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Search
Engine Comparison Chart
By Danny Sullivan, April 17, 1996
Most comparison charts of search engines are made from the search
engine users' perspective. This chart is designed for webmasters
who care about how search engines catalog their sites. It is meant
to give an at-a-glance summary of factors that can affect how
a site is indexed. New categories will be added, as they become
apparent or known.
*Claims to go farther, but even though I used the
"firm" choice, didn't see this to be true recently.
Pages Cataloged
The more pages cataloged, the more likely pages from your
web site will be found though an engine. Figures are from Internet World's
May 1996 issue, though Excite's figure was raised from 1.5 million
to 11.5 million based on information at its site.
Content
Shows whether the engine catalogs the full-text of a page or instead
creates a description or abstract based on a page's text. Full-text
may be better because it ensures that every word from your web
site will be available to match keywords entered by those consulting
search engines.
Meta Tag Support
Many believe all search engines acknowledge keywords and
descriptions placed in meta tags. In reality, only two explicitly
state that they do: AltaVista and InfoSeek. Instructions on using
the tag can be found in the help information at either site. Keep
in mind the tag doesn't guarantee your page will become more relevant
that other sites, but it does allow you to control the description
that appears.
Search Levels
Some search engines catalog everything on a home page but
go no farther than this "first" level. Others go to
all the pages linked to the home page, the "second level."
The process continues if the search engines continues to follow
links deeper and deeper into the site. To test how far search
engines go, I checked to see if the search engines
found the following pages from the InfoPages
site, which is three "levels" deep:
- http://infopages.com/
- http://infopages.com/survey/
- http://infopages.com/survey/results.htm
Catalog Date
The search engines may go out nightly to find new web pages,
but that work means nothing if the search engine catalogs aren't
updated with this new information. Only Lycos tells you the date
of its catalog (WebCrawler dropped this feature on 4/16/96). The
others leave you guessing over whether they have new information
or not.
URL Status Check
WebCrawler is the only engine that allows you to check
when your site was visited by the engine, a very nice feature
that other engines might consider adding.
Sells Words
InfoSeek is the only search engine known to "sell"
keywords. Those who run banner advertisements can also purchase
particular keywords to go with the ad. If the keywords are entered,
the ad will appear at the top of the page. However, this does
NOT effect the actual results listed. Other engines may do the
same. The chart will be updated, as this is learned.
Site Popularity Used?
Some search engines determine the popularity of a page
by analyzing how many links there are to it from other pages.
Sites that are more popular may turn up earlier in a search over
less popular sites, or popularity may be used in other ways. See
the page on how search engines work for
more information.
Catalog Update
My estimate on how often catalogs are updated. Better search
engines will constantly update their catalogs, but since the majority
don't date their catalogs, it can be hard to tell how old the
catalogs are. My estimates are based on when information from
the InfoPages site, plus a few other sites, has appeared. As "official"
statements are known, they will be listed.
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