Getting pertinent info from Search Engines is like climbing Mount Everest

Mount Everest Project

Recently using a few Search Engines I am experiencing that sometimes when I search on some keywords the engines come up with extremely unrelated websites. What's worse is that the results returned even rank high in the search. I decided to do a case study if you like and see what the results would be, I've called it the Mount Everest Project. The purpose of the study is to determine:

How accurate are search engines in finding quality pertinent material on the Web.
How accurately can they index and make your pages available to the Netizens when you submit.

I chose "Mount Everest" out of the blue, something which is totally unrelated to my work so that I would have no bias towards it, and something that there should be a lot about in the engines. I submitted it as search keywords to the following on Thursday November 20th 1997. Here are the results:

Altavista: About 215606 documents match your query
Infoseek: Infoseek found 365,914 pages containing at least one of these words: mount Everest
HotBot: Returned: 6894 matches.

Lets look at the last one first:

Results from HotBot

The No1 Position:

1.	Svenska Äventyr AB
99%	Svenska Äventyr AB anordnar konferenser, seminarier och föredrag. http://www.svenska-aventyr.se/, 2136 bytes, 17Apr97

Head:

<HEAD>
<TITLE> Svenska Äventyr AB </TITLE>
<meta http-equiv="author" content="Michael Stavbäck - Intera Interaktiv Affärsinformation AB, www.intera-aff.se">
<meta http-equiv="authoring_tool" content="Homesite 2.0">
<meta name="description" content="Svenska Äventyr AB anordnar konferenser, seminarier och föredrag.">
<meta name="keywords" content="Mount Everest, Svenska, äventyr, konferenser, seminarier, berg, expeditioner">
</HEAD>

No of times "mount everest" appeared in the text 0 times
No of times "everest" appeared in the text 0 times

The No 9 position:

9.	1st Singapore Mount Everest Expedition
99%	-SAS-WINDOW TOP=52 BOTTOM=610 LEFT=128 RIGHT=701> PRIMARY SPONSORS CHO-OYU EXPEDITION-97 click for a larger image (66k) NEWSFLASH! Team 1 consisting of 5 members has managed to attain the summit! More to follow when the team returns to Advanced... http://www.everest.org.sg/, 9289 bytes, 29Sep97

<HEAD><TITLE>Singapore-Everest Home Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>

No of times "mount everest" appeared in the text 0 times
No of times "everest" appeared in the text 10 times

The top rank here was a Swedish site, although pertinent to the subject really had a picture on the page and nothing else. That's why the keywords did not appear in the text content. I my opinion the 9th ranking site was slightly more pertinent to the matter.

Results from Alta Vista

1. You've got to Climb Mount Everest to Reach the Valley of the Dolls!
Marty's Home Page. I just though I would share some things that I thought are the COOLEST! Soap Stuff. All That
Links!! Cool Newsgroups. Soap Stuff. The...
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/5406/index2.html - size 8K - 14-Aug-97 - English

Head:

<TITLE>You've got to Climb Mount Everest to Reach the Valley of the Dolls!</TITLE>
</HEAD>

No of times "mount everest" appeared in the text 0 times
No of times "everest" appeared in the text 0 times
No of times "mount" appeared in the text 0 times

Totally unrelated site to the subject matter. It only had the keywords in the TITLE.

10. Nepal and Tibet mountaineering and trekking Mount Everest with Camp 5 guides
small groups. how to select a trip. the importance of booking early. mustang:the forbidden kingdom. dolpo high traverse:
land of the snow leopard....
http://www.adventuresports.com/asap/travel/camp5/nepal.htm - size 20K - 19-Jun-97 - English

Head:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Nepal and Tibet mountaineering and trekking Mount Everest with Camp 5
guides. </TITLE></HEAD>

No of times "mount everest" appeared in the text 0 times
No of times "everest" appeared in the text 20 times

Here again the Top rank had nothing to do with the keywords, just a figure of speech coincidence. The 10th site was pertinent, I actually liked the look of this site, will explore it one day further.

Results from Info seek:

The No 1 spot
AOG: Mount Everest
Mount Everest. MOUNT EVEREST werft, selecteert en verzorgt opleidingen voor afgestudeerde
academici en HBO'ers. Uitgangspunt is dat de kennis en vaardigheden van de deelnemers ...
90% http://www.rug.nl/aog/mountevr/index.htm (Size 5.2K)

Head:
<head>
<title>AOG: Mount Everest</title>
<meta name="Author" content="Dhr. Seth Kingma">
<meta name="CreatedBy" content="WP Internet Publisher 6.1">
</head>

No of times "mount everest" appeared in the text 16 times

Conclusion: pertinent article on the subject in Dutch

The No 10 Spot:
Untitled
I told you not to waste your time here! Key Words 2: Go to my Mount Everest Trekking Page to
see photos and photographs of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, ...
85% http://www.erols.com/ebolz/Nepal_Everest_Key_Words2.html (Size 1.6K)
More results from this site ...

