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Editor's
Note - 03.26.02 |
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You may call it the Mark of the Beast, but Nancy Nisbet
thinks of it as an investigation into the relationship between humans and technology. In October of last year she had a microchip implanted into the back of her left hand. This February she had another implanted in her right hand. The chips, normally used to identify pets, livestock, and wildlife,
contain a numerical ID that is broadcast via a low frequency radio signal.
Her aim is to learn about the impact of technology on identity.
How is technology effecting the way we think of our selves? What is the potential for abuse with this type of technology? What are its limits. These are the kinds of question Nisbet hopes to answer.
Some might think she's going a little far in having the chips physically implanted, but Nisbet says, ""the electronic ID chips embedded in my hands will heighten the connection between my virtual identity(ies) and my biological/physical identity." The way she sees it, the integration of man and machine is inevitable, so she wants to see the possibilities and the pitfalls before the technology is in widespread use.
Check out the text of Nancy Nisbet's recent presentation to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Symposium here:
http://www.finearts.ubc.ca/faculty/artworks/nisbet/
Today's issue features the first part of a two-part article on search engine spider analysis. Today you'll learn the fundamentals, and the next issue will teach you how to create a robots.txt to round out your search engine marketing plan.
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The
Importance of Spider Analysis in a Well-Rounded Search Engine
Marketing Plan
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WebTrends'
"10 Reports Every Webmaster Lives For"
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Want to know
which critical indicators webmasters are watching?
Need to know how to put the analysis to work for your organization
today?
Get our free guide, "10
Reports Every Webmaster Lives For."
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information you need to master your web site. |
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By Robin Nobles
The field of search engine optimization is a constantly evolving
industry with important changes being made almost daily.
In the beginning, search engine optimizers focused on one thing
only: rankings. Tracking of actual sales or conversion rates was
almost unheard of.
Slowly, search engine marketers began to realize that all of the
1's in the world won't help if they don't convert to traffic, and
all the traffic in the world won't help if it doesn't convert to
sales.
So, search engine experts began analyzing their log files and
tracking sales. With today's technology, Web site owners can now
tell which of their marketing campaigns are truly effective and
which need to be replaced by a different campaign. In other
words, through log analysis, you can analyze your human traffic
and their visits to your Web site.
But what about your "spider" traffic?
One part of log analysis that has remained surprisingly lacking,
both in terms of content and accuracy, is spider analysis.
Though traffic analysis programs may look at spider activity, the
information often isn't detailed enough or presented in a format
to do you much good. Also, spider and robot analysis is
acknowledged as being a main culprit for inaccurate log analysis
measurements.
internetnews.com/IAR/article/0,,_908361,00.html
Therefore, the need for detailed spider analysis has begun
entering the minds of search engine marketers.
So, what is "spider analysis"?
You know that when you submit a Web page to an engine for
indexing, the engine sends a spider to your site to index the
contents of the page. "Spider analysis" is simply analyzing the
search engine spider visits to your site.
Through effective spider analysis, you can learn the following
information about your site in a concise, easy-to-read format.
* Has your site been spidered?
* If so, by which engines?
* When did the spiders visit?
* Which directories and pages did they visit?
* Are certain pages getting respidered more often, signaling
their importance to the search engines?
* Are certain pages not getting spidered at all?
* Are the spiders indexing inappropriate content?
* Are the spiders getting everything they want and need, or are
they receiving error messages?
* Was your site spidered within the specified time agreed upon in
the pay inclusion programs you're participating in?
* Is your site getting respidered on a regular basis, as agreed
upon in your participating pay inclusion programs?
Another important issue in spider analysis is robots.txt files.
Though the object of search engine marketing is to help spiders
find all the pages on your Web site, there will be times when you
want to keep spiders out of certain pages. You can do this with a
robots.txt file.
What is a robots.txt file?
A robots.txt file is a text file that is placed on your server
that instructs the search engine spiders not to crawl or index
certain sections or pages of your site.
But why would you want to keep the spiders out?
Let's say that you're creating a new page for your site, and
you've placed the page online while you tweak and edit it. The
page isn't ready for visitors, so you wouldn't want it indexed
yet. Or, let's say you've placed some employee guidelines on your
site. The guidelines are of interest only to your employees, and
there's no reason for the public to view them.
Using a robots.txt file, you can keep the spiders out of those
pages.
Therefore, when working with spiders or robots, you want to be
able to:
* Create a robots.txt file quickly and easily;
* Use a robots.txt file to present optimized pages to specific
engines. For example, using a robots.txt file, you can focus
English language robots onto the relevant pages and direct robots
from international search engines to the localized content areas
of your site;
*Send e-mail harvesting programs away from your site to keep your
e-mail spam down;
* View highlighted pages requested in error by the spiders; and,
* Direct search engine spiders to relevant areas of your Web
site.
Don't miss the second part of this article in the next issue of WebSiteNotes.
About the Author:
This article was written by Robin Nobles, a professional
freelance writer and the Director of Training of the Academy
of Web Specialists (http://www.academywebspecialists.com/more_info),
where she has trained several thousand people in her online
courses in search engine marketing strategies. She also teaches
onsite search engine marketing workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com)
with John Alexander, and she has written three books that can
be ordered through Amazon.
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