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| Analyzing search engine results to improve your ranking | 
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There is no better way for you to begin learning about the different search engines and the results they produce, then to actually start testing them with a few simple queries. Put yourself in your prospect's place, and think about how they are going to find your Web site. What will they be looking for? What keywords or phrases are they going to use in their search? What benefits does your site offer them?
Below is a listing of the most popular portals and search engines on the Web as ranked by 100hot.com on September 1, 1999. Select a few keywords that would be appropriate for your type of online business and test them on a cross section of these search engines.
| Portal name | 100hot Sites ranking |
| #78 |
|
| AltaVista | #6 |
| AOL | #3a |
| AskJeeves | #95 |
| Excite |
#8a |
| HotBot |
N/A |
| InfoSpace.com |
#40 |
| Go (Infoseek) |
#5 |
| GoTo.com | #80 |
| Looksmart |
#15 |
| Lycos | #4 |
| Magellan |
#8b |
| MSN (Microsoft Network) |
#2 |
| Netscape |
#3b |
| #16 | |
| Snap.com |
#62 |
| WebCrawler | #8c |
| Yahoo! |
#1 |
Record the top 10 results from each search and see how they compare -- Were some sites ranked higher on the spider search engines like AltaVista and America Online? Did others do better on the eyeball engines like Yahoo! or About.com? Were some of your query results exactly the same between search engines? Answering this list of questions will become important as you begin to select the appropriate title, keywords and description for your Web site.
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