The Axandra newsletter archive

29 April 2003

This week we're featuring the Invisible Web and the latest Google acquisition.

A recent article in the Syllabus magazine pointed out that neither Google nor any other search tool can index all the information on the Internet:

Although search engines such as Google, AllTheWeb or AltaVista have billions of Web pages in their databases, a large part of the Internet is virtually invisible to search engines. As the Syllabus magazine puts it: "A large portion of available information has been difficult or impossible to
search."

Web pages can be part of the Invisible Web because they use technology on their pages that the index software programs of the search engines cannot understand.

If your Web site is part of the Invisible Web and cannot be found on search engines, you're missing a lot of customers and you're losing a lot of money.

What can you do?

1. Make sure that your Web site is optimized for search engines

You should make sure that your Web site is optimized for search engines. Many Web sites are designed in a way that prevents them from being indexed by search engines.

Don't build a Web site that consists of only flash elements and images. Search engines need plain text to index your site.

There are many features that influence the ranking of your site on search engines. The webmaster tool IBP can tell you if your Web site is optimized correctly for the search engines. There are many more things to consider than just the title and META tags.

If your Web site has a plain, simple and clear design, it's more likely that it will be found on search engines under keywords that are important for your business.

2. Make sure that surfers can find your Web site through other ways

Search engines are not the only way people can find your site. Surfers also follow links and recommendations on other Web sites. If your Web site cannot be found on search engines, make sure that your Web site is linked by many other sites.

This has several advantages for you. You'll benefit from the search engine ranking of the other pages because people who find the Web page that links to you also find your site through that link.

Another big advantage is that search engines think that your Web site is important if many other Web sites link to you. The more popular the Web sites are that link to you, the higher your search engine ranking. And you'll also receive additional visitors from your partner sites.

So make sure that as many good Web sites as possible link to your site. The webmaster tool ARELIS can help you with that.

In short, if your Web site is part of the Invisible Web, you're losing customers and money. Make sure that your Web site can be found through as many ways as possible.

A good Web site promotion strategy that focuses on search engines and partner Web sites will bring targeted visitors to your Web site and it will increase your online revenue.

* Google acquired Applied Semantics

Google said it had acquired Applied Semantics, a company that develops software that analyzes the content of Web sites in order to match them with appropriate advertising.

Applied Semantics' AdSense product enables publishers to understand key themes on different Web sites, knowing, for example, when the word "jaguar" refers to an animal and when it refers to a car.

"Applied Semantics is a proven innovator in semantic text processing and online advertising," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin in a statement.

"This acquisition will enable Google to create new technologies that make online advertising more useful to users, publishers, and advertisers alike."
Search engine analysts remarked that Google's purchase could also be viewed as a defensive move to prevent rival Overture Services from buying into this contextual ad business.

* Overture reported profits

Overture reported first quarter 2003 revenue of US$224.7 million, up 57 percent from revenue of US$142.8 million in the first quarter of 2002. "The rise in revenue was due to substantial increases in paid introductions and average price per paid introduction."

* Use AllTheWeb as a calculator

A reader told us that you can use AllTheWeb as a calculator. Just try a math query like 22+9*74 to get an answer and a list of supported functions.

* News about Google

Some Web loggers took notes about O'Reilly's Emergency Technology Conference and provide us with some interesting facts about Google.

For example, Google was asked why they only index 3 billion Web pages. Google's director of technology Craig Silverstein responded that 3 billion pages are as many as they could crawl in a month. He also revealed that there are only two people at the Web crawler team.

Read these and many more interesting facts about Google on these two Web logs:

• http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/001448.html
• http://blog.glennf.com/mtarchives/001607.html

* Interview with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt

The online magazine AlwaysOn interviewed Google CEO's Eric Schmidt in a three-part interview series. Part one and part two have already been published, part three will be published shortly. You can start reading the interview here.

* ARELIS 4 is on the way

ARELIS 4.0 is currently in the late beta phase. This means that the functionality is complete and everything is being tested at the moment.

We plan to release the update for our award-winning promotion tool this week. It will have more than 50 improvements and it won't cost anything for existing ARELIS customers.

* Find out the link popularity of you and your competitors

All major search engines rely on the link popularity number of Web sites. The more quality Web sites link to your Web site, the higher your link popularity number and your search engine ranking.

What's the link popularity of your Web site? How does your Web site compare to your competitors? Find it out with this neat Freeware program.

• Inktomi paid inclusion - for you?
  
  
• About Google results on Yahoo and AOL
  
  
• Google AdWords partner list
  
  
• Cookies required?
  
  
• How to check if a single Web page is indexed by Google

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Internet marketing and search engine ranking software ."

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