Finding Your Rankings on All Search Engines

By Carl Fogle
Posted Thursday, September 23, 2004

If you use the undermentioned url you can get Google to number the results of a search - and you get 100 results per page. However you must search for the "TITLE" of your websites, because no description is added to this "Google simple search". However, the "Title Attribute" displays the "Meta Description" once the cursor is held over the link. Another option is to make your Website into an "ACTIVE LINK" in the browser (usually purple).

(http://www.google.com/ie?q=&num=100&hl=en)

If you want to search Google regularly for your websites' keyword rankings:

An effective trick to find a website's ranking in all search engines quickly and accurately!

In Google, Fast and in Yahoo you use "advanced search" and change the results to 100 per page. In AltaVista and in Msn (my preferences) change the results to 50 per page.

Put in your appropriate keyword - get the "search results"

Press the "Control F" Keyboard shortcut simultaneously in *Internet Explorer...

Put your URL in the "Find what" search box... (Copy your url & press "Control V" (paste) after that) Or- on I.E. 6 and above, press "Control G" (find again)

Press "Find Next"... other "enter" keyboard button ...

You will automatically scroll down to your hightlighted website's listing.

--> Keep pressing "Find Next" to find other pages from your Domain.

(This technique works even better in Netscape 6+ because the query is cached in the find box and the box stays up as you navigate to different pages.)

(The approximately percentage near the bottom 1-100%, represents the approximate RANKING of your site 1-100. You can then refine your search.)

(If you don't want to use "Control F" using "Edit "-- > "FIND (on this page)" in the browser menu bar will do. (If you anticipate going through many pages, copy & past (Control V) after "Control F") Or- "Edit"--> "FIND NEXT"

Put your URL in EXACTLY as it appears in the search engine. Each page represents 100 web sites, so page 2 will start at 101-2, page 3 from 201-300 etc. Also the results will vary slightly depending on whether the "Compact" or "Expanded" Results view is on.

These free keyword generation websites are invaluable in finding the most popular keywords.

(http://inventory.overture.com/)

(http://www.wordtracker.com/thirdparty/addme/)

which is taken from this: (http://www.wordtracker.com/trial/popularitysearchframes.php3?frames=off&userkeyword=)
(http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx)

(https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox)

(https://safe.kanoodle.com/client_services/search_contains.cool?term=)

In the case of Overture they calculate results from: Yahoo, Iwon, Lycos, Msn, Altavista, Alltheweb etc.

Wordtracker calculates results from Dogpile and Metacrawler.

Google's adwords do not list the amount of hits the keywords get - however, they are listed in order of popularity, and now factors in AOL's searches.

Lycos offers a separate keyword calculator for the Lycos' search engine, free registration is required.

Yahoo Search offers their list of their most popular keywords for a given search term in the "Related:" -- > "more" links - just below their search form after a completed search query is made.

Because the Google database is estimated to be responsible for about 70% if all search engines referrals, you can search any of the Eight Google Datacenters directly to see if your website is listed or if there are any descrepancies.

(http://www-ex.google.com/)

(http://www-sj.google.com/)

(http://www-va.google.com/)

(http://www-dc.google.com/)

(http://www-ab.google.com/)

(http://www-in.google.com/)

(http://www-zu.google.com/)

(http://www-cw.google.com/)

(http://www-fi.google.com/)

or :

(www.google.com/)

(www2.google.com/)

(www3.google.com/)

are alternatives.
Search All 9 of "Google's" DataCenters For:

Advanced Fetures:

Check: www, www2, www3All 9 Datacenters Servers include: .de .fr .ca .co.uk .it
with: 101520253050 100 Results Per Page
aligned: VerticallyHorizontally
in: CompactStandard Mode

Multi-Search Provided By - Google Dance Tool

Ocassionally websites are "dropped" though no fault of the Webmaster - during the "Google Dance" - this helps you keep abreast of any possiblities.

If there is an urgent need to communicate with the Google staff immediately: googlebot@google.com

They also read their forum at:

google.public.support.general

Google, also allows the use of the daterange: as a method of including and excluding period of days when doing a query. DateRange is given in Julian Format - Dates are a continuous count of days since noon UTC on January 1, 4713 BC. until the present day. So adding: daterange:2452781- 2452783 after a query - means including the days May 21st 2003 -to- May 23rd 2003 (and all days in between). This is useful when finding WHEN as well as WHICH sites for any query result.

A Dmoz listings will often help your Google keyword ranking, thereby increasing your rankings on:

Yahoo
Aol
Netscape
Earthlink
Infoseek (Go)
IWon
Google's Directory
etc...

Getting on Dmoz should be a priority, however due to some technical problems, Newly added Websites have been delayed in showing up on Dmoz Search - due to problems with their RDF dump.

This url allows the public to find out when the new sites have been added to Dmoz search (http://dmoz.org/rdf/tags.html)

You can use their forum to check the status of your Dmoz submission and receive any updates from the Dmoz editors themselves.

