Newsletter No. 54
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Free Pint
"Helping 27,000 people use the Web for their work"
http://www.freepint.co.uk/
ISSN 1460-7239 20th January 2000 No.54
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IN THIS ISSUE
EDITORIAL
TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
"Search Engine Promotion"
By William Hann
BOOKSHELF
"Law of the Supersearchers:
The Online Secrets of Top Legal Researchers"
Reviewed by Crystal Sharp
FEATURE ARTICLE
"Architecture: the science and art of finding it on the Web"
by Kaye Bagshaw and Dylan Evans
FREE PINT BAR SUMMARY
FREE PINT FORTHCOMING ARTICLES
CONTACT INFORMATION
ONLINE VERSION WITH ACTIVATED HYPERLINKS
http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/200100.htm
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CONFERENCE - E-COMMERCE FOR THE SMALLER BUSINESS - 14th March 2000
E-commerce offers businesses a major opportunity to reduce costs and
reach new customers. But the surrounding hype makes it difficult to
judge the true benefits. This conference will clearly explain all
the technical, commercial and legal issues. Speakers include Gerry
McGovern, Martin White, Danny Sullivan, William Hann, & Sheila Webber.
Price: 200 pounds exc VAT (175 pounds before January 31st). Contact
Maureen Heath, British Library, t: 020 7412 7470, e: maureen.heath@bl.uk
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>>> ABOUT FREE PINT <<<
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EDITORIAL
We were delighted with the sheer amount of feedback we received after
our recent request for testimonials about Free Pint. As you know we
are currently talking to investors who will help us develop new
services for our community, and we want to let them know what our
members think. Your kind comments included:
* "It has a unique voice that comes from being close to actual
users of the Web"
* "I have found many fantastic internet sites that I now couldn't
imagine being without"
* "It is chock full of timely information and a fresh perspective"
* "To say what an excellent and invaluable service Free Pint is"
* "I subscribe to several similar publications in the
states but they don't hold a candle to your efforts."
Thank you to all those who emailed us. The quantity and generosity of
your comments will mean that the reader who wrote "Don't ever stop!"
has nothing to worry about.
We realise though that there are a number of new services you would
like to see. The first came online this week in the form of the
"Free Pint Industry News". This is a live newsfeed, with today's
stories in 200 categories, ranging from the Internet and other
industries, through to international news headlines and even sport.
This will really complement the variety of subject-specific topics
we have covered in the newsletter, and it is totally free. Hundreds
of new items are added throughout the day, so visit now to see
today's headlines:
http://www.freepint.co.uk/news
Today's edition of Free Pint covers some extremely popular topics.
After many requests from readers, we've written about how to promote
your Web site effectively to search engines. There is a fantastic
in-depth review of architecture resources on the Web, as well as
a book review continuing the legal theme from the last issue.
We round up with the latest happenings at the Free Pint Bar, and if
you haven't visited yet then you're really missing out on a great
resource. You can post your tricky research questions, and responses
are usually forthcoming almost immediately. You don't have to
register, it's easy to use and we're all very friendly. Why not pop
along today to <http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar>.
If you enjoy this edition of Free Pint then please pass it on to
someone else, and if you have any feedback then please don't hesitate
to get in touch.
Kind regards,
William
William Hann BSc MIInfSc
Founder and Managing Editor, Free Pint
e: william@freepint.co.uk
w: http://www.freepint.co.uk/
t: +44 (0)1784 455435
f: +44 (0)1784 455436
Free Pint is a trademark of Free Pint Limited
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NOMINATE YOUR SITE IN THE NEW STATESMAN NEW MEDIA AWARDS 2000
The six awards seek out excellent examples of new media use in public
life. Judges include Jon Snow, Channel 4 news presenter and
Alex Allan, UK government E-envoy.
Nominate online at http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/newmedia until
June, 2000. Sponsors include Telewest Communications, Nortel
Networks, Oracle and BBC Parliament.
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>>> CONSIDERING ADVERTISING HERE AND ON THE WEB SITE? <<<
http://www.freepint.co.uk/advert.htm
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TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
"Search Engine Promotion"
By William Hann
Preamble
--------
Through my previous company we provided a search engine promotion
service. One day I received a telephone call from a client, a
Webmaster for a large corporation, who was virtually in tears. It
transpired that one of his colleagues had performed a search on the
Web for their company name and had not located it in the top ten
results. This person had then emailed the top boss complaining about
this "appalling lack of international visibility", and unbelievably
copied it to every member of the department and senior management.
This is a hot topic. There is always discussion about it at the Free
Pint Bar, and we still receive many letters each week asking us for
an article on how to promote your site to search engines. Therefore
I'm going to cover this wide-ranging and unscientific topic here.
I am going to cover how best to prepare your site, pitfalls to avoid,
how to actually submit, and offer some further reading. Please note
that I don't have room to talk about objectives settings, defining
your audience, and the many other (more effective?) ways of
advertising your site both online and offline.
Parlance
--------
When you perform a search in a search engine, you've probably
gathered that you're not actually searching the Web - you're
searching an index. This index is created by search engine "spiders"
or "bots" which crawl the Web looking for pages to index. When they
find a page, they index the words on it and follow links to more
pages, either on the same site or externally. Some engines index
all the words and pages, some only crawl to a certain depth.
