~~~Search Engine Optimization~~~
From: Don Baker
Hi Jill,
Enjoyed reading your article updating the important SEs/directories to which sites should be submitted. I have a question regarding
MSN. You stated that as long as one's site is listed in LookSmart and
Inktomi, getting in MSN is assured. You didn't mention Direct Hit,
however. A search on MSN produces results from the Direct Hit
listings, including the results comprising the "Top 10 Most Popular
Sites..." link at the top of the search results. Can you explain the
Direct Hit connection, and where DH gets its results?
Thanks!
Don Baker
NSI Partners
www.NSIpartners.com
~~~Jill's Response~~~
Hi Don,
Good question! (Thanks for giving me the opportunity to promote my
latest article!) MSN does currently use Direct Hit technology to
enhance its listings by giving people the opportunity to click on the
"Top 10 Most Popular Sites..." for some searches. Currently, HotBot,
Lycos and many other sites also utilize Direct Hit technology. All of
these engines compile their top ten "most popular" results using the
data from their own databases, and the Direct Hit database.
Direct Hit is owned by Ask Jeeves, who will be closing down the Direct
Hit Web site in the near future. However, the technology will still be
available to their partner engines. Each partner engine uses the
Direct Hit technology in addition to its own results. If you search
at HotBot, for instance, the Direct Hit results are seamlessly
integrated into their regular results. At Lycos and MSN, they're
marked as "most popular."
What the Direct Hit technology does is look at how many times sites
are clicked on within the results and ranks them accordingly. If any
given site is clicked on enough, it gets put into the top ten
"popular" sites. One would think that it would be hard for new sites
to get into the most popular list because the top 10 sites would
always be the ones to be clicked on. However, Direct Hit has ways of
counteracting this phenomenon. It measures how long a person has
remained at a given site. In other words, if you clicked on a site in
the results, found it wasn't relevant to you, came back and clicked on
another result, the Direct Hit technology would track this behavior.
That site would lose some credibility for the particular keyphrase you
searched upon. If you click on a result and never come back to the
engine, Direct Hit assumes you found what you were looking for and
would rate that site accordingly.
Direct Hit has its own Web site, however, it's recently been announced
that it will be closing down in the near future. It's also possible
that Direct Hit technology won't be used much longer at MSN and its
other partner sites. According to recent Search Engine Watch
articles, Danny Sullivan stated that Ask Jeeves' most recent baby,
"Teoma," is being favored by the company and will start to be offered
to their partner Web sites. Whether or not Direct Hit disappears all
together is yet to be seen. Right now Direct Hit is still working
full force at many search engines.
To answer the original question, I maintain that as long as your site
is in the Inktomi and LookSmart databases, you'll also be listed
somewhere at MSN. If it's a great site that's relevant for specific
keyphrases, you'll have a chance to become "most popular" as long as
MSN continues to use the Direct Hit technology.
Hope this helps!
Jill
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