The Search Engine Speaks

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March 30, 1998

The Search Engine Speaks:
An interview with Jennifer Mullin, product manager of search at Infoseek
By Jason Levitt
an higher rankings in search engines make a difference for your company? Consumer search-engine usage is hard to measure, but it seems likely that at least sometimes the answer is yes. In my own use of search engines, the first page of results i s what I go to first, and if I am simply looking for a commercial product, I might stop then and there and purchase it. I routinely ignore results that appear farther down in the search-engine results, and I suspect most search-engine users do the same.
Suppose, for example, that I wanted to purchase a Quantum hard drive. If I put "Quantum hard drives" into the Infoseek search engine (I use the double quotes to narrow the search), I get 575 listings. That's about 50 or so pages of results and I'm clearly not going to click through them all.
A cursory click through the pages shows that some sites selling the drives don't appear anywhere near the top of the list, while others are right there on the first page; yet they are all selling the same items. Almost certainly, I'll click on the first ones since there is some implied notion that the search engine will rank the sites by relevance and provide the more "serious" sites first.
Whether or not search engine listings can bring a lot of people to your site, most will list your site for free, so that represents a pretty safe investment. The only question is -- and you've probably seen this in numerous spam mailings -- how can I make sure that my site gets listed before my competitors?
Rather than hand over bucks to the spam swindlers who peddle documents that claim to reveal the "secrets" of the search engines, I instead interviewed Jennifer Mullin, product manager of Search At Infoseek, one of the largest and best known search engine companies. Infoseek is one of the fastest indexing sites on the Internet with a typical turnaround of from five minutes to two hours for newly submitted pages. This fast turnaround has made Infoseek a sort of test bed for search-engine rankings.
Infoseek went public with a stock offering in February, making it one of the few companies to go public with a search engine as its principal asset. In the following interview, Mullin was reluctant to give me concrete details about how Infosee k handles search-engine rankings and spammers. She doesn't offer up the secrets (are there really any?) but she does provide some insight into how Infoseek manages one of the largest engines on the Web and what it can offer businesses.
InformationWeek: There are lots of spammers selling documents that claim to teach you how to get your site listed higher in the search engines. Are there really any secrets that people can use to get their Web pages listed higher in the Infoseek rankings?
Mullin: We recommend that users follow the guidelines listed in our Infoseek Submitting Tips . This tells the user how to make a quality site. We do not recommend using the Web site promoters as they do not know our algorithms and one's success is not guaranteed. If one has money to spend and wants the traffic, one can buy a keyword by contacting our ad sales. This will guarantee that the ad is seen. See our advertising information page for details.
InformationWeek: I've seen documents that recommend stuffing keywords into META tags, ALT tags, comments, and hidden tags (INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN"......) However, they also caution against using keywords too many times because it is an "old" ranking trick that search engines check for. Do you think there is any chance these tactics will help in the rankings?
Mullin: Definitely not. Our engineers are very aware of the spammer tactics and we filter against them. We have weekly meetings and a team to address spam. We do penalize and may even remove a site permanently if we feel the user is spamming.
InformationWeek: What are your best tips for submitting a useful listing to Infoseek?
Mullin: We want you to follow our Add Url guidelines . Use the META tag description field to specify the site. This determines the summary description. Also use the META tag keywords to help describe content of the site. To summarize, use a specific descriptive title, include META tag description and create keywords that contain comma- separated phrases. Remember: Repetition will result in a lower relevancy score, and maybe omission, if abused.
InformationWeek: Have you done any surveys to determine what impact your search engine has on site visits, sales, or customer satisfaction? What are your findings?
Mullin: We have received positive feedback on how we have increased traffic to sites because of our search-engine listings.
InformationWeek: Would you have done my search for "Quantum hard drives" (above) any differently? What are the most common mistakes people make when searching?
Mullin: No. The quotes and capitalizing really make a difference and you did find sites to buy. I would recommend that all users print our search tips page so they can accurately search, as you have.
InformationWeek: Some sites offer Web listing services that will let you submit your site to many search engines at once. Do you recommend or not recommend any of these services? Do you have a general feeling about them?
Mullin: Again, they cannot guarantee your site will get listed, so I would recommend using our Add Url Guidelines page on our site to make sure you get into our index.
InformationWeek: What are the major strengths and weaknesses of Infoseek compared to Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos, and AltaVista?
Mullin: We have the most relevant search engine. In test after test, ours yields the most relevant results. We integrate our directory, content channels, and search so the user receives a comprehensive, exemplary experience. We cluster our results so the user is not forced to look at one site that has changed the URL but has the same page. Thus, our results are more diverse. We fight spam aggressively so clean queries such as "cheerleader" yield clean results and not pornography as they do with our competition. Try cheerleader on our site vs. the competition. Our results are much more relevant and clean. We have instant URL so we can let users add their site to our index immediately. We have a 24-hour turnaround procedure with all customer-service issues. We map queries so that certain queries move a user into a channel. Thus, we get the user closer to what they are looking for. For example, a search for football puts the user right in the sports channel. We allow the user to "search these results," which is a great refinement tool. We have an advanced search feedback form that caters to the advanced user as well as the beginner -- this forms walks them through the process.
InformationWeek: It seems like there are so many Web pages now that it's harder than ever to get exp osure for a Web page. Does Infoseek foresee any technology in the future that might change the way sites are promoted?
Mullin: We are always tuning our algorithms and search engines. The best way for a site to be promoted is to have the best quality. Again, each search engine is a bit different, so one should follow our guidelines to get the best placement in Infoseek.
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