(http://www.resource-zone.com/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=status)

Link Popularity Analysis

To check which Websites are linking to a particular site: In Google and AllTheWeb - in the search box, place "link:" immediately BEFORE the complete url as it's listed on each Search Engine - with no spaces. To avoid including pages from a particular domain add a space and "-site:" immediately before the domain, with no space.

To discover the Webpages of a Website that is on Google, put "allinurl:" immediately before the domain, and add one space -and "site:" immediately before the domain in the Google search box. To discover if Website links to a specific site, add the url of the site being linked to as it appears in the engine - add a space and put "site:" and immediately include the url that is doing the linking.

In AltaVista - in the search box, place "link:" immediately BEFORE the complete url with no spaces. To avoid including pages from a particular domain add add a space- then "- host:"immediately BEFORE the complete url with no spaces.

In Lycos - in the search box, place "linkdomain:" immediately BEFORE the complete url with no spaces.

In MSN - in the search box, place "linkdomain:" immediately BEFORE the url without the "(http://) with no spaces. To avoid including pages from a particular domain add a space and "-site:" immediately before the domain, minus the "(http://)"

To do a Pure Inktomi search go to (http://search.positiontech.com/) in the search box, place "link:" immediately BEFORE the complete url with no spaces.

Link popularity (backwards links) can increase Websites' potential overall ranking - the keywords in backwards links can increase keyword rankings. However, those backwards links must be SPIDERED to be acknowledged by Search Engines - and different engines may have spidered different links, thus showing non-uniformed, partial results.

One method would be to do link queries and submit those Search Engines Results Pages (SERP) to the different engines; however, many no longer index DYNAMIC PAGES - or as Google does, indexes them to a limited degree - to avoid SPAM!

This is in contrast to a directory listing eg. Yahoo!, Dmoz etc. which are STATIC PAGES

To get the best of both worlds try this technique:

Go to "Advanced Search" and get 100 results per page

Save your query results (SERP) as an HTML file - or copy and paste the results into a WYSIWYG editor (you can take out all the images img src=" " using the "edit-->find" technique).

Put keywords in that pages TITLE and add an internal link to your site's other pages to benefit even more. (you can add as many links on that page as you like - or make several pages)

Add the search query HEADER as a link (some Search Engines index Dyanamic Sites if they are "linked to" from Static Pages) this will also automatically dyanically update itself spidering newer links.

Once submitted manually to Google, BOOKMARK that verification page in your FAVORITES; you can then just open it - and refresh and your page will be automatically re-spidered because the header info contains the submit instructions itself.

Tracking WebSite Visitors and Referrers

Counters and Trackers are vital for analyzing WHERE and HOW visitors to a WebSite originated from. There are both Server-side (tracks EVERY visitor with information taken from the Server)- and Client-side alternatives (which usually relies on the visitor using JavaScript).

Vital information should include:

Referrers - both Web pages and Search engines, with an active link to the page that the visited WebSite is currently listed in - in the chronological order of occurrance with the times of visits. Keywords - used in Search Engines linking to a WebSite. Both cumulative and daily viewing options. Countries and Cities - where the visitors originated from. Browsers, Screen colors, Resolution, Javascript, CSS etc. used by the visitors' browsers. Graphical Trends - over a period of time, to measure patterns. Customized Analysis - allowing for keyword query searches to customize information on visitors and traffic.

The following Directories offer a wide variety of Counters and Trackers with many options, some are free or offer free trial periods:
Yahoo Directory Web Counters
Dmoz Directory Web Counters
Looksmart Directory Web Counters
About.com Directory Web Counters

Optimization Tips & Pitfalls
When surfers complete a search query for unfamiliar sites, they usually factor in:
The ranking of a WebSite
The Title
The Description
The Keywords in the URL
in assessing whether to visit, before, in addition to, or instead of the nearby ranked competitors.

A Title that reflects the query of the searcher either through it's use of exact Keywords or synonyms can convince someone to react by clicking, especially since the complete

Title is in a larger font and either, the complete Title or the queried keywords are in Bold and about 60 to 120 characters are displayed by the Search Engines.

In case of the Description - in some search engines the queried keywords are in Bold and about 100 to 200 characters are displayed. Sometimes this is taken from all or part of the META Description or Alt Tags or Heading or beginning Body text depending on how each search engine is engineered.,/p>

The "ranking" of a given WebSite has an effect - in theory the number one ranking gets more immediate attention than the last result on a given page, however, "pay-per-click" results sometimes appear at the beginning of the listings - thereby adding more competition.

Yahoo!

That being said, a Yahoo listing - because it is now using a collapsed version of Google for it's default search results may will only display the "edited" Title and Description given by the Yahoo editor for sites that are currently listed on the Yahoo Directory that comes up for a given Yahoo Web search query.

Yahoo has a policy of using the URL of a listed site as it's Title if the site listed is the Home Page, on the other pages of a site that are listed they will be open to the suggested Title submitted by the payee, or they may choose the Title in the WebSite?s "Title" tag.

However, for URLs that do not contain keywords or have all the keywords combined into One Long word - there may be consequences.

