Down In The Dumps With Inktomi...MSN

I can only find my site by searching for URL...

[Webdoc]

Hi all,

I can only find my site by searching for URL in MSN (Google, no problem). Anyone care give me tips to ranking well in the Inktomi Database?
It's pretty strange, I perform searches with my keywords and I get irrelevant results?

I have submitted 5 sites to PositionTech.com and have 0 hits. Sad, I know. BTW, I have analyzed my sites with W3C's Link and HTML analyzer...realtively okay, nothing major.

Thanks.

[edited by: seth_wilde at 12:06 am (utc) on Nov. 21, 2002]

[mayor]

Webdoc, if your keywords are competitive you can expect your PFI pages to be buried under a whole string of higher listed programs (featured sites, sponsored sites, web directory results). The Inktomi backfill results are on the bottom, under the 'web pages' results.

And if your site has been banned for some reason, you can probably pay until you're blue in the face and won't rank well. As I understand it, they'll take your money but not tell you that your are banned. Ink will still index your paid pages every 48 hours but your rankings will be at the bottom of the bottom.

Also, check your logs and at least make sure the Ink spider is getting at your pages. Obviously, if the spider is excluded somehow, or your site happens to be down when Slurp comes to visit, you won't rank. Since you are using PT, their reports will indicate if there was a problem spidering.

[Webdoc]

Thanks for your reply!

If you can believe it, my keywords are not competitive...good for me.

Let's see, there are only two web directory sites listed. The, the folllowing are web pages. (I believe the web directory sites come from Looksmart in MSN.)

I haven't had any problems getting spidered by Ink. Sometimes twice in one day.

Here's the crazy part:
My sites are based on my keywords and do well in Google, AllTheWeb, and AltaVista. When I search for my keywords in Ink (i.e. MSN) some of the top sites only have the keyword listed once in the whole site. Does that make any sense to anyone?

Just a guess, could they be using cloaking software to make the pages relevant?

[mayor]

Webdoc, if your search terms aren't real competitive it's not likely you'd be buried by cloakers.

Sites that do well in Google, Fast and Alta Vista should do at least OK in Inktomi. You should't be buried so deep you can't be found, but I suppose it's still possible if you haven't optimized for Inktomi.

Try raising the keyword density a bit, then check again in a few days. Make sure your keywords are in your title and description, and show up prominently in the body of your page. If that doesn't work, maybe it's time to email PT and ask them if they know of any problem with your site.