Head:
None

I just copy and paste the actual page for you here:

I told you not to waste your time here! Key Words 2: Go to my Mount Everest Trekking Page to see photos and photographs of
Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche, Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near
Mount Everest. Photos and photograps of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche,
Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near Mount Everest. Photos and photograps of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount
Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche, Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near Mount Everest. Photos and photograps
of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche, Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near
Mount Everest. Photos and photograps of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche,
Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near Mount Everest. Photos and photograps of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount
Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche, Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near Mount Everest. Photos and photograps
of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche, Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near
Mount Everest. Photos and photograps of Nepal, featuring Katmandu, Mount Everest, Khumbu, Chukhung, Tengboche,
Dengboche, Gokyo with tails of trekking near Mount Everest.

Observations: Keywords in the TITLE will get you far even if the content does not have any reference to it. The 10th spot at Infoseek is obviously a Spam. However it has achieved its objective of appearing amongst the top 10. I did not follow the link but I suspect that its pertinent to the subject. I suspect that Alta Vista in an effort to curtail spam is penalising legitimate pages which although legitimate appear to have repeated the keywords over and hence may be suspected by their robot as spam. This is indeed a pity as the quality of the superb service is degrading. Alta Vista used to be the first place I looked, now its the last.

Now lets get to the second objective. How accurately can they index and make your pages available to the Netizens when you submit.

1- To test the Search Engines in their positioning capabilities. I am anxious to see what position in ranking this page will get in the search engines discussed namely Alta vista, HotBot and Infoseek. There should be two categories in which this article will appear and obviously I would like it to do well as far as ranking is concerned in both

1- Mount Everest, I feel that it surpasses all the websites mentioned above as far as " Mount Everest " is concerned ( as a figure of speech). It uses the phrase 40 times in the body of the text, and also in the title ( could get penalised by Alta Vista, however you are witnessed that I have not spamed). It also has links to 6 top position websites on the net which the search engines tell me are prominent as far as "mount everest" is concerned. This I believe is what Alta Vista gives weight to.

2- Search Engine positioning: I would like it to appear in the top ten of all the three, I have included the phrase " search engines " in the title but who is really going to look for search engines using a search engine. I really need to incorporate somehow phrases like " search engine ranking", "top 10 positioning", "site positioning", "web promotion", etc. what I could do is make a dummy page like the No 9 site at Infoseek and keep repeating these words. But no that's spamming, certainly not on. How the hell am I going to get noticed then? Well I'd better go see what competition I have. Off I go to the engines to check these phrases. Here are a couple of examples.

<HEAD>

<META name="description" content="Improve your keyword search ranking in every major search engine automatically">
<META name="keywords" content="increase traffic, increase website traffic, search position software,report position, search ranking software, rank, report rankings, search ranking, optimize positions, optimize rankings, monitor positions, monitor search positions, web site promotion, optimize search engine
positions, improve traffic, website visibility, increase website
traffic, improve search positions, search engine tools, internet
software, internet tools, web marketing, internet marketing,
MarketPosition, search rankings, positions, search positions, web
promotion, Yahoo, Altavista, Excite positions, InfoSeek positions,
WebPosition, positioning software, traffic building software, improve
search engine positions, keyword search positions">
<TITLE>Search ranking</TITLE>
</HEAD>

Here's another:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Search Engine secrets made easy using position ranking improvement service - InterNetGain website
services, free search engine position ranking analysis, consulting improve search engine placement</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Mozilla/3.0Gold (Win95; I; 16bit) [Netscape]">
<META NAME="CLASSIFICATION" CONTENT="search engine secrets, search engine position reporting, search engine position improvement service,
webmasters, meta tags, hits, increase traffic, web site listing, web software, consluting,
website visibility, optimize search position">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Search Engine Secrets made easy. It's no secret, InterNetGain automated
website analysis system is the answer to high search engine positions. Pricing Information,
search engine position free report on your URL, search engine position consulting">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Search engine secrets high ranking position, consulting
placement improvement search engines, product pricing information, increase website traffic,
how to obtain a top ranking placement, URL analysis, web page design for optimizing search
engine placement, web tools, webmaster, web software, ROI, optimize position presence, maximize
investment in your site, improve search engine ranking, site listing findability, automated
analysis of search engine ranking, keyword analysis, Meta tags, text analysis of keywords,
search engine tutorials guide, ranking tips, secrets, website design strategy, consulting, Perl,
HTML, Internet, gain advantage, more hits">
</HEAD>

Well here is the meta tags I have put together for this page:

<head>
<meta name="description"
content="How to improve Search Engine Ranking, Placement and Positioning.">
<meta name="keywords"
content="website promotions, site visibility, good placement, internet exposure, web announcements, traffic building, rankability, one-upmanship, website traffic, internet presence, ranking secrets, meta tags, keywords selection, visibility tools, going upmarket, high placement, top placing, top 10, webmasters, web authors, search engine tips, optimization, maximization">
<title>Getting pertinent info from Search Engines is like climbing Mount Everest</title>
</head>

Guess its time to submit. Lets declare this Beta Version 1 and see what happens. I shall certainly follow this up ( see 2003 update ).