It has worked for me on three different sites ... and I didn't do it on purpose. Its a major failing within the whole editor controlled description concept.
One site I did for a friend is number one on Google for a keyword that doesn't even appear on the index page anymore and is not in the site description!
Paid pages are still showing the L$ title and description... From your post it sounds like this shouldn't be happening... Is this some sort of glitch or did I read your post wrong?
Another interesting thing is what it says in describing the free Ink submit at MSN [listings.looksmart.com]:
Commercial sites may be submitted at no charge for inclusion in the Web Pages section of MSN Search. Sites in the Web Pages section will be ranked below sites that are submitted via the paid submission service and will not be included in the MSN directory. There is no guarantee of acceptance or turnaround time for these submissions.
This doesn't seem to be 100% so. You can now mouse over the titles at MSN and see which are the paid and unpaid, and while there may be a boost, the paid and unpaid are mixed in results.
(edited by: MarkHutch at 6:56 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2002)
It's hard to keep track of all the paid sources and how they rank, isn't it? Just to summarize (and I know you already know this Marcia ... I'm just doing this for the newbies) MSN has the following sources:
Featured sites (special paid pages)
Sponsored sites (Overture)
Web Directory sites (Looksmart Directory)
Paid inclusion Web Page results (Inktomi)
Free submit Web Page results (Inktomi)
The last two are mixed together and presumably neither gets any preference in ranking. They are already sharing the "bottom of the barrel" under the others.
I don't think you will find a recently submitted "free submit page" that will rank above a PFI page. Now if that page is part of the old database (basicly unchanged for two years) they can, rank over PFI.
A page submitted for free today is automaticly but at the bottom of the INK results. The only way they will rank is on extremely long phrases, if then.
At this time overture is the best way into MSN, followed by the directory listings followed by PFI, followed by free ink that is for my money anyway...
Actually there's a 5th way if you consider ink's IC which appears to rank above ink's PFI - go figure!
-s-
stcrim, that goess right along with what that quote above says - unpaid, if included, will come after paid. So it's not as ambiguous as it seems, then.
The free pages in the categories I saw mixed in look like older pages that have been in, they're right up there at all the search engines, those same sites, and have been for a while.
>At this time overture is the best way into MSN, followed by the directory listings followed by PFI, followed by free ink that is for my money anyway...
That's exactly what it seems will happen now.
The point I'm finding needs pondering now (ignoring LS) is balancing ODP with doing Ink paid. If ODP description and title will be used, except for the PR and link value, in some cases it may be better to not do ODP. In a case where the ODP title will read "Companyname, Inc." and will be used with the Ink page, if the site would be good for AOL and MSN both, who needs it? It might be better to forego ODP altogether and be able to put something there that makes a little more sense to searchers and won't bury the site for what it's actually about. There's one now that the owner submitted to ODP way back like that with the wrong keywords in the title. High ranking for a 100% worthless phrase.
A new one, same category, just got into ODP but this time there was a chance to have control over what went into the ODP title and it's perfect - no Ink will be done unless it seems necessary in 6 months around.
That Ink using ODP thing is really confusing things right now, in some cases it might be either/or.
This thread started out with us finding stuff in INK that hasn't been changed in 2 plus years.
Inktomi responded with that being from directory listings, but I have to ask what difference that makes, old is still old?
As stated earlier: I love a well aged wine - but search engine listings...
-s-
I'm deeply concerned that Ink will get the boot from their partners if they don't freshen up, and if that happens even the paid-for-inclusion pages won't draw much traffic. And even if they don't get the boot, surfers will soon find Google, Fast, Ask Jeeves, or even Alta Vista (yes, even AV has been freshening up) are better places to search, making the Inktomi paid-for-inclusion pages of less and less value.
Ink has to learn that you can only milk the cow so long before it has to be fed.
ODP titles?...but hey wait...what about my PFI titles!
PFI gets you spidered, but Index connect gets you to the top.
Ah..oh well maybe index connect gets you to the top if looksmart or ODP serps aren't in play today..and well PFI is maybe somewhere after BOW.
What exactly am I paying for here?
And why aren't index connect listings called "sponsored" or "advertising", it is pay per click with a 5 grand minimum...most folks don't know that.
schizo city.
I think INK is caught between a rock and a hard place. Ink can't give away what they are selling and they can't sell what they are giving away.
I have heard through the grapevine that those engines using INK's results are paying next to nothing for the service making it attractive for them to stay with and continue to deliver stale data.
It reminds me of the days when gas was watered down for increased profits. People quickly learned which gas station to use and which not to resulting in watered gas becoming a thing of the past...
MSN and AOL are beginning to find out they don't have a captive audience and that their users can get to Google just as easy as you and I can.
Google's huge popularity means people have switched to them and left their old search portal behind. Wouldn't you love to know those numbers?
I also like some well aged cheeses...
-s-
People still eat processed cheese, too. Why? They don't know different and they don't like to pay more for better quality.
Search should be current and up-to-date. Look at the success of those engines that are up to date and those that are stale.
I hate processed cheese and like fine wine.