Unlike the immediate re-optimization a Webmaster can give a site to update new content information etc. - a Yahoo listed site will be totally dependant on the Yahoo editors reaction to a request for any changes.

So, this reflects the Yahoo search (Google powered) as well as their Yahoo Directory results.

Ironically, the sites that are NOT listed in the Yahoo directory - but appear near the same positions for a Yahoo Web query result, may therfore have an advantage over the ones that are listed - because their Titles and Description may be more compelling to a surfer for a given search.

Having a link from the Yahoo directory may or may not add to a sites ranking depending on how far down the subdirectory is that the site appears. Additionally, some search engines factor in the hyperlinked text in the backwards links to a given site, so EVEN in that case, a Yahoo Title may not add any popularity a listed site.

Google uses an expanded search Option and defaults to 10 search results per query, which means that two Webpages from the SAME domain name - even if they are different sites eg. geocities.com, angelfire.com etc. - with a similar Theme and Title will sometimes be listed one after another for a query (this is shown by the second listing being indented). Google usually limits it just TWO webpages belonging to the same domain name per ONE result page, however, a similar webpage in that same domain can appear as another listing on the next result page.

Yahoo, on the other hand, since it defaults to 20 "web search" results per page - will not display a listing from the same domain for those twenty listings. which means in theory - one could have TWO listings from the same domain on TWO separate pages in Google that default to 10 listings apiece - and only have 0NE listing show up on Yahoo's top 20.

AOL - Google's other major partner tends to mirror Google's expanded search results.

Dmoz

dmoz.org
A Dmoz listed site does affect how the Description appears in Google for that site that is also listed in Dmoz. Google will usually limit the main Description a site to about 160 characters - however, if that site's also is listed in Dmoz and comes up in a Google search query - Google will "add" the Dmoz description "after" that site's Webmaster added Description that is used by default.

This appears after "Description:".
A link to the subdirectory inside that Google directory that the site appears on once it is added to the Google directory is shown after "Category:" - if this hyperlink is clicked on, it will take potential visitors away from your site.

The Google directory uses the data from Dmoz - this link will increase a given WebSite?s ranking for pertinent keywords on Google search.

MSN

Search the Web for:

Use Advanced Search

Msn -after the Pay-per-click Overture listings (FEATURED SITES) will show Looksmart's listings (WEB DIRECTORY SITES) as the first "search results" for a query. This is followed by Inktomi's lisings (WEB PAGES). Because the Title and Description in Looksmart's listings are editor approved (similar to Yahoo) the results that come up on MSN are totally dependant on the Keywords in that Title that the editor has given and, in the displayed URL of the website.

The Keywords in the Description will only influence the outcome on Looksmart searches.

Once a search is done via MSN, the Keywords in the Title are prioritized in ANY order and will cause those sites with those Keywords in the Title or URL to display regardless of the order the Keywords appearing in the search queries also, stemming is done by default automatically (using "Advanced Search" enables search modification) - so whether a query is plural or singular or sometimes abbreviated - it will not affect the outcome (this is in direct contrast to Google which will not stem).

Getting your listing Looksmart - although they get first "search" priority - will mean that on an MSN search on the Inktomi portion - your webpage (even if spidered or payed for submission) will be "filtered" out of these secondary results it appears in the Looksmart portion. This is important because of the keyword restrictions mentioned - so Meta Tags, Body Text etc. will not count. However, the other pages in a given website NOT listed on Looksmart will not be filtered out if they happen to also come up for a query.

However, if your Inktomi listed Webpage does NOT come up on the Looksmart portion of an MSN search, it WILL come up under the Inktomi secondary results with all of it's ranking algorithms calculated.

Unfortunately - "Concept Searching" popularized by Excite is not offered by any of the majors, so synonyms - however valid, will only display Websites that use them literally as keywords.

Pay-Per-Click

Search the Web.
Type it and go!

Pay-per-click can often be an expensive option - however, the ONLY option for brand new site.

These services will usually give you personal stats on how well your effort is paying off, but to verify independantly by calibrating EXACTLY how much traffic is coming from your:

Overture
Google Adwords
Looksmart

here is a useful option...
if the url for your main site is for example: (http://?.com/) use the "adwords" and "sponsored link" for incoming clicks
as follows:
for Google: (http://?.com/GOOGLE/) or (http://?.com/anyword/)
for Overture: (http://?.com/OVERTURE/) or "anyword"
for Looksmart: (http://?.com/LOOKSMART/) or "anyword"

in the case of google and overture the sponsored links will not count towards link popularity - so you can add a "counter/tracker" and/or both server-side or client-side stats to each individual page.

using the following html: base href="(http://?.com/)" will make all of the resulting page views default to your regular home directory AFTER the initial entry to your site.

you can even add a "bookmark this page" option for the NEW directory or your regular home page - so that visitors can return again - without having to re-visit the search engines and "click" to your site.

This technique can also be used to take advantage of popular "misspellings" - by optimizing a page of two to redirect to your main site - that takes advantage of very common misspellings of your most popular keyword queries

Search Engine Submission - Free Options:

AllTheWeb/Lycos
Google
Inktomi/MSN
AltaVista

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