Inktomi

[spacemanspiff]

Has anyone been fooling with Inktomi. With the big Yahoo change looking more like it might possibly be a reality (maybe), I thought it would be a good time to see what's up with them these days.

I've heard that if you clear out your cookies, log in to your yahoo member account, and stand on your head under a full moon, you'll get Ink results at Yahoo instead of the usual mix of google and yahoo sites. I haven't been able to get that to work though.

[Surfn]

Yahoo (and several others) used Inktomi before google. I have Inktomi spidering all my sites. In a typical month I have spiders from 40+ SE's wandering my pages at least weekly.

[spacemanspiff]

Hey Surfn, do they just spider paid submissions, or is there a way to get in for free. And do they just spider the pages you paid for, or your whole site.

I use to have a lot of sites listed in Ink, but I can't find a single one in there now. I've been searching for info on ranking well with an Ink listing. So far I'm not finding much.

[Bill]

I haven't been tracking inktomi much lately, altho I used to do a lot of it. I've let most of the 60+ urls I once bought into positiontech expire this past year, I think I have about 15 left, and so far I can't say I see any traffic rise, altho I've been wondering if I would with the yahoo thing.

It used to be if you were in one of two different INK databases, the BOW and the more recent free "slurp" database, ink would spider endlessly off those urls into your whole network. I don't know if this is still as true as it was, there was speculation that ink would devalue those older databases and move to pure pay-to-spider.

Ink itself said, and all the "experts" I talked with agree, that ink did not EVER spider off pay-to-spider pages, it spiders only the page paid for.

Unless you have a unique keyword, you have to have about 100+ links in the free ink databses in order to rank well, you need 400+ for more competitive terms. It's a very simpleminded linkpopularity algo and is extremely vulnerable to script generated pages. If you have old domains, like 1999-2000, chances are good they are in one of the two free (arguably there are more than two, but I condense them for simplicity) databases and you can use them to generate linkpop.

Still, I have been disappointed with ink for the past 18 months.

[Surfn]

Originally posted by spacemanspiff
Hey Surfn, do they just spider paid submissions, or is there a way to get in for free. And do they just spider the pages you paid for, or your whole site.

I don't pay for listings or keywords. They pick up my pages because of all the typin traffic from other SE's. Plus I submit my optimized Ink pages to them.

If you know what you're doing there is no reason for paid inclusions. No SE wants to be left out of the loop for popular searches. They are in the business of serving up what the surfer is looking for.

[spacemanspiff]

Hey Bill, is there any way to check the free databases to see if sites are indexed? The only place I know of to check is the Pure Search page at Positiontech. I've got a lot of really old domains and I know a bunch of them used to be in Ink. I guess it's possible they're still in there.

Surfn, I used to submit to Inktomi for free, even after they came out with their paid service. I have no clue how to do that now. Where do you go to submit?

I'm doing a lot of research on Inktomi right now, and if I find any juicy tidbits that might be helpful, I'll pass them along here.

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by spacemanspiff
Hey Bill, is there any way to check the free databases to see if sites are indexed? The only place I know of to check is the Pure Search page at Positiontech. I've got a lot of really old domains and I know a bunch of them used to be in Ink. I guess it's possible they're still in there.

Surfn, I used to submit to Inktomi for free, even after they came out with their paid service. I have no clue how to do that now. Where do you go to submit?

I'm doing a lot of research on Inktomi right now, and if I find any juicy tidbits that might be helpful, I'll pass them along here.

At http://search.positiontech.com/Inkto...TechSearch.jsp

...punch in your domain name. Try with and without the www.

Just... mydomain.com

Another way at MSN is:

http://search.msn.com/advanced.aspx

Put in empty quotes within the search field- ""

Put your domain name in the domain field.

Read here for Ink stuff:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum1/

You are all set.

PS- If you have even a few good links I wouldn't do PFI on Ink. I have had clients do PFI and only have those URL's in Ink whereas, one of my smaller sites has far ore listings in Ink and I never did PFI.

[xxxjay]

Back when it mattered a lot more, every time I would launch a new site, I would do the Inktomi PFI. These days, I don't do it because there isn't enough traffic with Inktomi. *If* Yahoo switches, that all may change. I used to say *when* but the Yahoo switch was supposed to have happened this past summer.

Maybe the yahoo folks are realizing that would be commercial suicide. Example: Take a look for some decent information on Inktomi's current big client Hotbot:

http://www.hotbot.com/default.asp?qu...rovKey=Inktomi

Pretty sorry, eh?

Now try it on a real search engine:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...F-8&q=greenguy

Results do matter.

