HotBot at a Glance
Size
Spider Class
Meta Tag support
Frame support
Image Map support
Alt Text support
HTML Comments
Url Searching
Embedded Directory
Submission URL
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95 Million Urls (approx)
Deep
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Submit
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Hotbot is now part of the Lycos Network, but still a seperate search engine from Lycos.
SUBMISSION POLICY
The HotBot system doesn't contain a lot of information concerning a submission policy. Mostly its in the form of vague statements concerning "spoofing" (see reference).
We're aware that some people create pages to maliciously "spoof" search engines - making search engines return pages that are irrelevant to the search at hand or pages that rank higher than their content warrants. Common spoofing techniques include the senseless repetition of words, the inserting of META tags unrelated to the document's content, or the use of words that cannot be read due to their small size or color. If HotBot recognizes any spoofing technique, it will severely penalize a page's ranking.
HTML FACTS
The HotBot system is not as capable as some others. HotBot does not support frames or image maps. It will index all of the visible page content, Meta tags and html comments.
Alt Text statements are not indexed in Hotbot.
The HotBot spider is not a deep level spider, so if your site contains many sub-directories, be ready to submit your top url and the urls for the lower level directories as well. You may submit up to 50 URLS per day to HotBot, but they warn that it may take up to 60 days for the submissions to appear in the database.
RANKING METHODS
Here is what HotBot has to say about their own ranking methods;
Some of the most basic factors affecting query result ranking include:
Word frequency in document --- In general, the more often a query word occurs in the document, the higher the rank. However, the obscurity of the word also has impact. Common words like "the" contribute less to the rank than rare and discriminating words like "tiki".
Search words in title --- Pages that use your search terms in the title will be ranked significantly higher than documents that contain the search term in the text only.
Search words in keywords --- Pages that use your search terms in the "keywords" tag, will be weighted more highly than text words, but less highly than title words.
Document length --- When the search words appear frequently in a short document, the page will be ranked higher than when the words appear in a long document.
Again, like InfoSeek and Alta Vista, links to your site will boost your ranking, also your keyword relevancy to page content is important.
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HotBot isn't a custom built search engine. Unlike InfoSeek or Alta Vista, HotBot was purchased from Inktomi Corporation. Quite a bit of information about the core system can be learned by visiting Inktomi and reading their faqs, including how to achieve higher rankings.
- Documents are ranked higher if a search term is in the title. Users are more likely to click a link if the title matches what they're looking for. Choose terms for the title that match the concept of your document.
- Write your description carefully. After a title, users click on a link because the description draws them in.
- Place your key terms in the "keyword" meta tag. This helps, too, although not as much as the title. If possible, customize the keywords for each page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords on every page.
- Keep relevant text and links in HTML. Placing them in graphics or image maps means search engines can't search for the text and the crawler can't follow links to your site's other pages. An HTML site map, with a link from your welcome page, can help make sure all your pages are crawled.
- Be judicious with frames, or, to be safe, avoid them completely. A complex frame structure confuses many web crawlers.
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It is interesting to note that both HotBot and Inktomi are urging people to steer clear of strictly image based websites and other fancy features like frames. This was amply illustrated by this entry located searching on the words "web design north idaho".
9. Design-Build Online Directory
4/12/99 http://search.designbuildmag.com/states/
See results from this site only.
This site actually has a blank description tag. And almost zero visible text with the bulk of the text being incorporated into the images. This sort of ambigous entry is something which could have been easily avoided. The next listing (shown below) illustrates an entry with meta tags, and decent keyword relevancy.
2. Northern Webs, North Idaho's premiere internet services company
Northern Webs offers custom internet system and site designs at reasonable rates, and custom solutions for today's information infrastructure problems.
2/11/2001 http://www.northernwebs.com
See results from this site only.
There is one additional item to note here. Should you omit your title tag, HotBot will use the url as the title for the entry.
SUMMARY
HotBot is a dual system. Containing both the Inktomi engine and a directory system. The directory is actually part of the open directory project so if you want to get yourself listed in this manually reviewed system you need to go here.
HotBot allows you to check your url submission here.
We strongly recommend that you submit to both the index and the directory for HotBot, with 95 million urls indexed, HotBot is not a system to overlook.
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