GO. com / INFOSEEK Infoseek Corporation

1399 Moffett Park Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94089
(800) 781-INFO (408) 543-6000 (voice)
(408) 734-9350 (Fax) comments@ Infoseek. com

URL to the engine http:// www. go. com or
http:// www. infoseek. go. com

Must submit EACH page? MUST SUBMIT EACH ONE
How long to index my page? From two days to months
Recognizes and supports META tags? YES
Are searches case sensitive? YES
Does a spider index the site? NO
Uses data entered on submission form only? NO
Is page popularity a factor? YES (very important)
Alphabetical ranking used? NO
Keyword weight plays a role? YES
Title tag considered for relevancy? YES
Prominence of keywords in title tag important? YES
Frequency of keywords in title tag important? YES
Comment tags considered for relevancy? NO
Max. length of title accepted 75 characters
Max. length of keyword META Tag 1000 characters
Max. length of description field you can submit N/ A. Indexes entire page.
How to check to see if you're listed URL: http:// www. company. com
How to check your link popularity link: company. com
E-mail Support comments@ infoseek. com
Total documents indexed 500,000 in Go. com directory, over 10
million pages indexed in primary index

Total page views 431 million page views for the month of
December 1998

Add URL http:// www. go. com/ AddUrl? pg= Submit Url. html

Infoseek was recently purchased by The Walt Disney Company and renamed "The Go Network" at Go. com. Since this takeover Go. com stopped indexing Web pages with the same speed that once made them the Web marketers' favorite. We know that Go. com turned off their automatic submission form for a few weeks in early January, but these new delays are nothing short of
alarming to folks in our business.

We had a chance to speak with some folks at Go. com, but they were less forthcoming than some of the other search engines. Nevertheless, they did supply us with a tidbit or two. We've considered their input and, where appropriate, added it to our own techniques and observations. Below are the steps to increase your relevancy and rank in Go. com.

Step 1: Go out and solicit links to your Web site. Go. com cares a lot about page popularity. One technique we employ is to go to AltaVista and query "link: www. yourdomain. com" to measure how many pages AltaVista records as having established a link to your site (because it has a very large indexed database, AltaVista always seems to record more sites that link to another site than any other search engine).

Review the list of sites that AltaVista shows as linking to yours. You can copy the URLs into a word processing document. Visit Go. com's "Add-URL" page and submit each of these pages so that Infoseek will
register the link from those pages as well.

Then, set about identifying other Web sites that you think might be interested in linking to you. Start by offering them a link and send them an e-mail pointing out the fact that you established a link to them.

Another technique is to submit your site to those thousands of the otherwise useless link lists and awards sites talked about by the many submission services on the Web. Sooner or later, some of these links will be recorded by Infoseek and hopefully help you with your rankings.

Step 2: Create a series of doorway pages with different names. Be careful when doing so, because Go. com's spam filter may remove some of your pages. We experienced this when we tried to submit the following pages:

http:// www. yourcompany. com/ indexkeyword. htm
http:// www. yourcompany. com/ indexkeyword2. htm
http:// www. yourcompany. com/ indexkeyword3. htm

Infoseek deleted all but one of the pages that had "index" as part of the file name. Infoseek recently implemented a clever way of preventing dozens of pages from the same URL resulting for any given keyword search. Go. com now returns only one page from any URL in the main search results, and then offers a link to "more links from this page."

This prevents someone from flooding a particular keyword search results page with 50 of their pages, but still allows someone to have all those pages listed. This change should not stop you from developing your different doorway pages. Our goal has never been to help you have dozens of your pages result from a particular keyword search. The goal of doorway page is to have one of your pages returned in a top position for a variety of different keywords. One page in a top position for each keyword is all you need!

Step 3: Create a <TITLE> tag and META description tags for each doorway page. You may do better in Go. com if you leave out the keyword META tag. Some pages seem to actually rank better without it, or using fewer total keywords in this tag. If you do use a keyword META tag, we suggest placing just one keyword in the tag.

Make your title long and don't repeat your important keyword in the title tag more than once - very important with Go. com.

NOTE: At the search engine conference in Boston, Steve Kirsh, chairman and founder of Infoseek, gave a terrific speech. He revealed that Go. com would be considering keywords found on internal pages of the Web site as well. That means, if you have a doorway page and you're targeting a particular keyword, it might be a good idea to include that keyword throughout the
rest of the pages on your Web site.

Clarification on the recommendation to use only one keyword in the keyword META tag.