[Bill]

SpacemanS, I don't know of any better way than puresearch to look thru the ink databases. There is a way to tell wether you are looking at a pay-to-spider page or a free page, but I've forgotten what it is... ;-} goes to show you how much I worry about ink these days.

I'd agree with Alphawolf, I would never buy a page from an established domain into ink, I have personal experience with the disaster that can cause, back when it mattered I bought pages from 30+ domains that were getting good free traffic from ink, and ink deletes all pages from the purchased domain from the database, including the linkpop you are getting from those pages, I lost 95% of my ink traffic on those domains overnight. Ink has acknowledged that there was a problem, and said they would fix it, but I have never heard that they DID fix it, and I wouldn't trust them.

So rule #1 would be only use new domains for pay-to-spider pages.

If you have unusual and unique keywords the pay-to-spider deal can be fairly profitable.

[spacemanspiff]

Yeah, Jay, it's possible that Yahoo will wise up. I think residents of the dark side of the moon know that Ink is pretty crappy. But I'm trying to do a little pre-planning, just in case.

Bill, if positiontech shows all pages indexed in Ink, then I have zero presence there. I find it strange that they would not have indexed at least one of my sites if they are a crawler based engine. Some have been around since 1998, maybe even earlier. I did a few domain searches and found some with many thousands of pages indexed. Is it worth it to fork over that kind of dough for the traffic it would bring? Maybe so.

[Bill]

SpacemanS, there are very strange things happening right now in all the yahoo owned search engine properties, AV, Alltheweb, and now inktomi. Your missing sites could be part of those changes.

All three pay-to-spider, all three owned by yahoo, all three mysteriously missing sites.

My first guess would be that the rumors that ink was going to devalue the older databases is true and it has happened/is happening.

All very interesting, altho I still don't see any reason yet to put new effort into ink. If you read anything new, let us know.

[T Pat]

I paid for inclusion of www.tiajuanawhores.com 5 or 6 months ago Tijuana is misspelled in my domain name. Just looked me up in Inktomi no listing under tiajuanawhores, tiajuana whores or tijuana whores.
Looked same words up in hot bot. (tiajuanawhores)
1st position is my user info on greenguyand jim forrum
2nd position is one of my first photo shoots where I was trying to figure out what thumbnail program to use.
3ld position is my home page,
4th position is a load of crap guess I’m in it somewhere.

Then I looked up (tiajuana whores) results the 1st position is a link to greenguyand jim forrum where I’m asking for advice,
my home page is listed in the 13th position.
Then I typed in tijuana whores (spelled correctly) results I’m not listed.
Same searches on google
(tiajuanawhores) total of 20 listing (home page 2nd postion) of either my galleris feesites I’ve done, home page or sites I have submitted to.
(tiajuana whores) first 20+ positions are of my site, galleries, feesites I’ve done, or sites I have submitted to.
Tijuana whores (spelled correctly) position 3 and 4 are free sites I have done.

Some of my server logs for the month
Robots/Spiders visitors
11 different robots
Inktomi Slurp 94
Alexa (IA Archiver) 53
Lycos 49
Googlebot (Google) 28
WISENutbot (Looksmart) 27
Scooter (AltaVista) 20
Unknown robot (identified by 'crawl') 18
Unknown robot (identified by 'robot') 7
Jeeves 3
Unknown robot (identified by 'spider') 2
Fast-Webcrawler (AllTheWeb) 1

More server log info
Links from an Internet Search Engine
- Google 244 244
- Yahoo 204 204
- MSN 70 70
- Other search engines 33 33
- Ask Jeeves 27 27
- AOL 26 26
- Excite 9 9
- AltaVista 9 9
- Dogpile 7 7
- Mamma 5 5
- Hotbot 4 4
- Earth Link 4 4
- MetaCrawler (Metamoteur) 3 3
- AllTheWeb 3 3
- Overture 2 2
- Lycos 2 2
- AOL 1 1
- Netscape 1 1
- InfoSpace 1 1
- ix quick 1 1

I might be a newbe but I won’t be wasting any more money at position tech

[AussieWebmaster]

This Yahoo thing is urban legend for now. Yahoo resigned with Google late last year.

Ink is important for MSN searches... so if you had good msn from LookSmart and see the searches dropping off it would be an idea to do PFI at ink.

The best way to get free Ink is to find sites that are not paid that have good pacement and do a link exchange if you can.

To see if it is paid do a rollover of the link or a properties check.
If you see this
http://rdrw1.inktomi.com/click?
it is a PFI.