• Search And Ye Shall Find Edition, March 2002

• Editor: Don Hunter don@arkvalwebworks.com

• Publisher: Arkansas Valley Web Works

• http://www.arkvalwebworks.com/

1. What’s Up?: Famous Today, Hanged Tomorrow.

2. Web Page Help: Save A Buck or $300.00!

3. Web Issues and Stuff: The Demise of the Search Engines

4. Surfing With Ark: A Googlewhack Attack.

5. Ark Announcements: Submission Nutrition

6. Both Sides Of The Coin, (Words of Wit and Wisdom)

Just for grins I decided to do an engine search for my name. I figured there had to be at least two hundred billion Don Hunters on the web.

For the last three years I have been working fairly consistently toward getting my site recognized, improving content and developing my own presence on the web. Nonetheless, my chances of finding reference to myself seemed very remote.

I decided to start with Google, my favorite search engine, because I thought my chances were so slim. I expected to scroll through several hundred Don Hunters looking for references to myself, and never finding any. Was I mistaken? Google listed my index page as number one and my About Me page number two.

Deciding it must be some kind of fluke, I did a similar search on WiseNut, MSN, and Meta-Crawler. On each of those search engines I found my name and reference to Arkansas Valley Web Works listed within the top ten.

"Wow," I exclaimed aloud distracting my gal, "Google listed me number one and two in a search for Don Hunter..., I’m in the top ten on several other ones too. I’m famous, they’ll put my name up in lights."

"I’m sure they will," she suggested, "those lights they put up right above the gallows."

Everybody wants to save a buck or two. Well how about saving $300.00?

Yahoo is now charging $300.00 for them to list you on their search engine. Isn’t that naughty of them? I thought so. Therefore I’m passing along a little tip.

Yahoo now uses the Google database for web page results. Just submit your site to Google and you’re still listed on Yahoo for free.

Save a buck or two or $300.00 on search engine submission.

Those who are interested in learning more about search engine tips and tricks should subscribe to Boogie Jack’s Search Engine Optimization Strategies course. Just go to the following URL to subscribe.

http://www.boogiejack.com/seos.html.

Who needs to Yahoo for $300.00 when you can still Google for free?

Remember when Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, Yahoo and a few others dominated the search engines. They got lots of visitors and their revenues exploded. Then there was a resulting explosion of more search engines, with some of them doing better than the originals.

I was impressed with the Northern Light search engine because they were the first to list my site when I started out almost three years ago. Northern Light has now gone out of business as a free search engine. Conversely I remember being unimpressed with Yahoo because it took them over six months to list my site. Sadly though in some respects, the technology changes so quickly that today’s great search engine is tomorrow dinosaur.

A number of the search engine sites, notably Yahoo, became what I would term more shopping oriented with a small link to your information and a ton of advertisements. Many of the other engines followed suit.

After that initial explosion the number of search engines is now dwindling. Excite and Northern Light are among those who have gone belly up. They have been turned into pay for searches. Yahoo now charges $300.00 a year to list commercial sites. Most people I know aren’t ready for pay for searches, myself included; but the list of search engines doing just that is growing.

It is hard for me to rationalize shelling out $2000.00 to $3000.00 a year to be listed on the top search engines. Even then I would still have to play the search engine rankings game just like when the service was free; and it would be a waste of money to even be listed at many of the engines.

With revenues from advertisers falling, and the use of ad blocking software by internet users it was bound to happen sooner or later. Could it be that with the demise of the search engines so would go the FREE internet? Could it be the initial jubilation of having so much free content available online will succumb to the bitter reality that nothing is free, that someone has to pay for the webmaster services, hosting, and all the other necessities? Before you say that could never happen; perhaps it might better be argued that it is already happening.

Everyone is bound to lose in the current atmosphere of search engine gloom and doom. But perhaps there is a ray of shining light on the otherwise gloomy horizon.

The good news is that Google keeps on growing stronger. I learned about Google a couple of years ago when I was reviewing a Web Trends report that listed, among other things, the top search engines that

people were using to access my site. I tried it and liked it. I found what I was looking for and it was clean and fast.

Google indexes over 1.5 billion pages. That is far more than any other. They also refresh their database by going back to the pages they have already indexed and checking for updates.

There are still a few search engines that are doing things the right way. My favorite three are http://www.google.com, http://www.wisenut.com, and http://www.teoma.com.

We may not quite be witnessing the demise of the search engines yet; but if they don’t change their ways they may get gobbled up. Or would that be Googled up?

As if we need more silly ways to waste time on the Internet, now they’ve come up with another dandy. It’s called googlewhacking.

Your assignment should you decide to accept it is to find two words with a single solitary result for the query. No quote marks are accepted in your search.

I especially liked some of the whacks for the current Enron debacle. How about "ambidextrous scallywags" defined as those Enron execs contributing to both the Democrats and the Republicans? Or the most popular mixed drink at Enron's corporate Christmas parties being the "bamboozle guzzler".

Let’s see, maybe I can come up with a few of my own examples for the Enron execs. How about "greedy swine"? No, there’s five million references to them listed. How about "covetous slitherers"? Is slitherers even a word? If I wasn’t trying so hard I could get it. Maybe you’ll have better luck.

Check out more at http://www.googlewhacking.com for a googlewhack attack.

For those in need of making their site more nutritious for the search engines, Arkansas Valley Web Works comes to the rescue. Simple search submission is being offered for only $50.00 when you provide the appropriate tags and wording. Optimized search submission is only $90.00 if you would like me to help you optimize it. What a buy, some others charge hundreds of dollars for the same services.

See http://www.arkvalwebworks.com/services/submission.htm for particulars. It’s nutrition without ingestion or indigestion. What a concept!

"Life is two percent finding and ninety-eight percent searching."

Don Hunter