News Release, October 2000

In a survey of business websites in the UK, over 75% were found to be lacking the structure or characteristics required to maximise their indexing on search engines.  Furthermore, just under 30% failed to include any of the elements required by search engines to index a site. These sites are therefore likely to be failing to attract the potential traffic from this core source of web users who are looking for relevant products or services.

These surprising results come from an analysis of websites completed during September and October 2000 by the web search workshop, an independent search engine placement consultancy.  They surveyed just over 500 websites across a range of business categories and rated the sites on the basis of their home page content, page structure and HTML metatag coding.

A staggering 28% of business websites failed to include any metatags in their HTML code that contain the key words and phrases used by the search engines to index a site.  These sites also displayed a poor site structure with either limited visible text on the page that could be indexed, or such inhibiting structural features as frames or Flash software.

The largest proportion of websites (48%) did include some metatags or had an improved site construction or significant body content on their home page that would allow some indexing by search engines.  However, all these sites displayed some evident lack of understanding of how search engines would index the sites effectively.  In over half of these sites, for example, the most important metatag - the title tag - was used solely for the company name and did not include other key words or phrases for the search engines to index.

The remaining 24% of business websites did display the structure, body text and metatags that demonstrated a good understanding of how search engines would index the site.  These sites were therefore produced in a way to maximise their positioning on search engine results and attract targeted traffic to their websites.

Commenting on the results, the owner of the web search workshop, Clive Hawkins said: "These results demonstrate the lack of understanding or awareness in the website marketing field of how to maximise the use of search engines to generate targeted traffic to a website.  In the rush to create a presence on the web, many businesses continue to lose out by ignoring this issue or using web designers who either don't fully understand the techniques involved or see such work as a distraction from creating an effective design."

Hawkins continued: "As the number of new websites continues to multiply and the competition to get noticed on the web gets tougher, optimising a business website for search engines should be central part of the web marketing strategy and the need for companies such as the web search workshop will become even more important. At the same time, search engines will continue to evolve to cope with the size of the web market and we will continue to develop our techniques to achieve the best results for our customers."

Notes
i) This survey was conducted between 4th September and 20th October 2000. In total 506 UK business websites were identified from press advertising, editorial features and directories.
ii) Each site's Home Page was reviewed and rated across a number of factors related to search engine optimisation and categorised into the three groups - no or minimal optimisation evident; some optimisation evident although not maximised; and good optimisation evident.
iii) The web search workshop is an independent consultancy specialising in search engine optimisation and placement.  It was launched in the Summer 2000 and works with UK business websites to improve their ranking on search engine results.

Also see:
Web positioning - the latest online industry
Get a high ranking on search engines
Buying your way onto search engines
Get listed at online shopping malls