In order to better understand how these listings are generated and displayed for users, one must begin to dissect the rather simple process- to see where search results come from.

First off, the title of the link result is "Countrywide Home Loans - Real Estate Mortgage Lender - Equity Loan Mortgages". If you look closely at the page's source code - you will see that exact same line of text within their title tag too. No, this is not a coincidence; it is simply the standard for establishing a title for an Inktomi search result.

Next on the list to dissect, is the description of the web site provided by Inktomi by those searching. Again, and certainly not surprising - all of this data is easily found within the document heading, under the META - Description tag.

Of course, the URL listed at the bottom of the listing is simply the URL that is indexed.

Factors that Affect Ranking
While the primary factors in establishing an Inktomi result are very straight forward and simple, some secondary factors exist as well. They are listed below, with their relationship to search results:

• Link Popularity
Both private and public research shows that Inktomi factors in Link Popularity, or, the amount of links that do not exist on the same domain name that point to the target (listed) URL. The more links that are established, the more popular the page is seen through Inktomi - and thus, is given an advantage.

•Keyword Density, Relevancy, and Importance
Residing in both your document text as well as within your META tags, are the keywords you are looking to target. While these would seem to be the most important factor of any optimization campaign - it is not as important for Inktomi as it may seem.

It has been researched within WebMasterWorld often, and recently - and the general consensus is that the keyword density of a page should fall somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent for any given page.

• Content
With an elementary algorithm like that used at Inktomi, playing your way to prominent rankings can become fairly easy. While Inktomi is an easy engine to understand and see working though, they do claim rewards for sites that offer unique and targeted content.

Interestingly enough, smaller pages (those with minimal amounts of content) often appear more prominently than other, more lengthy pages. Despite the claims that content will dictate some affects on Inktomi - simply offer about 300 words of text on your page - and you will at least fit in with the norm.

How to Get Optimized for Inktomi
Once you have a site that features unique content, and you have decided upon what keywords will yield the most qualified site visitors for that site's purpose - make sure that Inktomi knows that you exist.

Of course, the best way to proceed in that direction is to know that your site will in fact be spidered every 48 - 72 hours by Slurp, Inktomi's spidering bot. In order to know it will be coming around, subscribe to have the most resourceful URL's spidered through Position Technologies - positiontech.com

Once it has been spidered, make sure to check back within the Inktomi Pure Search available at http://169.207.238.189/search/ and monitor ranking for all of your keywords as well as other possible searches that would result in your URL being displayed.

Tune the META tags and page titles over time, but do so carefully. Thankfully, no matter how much you change - you can always refer back to what worked. Use the fact that Inktomi updates so often to your advantage to maximize clickthroughs, and be sure to find your URL listed within affiliated partners of Inktomi. Often, they use click-popularity in sorting their results.

Good luck, and of course - If you have any questions about this article simply email us at topsites@orbidex.com.