Google updates PR

Many web sites either suffered or benefited from the last Google PR update. Some very old and almost dead web sites started to appear in the results.

Yahoo refused Microsoft's offer

After a long and painful period of negotiation, Yahoo refused Microsoft's multibillion dollar offer. If this offer was accepted, there is no doubt that the search engine market will be dramatically changed. You may have to pay for each search for a typical hotel search in Yahoo.

Making Your HTML Valid

Creating a web page that conforms HTML/XHTML standards can be a factor in search engine optimization. You can use http://validator.w3.org/check address to check the validity of your pages. It provides hints for solving invalid HTML.

Exchanging Links: Is it Legitimate?

Links to a web page/site increases chance of display in search results for that page/site. If somebody links to your web site with or without your knowledge, that is a good thing. However, this takes very long, if you leave this process on its own. The solution for a quicker search engine boost is making link exchange with related web sites. You basically make searches for your target keywords and contact the webmasters of the sites in the results. Some of them will want to exchange links with you and this will benefit both sides. Actually if the relevancy between the sites are considered properly, search engines will like this, instead of marking it as spam.

Checking How Many Pages of Your Site are Indexed

You can check how many page are indexed from major search engines:

Yahoo: Hotel-Board.com
MSN Search: Hotel-Board.com
Google: Hotel-Board.com

Using Google Notebook

You can use Google Notebook for taking notes for the web pages in the search results as follows: Madrid Hotels . This was you can check your previous opinions for a web site.

How to See the Owner of a Website

Sometimes we need to learn the person or company behind a website. We may be about to make a purchase or just wondering what's going on. Then the first thing is to check for "About Us", "Company Profile" kind of pages. Afterwards the next, and a more important, part comes: WHOIS
.

WHOIS, is a domain name ownership querying system. Here is an example: We are about book a hotel room from Hotel-Board.com and wondering who these guys are. We make the following search: http://whois.domaintools.com/hotel-board.com .

It shows us plenty of information about the web site.

Using Alexa for Checking a Website's Reputation

You can use Alexa to check a web site's overview, thumbnail, traffic detail and related links. This is very useful if you want to learn if a web site or company is really important. Here is a sample query in Alexa: discount hotels

Search for Beginners

I will tell you how to make a good search. Google will be my test bed.

Rule #1: Be specific
Our purpose is to find cheap accommodation in madrid. Open Google, type "hotel" and click Search. It gives too many results. We narrow our search term by "hotel madrid" which is still too much. "hotel madrid cheap" brings a better result set and we can start checking the result web sites.

Rule #2: Find what to search
You may not be using the right search phrase for getting what you need. Make test searches using related words. The higher number of results will give you a hint of the best phrase to use. For example you can use "madrid hotels", "hotels in madrid", "madrid accommodation" for determining the best keywords.

Rule #3: Filter what you don't want
Among all the results you may want to filter some words, phrases. The negation "-" operator is handy. A "madrid hotels -hostels" search will filter out hostels from the results.

Search Engine Stories

Hello everybody, this site will contain my personal experiences with search engines. Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, and so on.

Searching on the net has become the focus of most of us. You are talking to your friend and suddenly something or someone does not come out of your mouth. You know what it is; but you can not give the name. A few searches in favorite search engine gives you the name. Here is an example: you forget the name of Humphrey Bogart but you remember the name of his famous movie Casablanca. You just search for "casablanca" and grab the first result page. It is IMDB and it lists the casting with Bogart on the top. Bingo! The search engine replaces your memory in this case, which sounds dangerous to me. Anyway this is what happens everyday for most of us and leaving the task of searching information to Google and etc. is becoming reality.