The Axandra newsletter archive

3 September 2002

This week we'll reveal a small leak in AllTheWeb's ranking algorithm and we'll tell you an unusual reason why search engines might not index your Web site.

Webmasters use the META Refresh tag on their Web pages to redirect users to another Web page. They often use it on so-called "bridge pages". Users access this page first and then they're automatically redirected to another Web page.

For example, the following HTML tag redirects to "www.domain.com/second-page.htm" after 5 seconds:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5;URL=http://www.domain.com/second-page.htm">

Many search engines don't like the META Refresh tag. Webmasters can abuse it to spam search engines with similar pages which all redirect to the same page.

Four months ago, we finished the biggest search engine ranking study ever conducted: We analyzed 103,260 top 10 Web pages on six search engines to find out why they are well ranked in the search engines.

Of course, we also examined which role META Refresh tags play on search engines.

We found out that 5,1% of the #1 Web pages on AllTheWeb used the META Refresh tag.

In addition, we discovered that nearly 50% of those #1 Web pages used no delay (0 seconds) in their META Refresh tag to redirect to another Web page.

Most search engines utilize filter algorithms that will detect the META Refresh tag and they'll ignore or even ban Web pages using it. However, it seems that AllTheWeb is still vulnerable to this kind of search engine spamming and that bridge pages or doorway pages are still able to obtain #1 rankings.

Nevertheless, we advise you not to use bridge pages to obtain high rankings. Sooner or later, all search engines will detect this kind of search engine spamming.

There's a simple reason for it: Web pages that use the META Refresh tag make search engine databases cluttered with multiple versions of irrelevant Web pages.

Source:
Search Engine Ranking Study 2002

If you want to know what other factors are taken into account by AllTheWeb, Google, AltaVista and others, read the full search engine ranking study .

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 #17: Your Web site has a slow host server.

Search engine crawler programs that index Web pages don't have much time. There are approximately 2-4 billion Web pages all over the world and search engines want to index all of them.

So if the host server of your Web site has a slow connection to the Internet, you may experience that your Web site will not be indexed by the major search engines at all.

AltaVista and Google specifically mention the problem on their Web sites.

AltaVista: "If a site has a slow connection or the pages are very complex, it might time out before the crawler can index all the text."

Found at:
http://help.Altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_wellindexed

Google: "Your site may not have been reachable when we tried to crawl it because of network or hosting problems. When this happens, we retry multiple times, but if the site cannot be crawled, it will not be listed in our current index."

Found at:
http://www.Google.com/webmasters/2.html#A3

You may also want to limit the size of your homepage to less than 60K. It'd also benefit the still numerous users that connect to the Internet with a slow modem. For even the casual Internet user, the performance of a Web site can make the difference between pleasure and frustration.

How you can test the speed of your server:
http://web-hosting.candidinfo.com/site-response-speed.asp

If you're like me, you've installed Google's free toolbar in your Web browser and since then, you've never visited Google's homepage again to perform a Google search.

Google's free toolbar:
http://toolbar.Google.com/

Unfortunately, this means that you'll never see any changes on Google's front page. New on the Google homepage is a link to a page that lists all Google services and tools in one convenient place:
http://www.Google.com/options/

• Finding relevant keywords with Google
  
  
• AltaVista ranking tip
  
  
• All about LookSmart USA, LookSmart UK
  
  
• Your Inktomi questions answered
  
  
• Query recent additions to Google

*** LinkPopularity.com recommends ARELIS

The very popular Web site LinkPopularity.com recommends ARELIS, the professional webmaster tool to increase your link popularity and your search engine rankings: http://www.LinkPopularity.com/arelisreview.htm

They come to the conclusion:

"[ARELIS] does an excellent job of simplifying and automating the most time consuming parts of a link promotion campaign while still retaining the ability to manually review and personalize link requests.

Unlike other programs which send 'cookie-cutter' messages to poorly targeted Web sites, the makers of Arelis seem to understand the art of link promotion and have developed a powerful and extremely useful tool."

Download a free trial version now:
http://www.Axandra.com/arelis/download.htm


*** Measure your link popularity

We recommend the free software tool called "Link Popularity Check " which checks the link popularity of your Web site.

Just download this free tool to see how well your Web site is indexed by the search engines. It also compares your site to other sites on the Internet.


*** Internet marketing and Web site promotion Web sites we recommend

If you want to publish one of the above articles on your Web site, you're allowed to do so! However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two sentences with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Internet marketing and search engine ranking software ."

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


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Copyright 2002-2003 Axandra / Voget Selbach Enterprises GmbH