Google Rating

[tevj]

Hi, can anyone explain why, on some search engines, namely "safari" when i google my name, my site comes up in the top 10 sites.
BUT...on IE and NETSCAPE etc. when 'googled' my site is nowhere to be found within the first 20 or so pages?!!
ALSO, how can you get a good GOOGLE rating without paying any cash?
Cheers, Tim :eek:

[Landseer]

Hi, can anyone explain why, on some search engines, namely "safari" when i google my name, my site comes up in the top 10 sites.
BUT...on IE and NETSCAPE etc. when 'googled' my site is nowhere to be found within the first 20 or so pages?!!
ALSO, how can you get a good GOOGLE rating without paying any cash?
Cheers, Tim :eek:Maybe because Google is the largest most used of them all, so naturally the small fry have less sites listed to begin with. Being in the top ten on an obscure search engine few use isn't of much use.
The fact remains that EVERYONE wants their site to be in the top ten, the problem is, only a handful of sites can physically fit in the top ten list, or even the first 100 results pages. The problem will become worse because the web expands exponentially every month.

Some facts from various sources showing the growth, and with this I doubt paying afee will get you in the top ten because big businesses and porn sites can afford a much higher cost to get theire than anyone else, and both of them clog up the top results:

By the end of 1992 there were only 50 web-sites in the World and a year later the number was still no more than 150.
In 1994 there were 3.2 million hosts and 3,000 web-sites. Twelve months later the number of hosts had doubled and the number of web-sites had climbed to 25,000. By the end of the next year the number of host computers had doubled again, and the number of web-sites had increased by more than ten-fold.
January 2001, the number of hosts stood at 110 million and the number of web-sites had reached 30 million.

In the February 2006 survey we received responses from 76,184,000 sites, an increase of 933,000 from January's total. This month's survey finds different trends emerging in hostnames and active sites. Apache continues its strong growth with an increase of 1.3 million hostnames for the month



Keep in mind that when a search-engine gives you a couple of hundred of hits, on twenty pages, many people do not bother beyond the first three pages. It is worth pausing to reflect what these 'spiders' are looking for. Web-page makers offer the spiders four information sources:

Page title or, by default, the first words (like 'welcome to my page')

Description (written in meta-text, which means you can't see it on the screen) which tries to pack in as many keywords as possible
Keywords (again in meta-text)
The text of the document itself

Google now also has the largest coverage of any search engine (1.6 thousand million web-pages)
Altavista opened in December 1995 as an offshoot of Digital Computers. It has an index to 550 million web-pages,

[sculptor]

'lo Tim
what's yer full name?
and
did you metatag your site as mentioned above?

checking google for my name, I came up with me, a folk singer from Ireland, a racecar driver outside Detroit, and a weight lifter

the folk singer e-mailed me a celtic music joke
"What's the difference between an onion and a bagpipe?"

so I don't hog the entire first few pages,
and an author who uses "rod Patterson" as a nom de plume

and I just finished my new clay warmer
I'll post pictures later

rod
sculptor (http://home.mindspring.com/~mandali/index.html)

[joem]

how do you meta tag??

[tevj]

'lo Tim
what's yer full name?
and
did you metatag your site as mentioned above?

checking google for my name, I came up with me, a folk singer from Ireland, a racecar driver outside Detroit, and a weight lifter

the folk singer e-mailed me a celtic music joke
"What's the difference between an onion and a bagpipe?"

so I don't hog the entire first few pages,
and an author who uses "rod Patterson" as a nom de plume

and I just finished my new clay warmer
I'll post pictures later

rod
sculptor (http://home.mindspring.com/~mandali/index.html)

My full name is Timothy John
and yeah, what is metatag??....and i give up "What's the difference between an onion and a bagpipe?"

[sculptor]

Tim:
meta tags are the introductory html that search spiders use to catagorize your site
beware that the tags are compared to the sites text and the closer the proximity, the more the spiders(search bots) rank them as important and a valid indicator of the sites content/context
eg: if i were to pack the metatags with a phrase like "free refridgerators" and not actually offer any free refridgerators on the site, the spiders would assume that the tags were intentionally misleading, and put the site at the back of the list or ban it altogether.
for some free information on metatags see:
http://www.ineedhits.com/free-tools/free-metatags.aspx
also some interesting reading on the rest of their site.
If money isn't a concern of yours, their paid services make it easy, for the rest of us, the free stuff is adaquate.

You should be selective in the phrases for which you wish to optomize your search engine presence and rankings.
In my early web days, I coined the phrase mythofigurative sculpture, and was instantly #1 in the search results for "mythofigurative sculpture"..trouble is-no one but me will ever search for "mythofigurative sculpture"--remember that phrase in Hamlet wherein the bloodshed for the tiny piece of land created more corpses than the land could hold---some victories are a bit like masturbation or playing solitare. Winning is fun but nobody actually gives a flying fuck.

Also the search bots take awhile to find and place your site so plan on acting now and seeing results filter in over a few weeks.
By submitting to the lesser known search engines, the greater ones are more likely to pick you up sooner.

and

Rod's answer was..."nobody cries when you cut up a bagpipe"

I hope Randall chimes in on this metatag thing, as I suspect that his knowledge is a tad more current and likely broader than mine.

hope this helps
Rod
sculptor (http://home.mindspring.com/imagelib/sitebuilder/misc/show_image.html?linkedwidth=actual&linkpath=http://home.mindspring.com/~mandali/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/lynn.torso.figurative.sculptor.rod.patterson.jpg&target=tlx_new&title=figure%20sculpture%20LYNN%20torso%20in%20the %20clay)

[Merlion]

I got curious by the previous comments about coming up top at a Google search.

So I tried keying in the two words sculpture singapore, and cannot find my website from among the top 40. By chance I add another word university, which is where I worked before I retired and take up sculpture seriously. I also add instead my first name john, which is more probably what people looking for me would key in. I am very happy that for both, I got to the very top.

Wow, wow. This makes my day.

[Landseer]

Chiming in :)

I do use meta tags, on every page in my site, another thing is search spiders follow links, so be sure your main page links to every sub page and that every sub page has a link to the main page and each other- the more intersite links you have the better.

Sample of a header with some basic meta tags as I use, modified for an example;


<html>
<head>
<META name="Author" content=" Whatever you wish">
<META name="Classification" content="Photography, historical essay">
<META name="resource-type" content=document>
<META name="description" content="DESCRIBE YOUR PAGE CONTENT I.E: PHOTOS OF FIGURE SCULPTURES">
<META name="keywords" content="I.E: sculpture, figure sculpture, modelling, bronze casts, art">
<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="Global">
<TITLE>YOUR SITE OR PAGE TITLE</TITLE>
</head>
<body>

YOUR CONTENT HERE

PUT IN SOME EXTRA KEYWORDS IN A HIDDEN FOOTER LIKE THIS- DOESNT HURT, CAN HELP, THE TAG HIDES THE WHOLE LINE FROM VIEW;

<!--KEYWORDS: sculpture, bronze art, statues, photography-->

</BODY>
</HTML>

[ahirschman]

We could all help out our ratings if we all added links to each others web pages. These could be in a "links" page, that need not be centrally located. Google and the like give better ratings to sites that are pointed at by other sites.

Ari.