We created a number of pages that contained varying numbers of a made-up keyword called "METAsnafutest" in the META keyword tag. We discovered that Go. com does not ban your page entirely for having more than three repetitions of a keyword in your keyword tag. However, the pages submitted with fewer repetitions in the keyword tag (with all other elements the same), scored higher. A page with two repetitions scored better than one with three repetitions, and the page with just one mention of
the keyword in the META tag, scored better than all the other META tag test pages.

The page that ultimately came out on top was the one that was better balanced by having the keyword not only in the META tag but also in the body text. Therefore, always remember that the META tags play only one part in Go. com's, or any engine's, overall scoring system.

We also tested to see if there was in fact a limit that would ban the page or get the keyword ignored in a search. Despite the widely held belief of a seven repetition limit, a page on Go. com with eight repetitions in a row of the word "METAsnafutest" still showed up, although it ranked poorly. Evidently nine repetitions were too much since Go. com failed to find that page on a search for "METAsnafutest." The page was still indexed though, since it did show up for another unique keyword search.

Therefore, the recommendation for Go. com is to repeat keywords throughout the page, but generally no more than three times in the keyword META tag. You might try repeating it once as lowercase, once as uppercase, and perhaps once as upper/ lower case. We do not suggest repeating it anymore than this, even using other forms of the same word such as "RUN" and "RUNNING." If you still have trouble achieving that optimal rank, consider listing your keyword only ONCE to avoid any small penalty that might make the difference between a good score and a mediocre one.

Step 4: Create sentences for your body copy that use the keyword and synonyms of your keyword. Go. com assigns relevancy for synonyms of your keywords. Keyword frequency is not enough. Use your word processor's thesaurus to find synonyms for your keywords.

Don't worry about including every variation of your keywords as Go. com employs word stemming. Someone searching for "consultant" will retrieve documents including "consultants" and "consulting." Focus instead on what you believe will be the most popular keyword, and go with the longer form of the word when possible.

Step 5: Increase your page's keyword weight. Work toward 4 to 5 percent keyword weight on pages, and, as always, take a quick look at what Infoseek returns for matches on keywords you are targeting. Examine the keyword weight of those pages returned as the top 10 matches and model keyword weight after those pages, perhaps increasing it slightly. Don't forget to use a keyword near the bottom of your page.

Step 6: Prepare ALT tags. Go. com assigns relevancy to keywords found in ALT text. Prepare sentences rich with keywords and their synonyms for use in these tags. If you don't have graphics on your page, consider using the "single pixel gif trick" outlined in the first half of the report.

Step 7: Build in hyperlinks that contain keywords. Go. com assigns relevancy to keywords found in hyperlinks. Build links from your main pages to internal pages and even internal links to lower down or higher up on your page.

Step 8: Remove or slow down META refresh pages or CGI redirect scripts that are too fast. Below is an error message from Go. com that speaks for itself, concerning a site trying to employ a doorway page with a META refresh tag. A META refresh tag is a tag placed in the head part of a Web page and can be used to transport visitors to another page (presumably your site's main page) in some amount of time that you set.

It is important to note that this error message was not received when submitting two other pages that used the META refresh tag when the refresh rate was set between "16" and "18" seconds. The offending page's refresh rate that resulted in the following message, was set at "3" (Note: This statement was paraphrased for brevity.):

... Error: This URL Could Not Be Indexed by Infoseek

http:// www. thiscompanyname. com/ ads/ 895192967. htm will not be indexed by Infoseek.

(Editors note: The URL in the above example has been changed.)

The error message was generated because Go. com spider is specifically programmed not to index Web sites that employ certain techniques.

Step 9: Resubmit your pages often (monthly, perhaps).

Go. com likes fresher pages and seems to give them a favorable ranking. They have also recently been dropping pages from their index, so it never hurts to resubmit your pages.

Still need more power? Try these:

1. Go. com looks for all word variants during a search so you do not have to include every imaginable variation of your keywords on your page or in your META tags. A search for "mouse" will yield documents with "mice" too! Don't waste keyword weight by including the many variations of your important keywords.

2. Infoseek detects same color on same color keyword spamdexing. Don't bother trying it.

3. Uncommon words are given more weight - use them as best you can in doorway pages for Go. com (see the section on "stop" words for more information). And uncommon keywords with a high weight on your Web page do even better!

4. Keywords in the title and the first 200 words of your Web page are given the most weight. So make those first 200 words matter and avoid common "stop" words like "the" and "and." Craft your first 200 words with exacting attention to detail so the page starts out rich in keywords and synonyms.