The Axandra newsletter archive
11 June 2002
WEEKLY SEARCH ENGINE FACTS
http://www.Axandra.com
Issue #7 - June 11, 2002
Copyright 2002 Axandra / Voget Selbach Enterprises GmbH
Hello!
1. Facts of the week: Keywords in IMG ALT texts for Inktomi
One month ago, we finished the biggest search engine ranking
study ever conducted: We analyzed 103,260 top 10 Web pages to
find out why they are well ranked in the search engines.
We examined six search engines. To analyze the Inktomi database
of Web pages, we decided that the search engine iWon would
be a good representative for Inktomi results.
As you might know, Inktomi provides (part of) the search results for About.com, AOL,
.com, HotBot, ICQ, iWon, Looksmart, MSN Search and Overture.
We discovered something very interesting on the Web pages
that iWon/Inktomi returned for our search queries. An unusual
high percentage of #1 Web sites on iWon had keywords in their
<IMG ALT> attributes.
27,13% of the #1 Web pages on iWon/Inktomi result pages
have the queried search term in their <IMG ALT> attributes.
This is more than the Web pages have on the positions 2 to
10, and significant more than on other search engines.
So it's fairly safe to assume that in order to get a high
ranking on Inktomi powered search engines, it helps to put
your keywords in the <IMG ALT> attributes of your Web
page.
Source: Search Engine Ranking Studies Q2/2002
http://www.axandra.com/search-engine-studies/index.htm
If you want to know whether putting keywords in <IMG ALT> attributes also helps for Google and AltaVista rankings, read our search engine ranking studies for those search engines:
http://www.axandra.com/search-engine-study-store.htm
2. 19 common mistakes that prevent your Web site from getting top rankings on search engines - Part 6 of 19
Is your Web site not getting listed in search engines? Is your Web site listed but it's not getting top rankings? In our series we tell you the 19 common mistakes for low or no ranking and what you can do about it.
Reason #6: Text in the background color of the web
"Color can kill your ranking!" Some Web designers,
in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to
make their Web pages as keyword-rich as possible. They try to
spam search engines by repeating keywords in the same color
as the background color to make the text invisible to browsers
and search engine spiders.
However, almost all search engines already know that trick.
They will penalize or even blacklist your Web page if they
determine that your page is trying to unfairly misrepresent
its actual content. This tactic is commonly referred to as
"spamming the search engines" or "spamdexing".
Unfortunately, the problem is that the search engines may end up penalizing Web sites which did not intend to use the hidden text trick. For example, suppose you have a Web page with a black background and a table in that page with a white background. Now suppose that you've added some black text in that table. This text will be visible to your human visitors, so in fact, the text isn't hidden. However, the
search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because
they overlook the table background color.
I recommend going through all your Web pages and make sure
that you haven't inadvertently made any such mistake.
And, by the way, search engines also catch on using a slightly different color than the background color to hide words, so don't use that trick.
3. Previous articles
The importance of H1 tags on AllTheWeb
http://www.axandra.com/news/newsletter6.htm
Search term density on AltaVista
http://www.axandra.com/news/newsletter5.htm
Robots.txt on 6 search engines
http://www.axandra.com/news/newsletter4.htm
Teoma and reciprocal links:
http://www.axandra.com/news/newsletter3.htm
Web site age on Google and AltaVista:
http://www.axandra.com/news/newsletter2.htm
4. Recommended resources
* Top ratings for the webmaster software ARELIS
ARELIS is a software program that helps the professional webmaster
to get more reciprocal links. This brings targeted traffic to
your Web site and you'll also get better search engine rankings
because of the higher link popularity.
Last week, ARELIS received five top ratings from popular software sites:
- 5 out of 5 stars from Tucows.com
- 5 out of 5 stars from FileHungry.com
- 5 out of 5 stars from VersionTracker.com
- 4 out of 5 stars from BlueChillies.com
- 5 out of 5 stars from FileTransit.com
And that's for the current version 2.3 of ARELIS. This week,
version 3.0 will be released with many improvements. For example,
the interface will be even easier to use and it will support
the new Windows XP design. In addition, ARELIS 3.0 will find
more relevant links and it will support SMTP authentication.
Version 3.0 will be a free update for all registered version
2 users.
Download the free trial version now:
http://www.Axandra.com/download.htm
* Check your popularity today!
Without marketing, just by word-of-mouth, the freeware program
"
Link Popularity Check " is downloaded more than 500
times per week. Why? Because it offers a fast and easy way
to check your link popularity on five search engines at
once:
http://www.CheckYourLinkPopularity.com
* Our 2-tier affiliate program pays you 35% + 10%
We pay you up to US$139.98 every time one of your visitors buys our products:
http://www.Axandra.com/affiliates.htm
* Marketing Web sites that we use
http://www.axandra.com/recommended-sites/index.htm
Please recommend this issue to anyone you know who is interested
in search engine facts. It's a good way to stay in touch with
your clients, too.
If you're receiving this issue as a forward, and would like
to get your own free subscription, visit
http://www.Axandra.com/subscribe.htm
Back issues:
http://www.Axandra.com/news
Copyright 2002 Axandra / Voget Selbach Enterprises GmbH
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