How to get a high search engine ranking on Inktomi / MSN.

Inktomi is the 'hidden' search engine that provides the search index for many important search tools, including MSN. To get a high ranking on MSN will therefore depend on your placement on Inktomi (or a listing on the Looksmart directory for a more limited range of terms).

Submitting a site to Inktomi.

Inktomi was the first of the main search engines to offer a 'paid inclusion' option to help get a site listed. Free listings remain an option, although waiting for a site to get indexed by Inktomi without paying a submission fee can take a long time and even then it is unlikely that many pages within a site will also be indexed.

Paying for inclusion on Inktomi has advantages, both in terms of timing and ranking position. You can submit individual pages from a site for a small fee per page, which guarantees that the site will be retained on the index for a year and 're-indexed' every 48 hours.

It is still essential that a site is optimised for Inktomi to gain a good ranking, but a site submitted through paid inclusion does receive a ranking benefit, plus it is easy to try different optimisation techniques to see how this may impact a ranking as the revised pages will be re-indexed within a short period of time.

There are a number of Inktomi partners through which you can make the paid inclusion to this search engine. We recommend PositionTech for price and reporting options once a site is listed through their portal. Submission costs are $39 for the first page and $25 for each subsequent page. For very large sites there is also a bulk submission feed option available.

Factors to consider for a high search engine ranking on Inktomi.

Inktomi retains many of the 'traditional' factors as the key elements that can determine a site's listing, although link popularity is now also one part of the criteria used. Framed sites do not do well on Inktomi.

Factors to consider to achieve a high ranking include:

• Search terms used within the Title tag and the Description and Keyword metatags
  
• Page content, position and emphasis of keywords
  
• Pages submitted through the paid inclusion programme receive a ranking benefit
  
• The number of inbound hyperlinks from other relevant and quality websites.

To find out how your website can achieve a top ranking on Inktomi / MSN and the other top search engines, contact the web search workshop for more information or request a FREE site assessment to see how well your website currently performs.

A brief history of the Inktomi search engine.

Learn more about getting a high ranking on the other main search engines: AltaVista, FAST, Google, HotBot, Lycos and Teoma.

Return to Materials introduction
The top web search engines
The top web directories
How the top search tools work together
Options for paid search listings
UK search engines and directories
Partnerships between UK search engines and directories
European search engines and directories
The future of web search tools