When you've performed your search, the engine then has to decide in
what order to display the results. Although search engines are
reluctant to publish their proprietary algorithms for ranking
results, they are generally dependent on a handful of factors such
as: whether keywords appear near the top of a page, how close words
are to each other, and how often a word appears. Some engines even
work out how rare keywords are, or how popular a page is as measured
by how many other pages have a link to it (e.g. Excite).
Therefore, as long as a search engine is aware of your site (either
by crawling or by notification from you) and you use the right words
then you're going to come top of the results list. Simple. Er ...
Preparation
-----------
You've guessed it, it's not that simple. There are a number of things
you should do to ensure you have the best chance of being listed
favourably.
You firstly need to ensure that the pages on your site have all the
necessary HTML elements. These appear in the <HEAD> section, and the
most important is a descriptive title appearing in the <TITLE> tag.
Make sure this is keyword-rich and includes your company/organisation
name and what you do. Remember that this is what appears in the title
bar of the browser, as well as the description when someone bookmarks
the site.
Then there are the <META> tags. Not all search engines index these
tags (such as Excite and Lycos), but most give some emphasis to them.
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="...">
In the above tag you would replace the three dots with a list of
comma separated keywords which you believe people may search for to
locate your site. You can list up to a thousand characters, but be
careful not to repeat the same word too many times. This is known
as "spamming" and some engines will penalize you for doing this.
Infoseek for instance allows repetition of a word up to seven
times, after which the entire keyword list is disregarded.
The keywords won't be seen by searchers and so include common
spelling errors and word variants. For instance, my previous company
was called "Willco" but searchers often entered "Wilco" and so I
included this incorrect version as a keyword. Note also that you can
have different keywords on every page of your site. For instance, we
produce a new list of keywords for each edition of the Free Pint
newsletter in the Web site archive before promoting that specific
page to the engines.
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="...">
This tag should contain a description of the site or page, with up to
two hundred characters. This will be used by some engines as the
summary in search results, and so make it readable and informative.
Also, ensure that you have a keyword-rich first paragraph on your
entry page. Some engines give prominence to words appearing near the
top of a page, and so if you only have a large graphic on your
homepage then it would be best to add some text around this.
If you find a site is being listed above yours in a search engine
then analyse their keywords and description by viewing the HTML
source. In Internet Explorer 5 choose "View, Source" and in
Netscape 4 choose "View, Page Source".
Pitfalls
--------
If you have a "gateway page" (also known as "doorways" or "bridge
pages") which redirects visitors automatically to another page then
beware that a number of search engines no longer index pages with
fast refresh times. Heed the advice from the W3C: "Authors should not
use this technique to forward users to different pages, as this takes
the page inaccessible to some users. Instead, automatic page
forwarding should be done using server-side redirects."
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4>
Some search engines (again including Excite and Lycos) can't
understand client-side image maps. These are processed in the browser
and use the <MAP> and <AREA> tags. Make sure you have an alternative
text menu (perhaps in small text under the imagemap), or consider
server-side alternatives. Find out more from the W3C
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.6>.
Ensure that all images have the "ALT" attribute in the <IMG> tag.
This should be the case anyway to help your visitors who are browsing
with the images turned off, or for the visually impaired. Check your
site's accessibility by people with disabilities by using
Bobby <http://www.cast.org/bobby/>.
If your site utilises frames then beware. Individual frames are
indexed as standalone pages, and a searcher may therefore enter your
site directly to that frame and not see the navigation or menu frame.
For this reason, every page of your site should ideally have an easy
way for the person to return to the main <FRAMESET> page to reload
the required frames layout. On this note, make sure you
include <META> tags on the <FRAMESET> page.
If you don't want certain pages indexed then create a "robots.txt" or
use the Robots <META> tag. More information can be found at
<http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/exclusion.html>.
Most search engines ignore common or "stop" words when indexing, such
as 'of', 'the', 'with' and 'if'. This has caused problems for me in
the past when we offered "Internet training in the UK" and the
words 'Internet', 'in', 'the' and 'UK' were all ignored by some search
engines. This was rectified over time as search engine developers
realised that words like "Internet" and "UK" were actually quite
important search terms, even though they are very common.
Remember also, search engines have great difficulty indexing pages
which are created dynamically from a database or hidden in a password
protected section of your site. Is there a way that you can produce
static representations of these pages for submission?
Finally, it is always best to check your site's HTML, spelling, broken
links and load times. Ask NetMechanic <http://www.netmechanic.com/>
to analyse the pages on your site, and get it to email you when
the results are ready.
Promotion
---------
You need to decide which search engines and directories you want to
be listed in. If you have access to your server logs you should be
able to get an idea of which search engines are already sending
people your way (referer log), and are indexing your site (access
log). Don't forget the announcement services and awards sites
(sometimes called "cool sites" or "best of the Web"). Plenty can
be found in Yahoo!.
Before you start you may want to have at hand the extra information
which some engines require. For most you'll need to have a contact
name, email address and the URL of the page you're submitting. You
may also need a list of keywords, and two descriptions; some engines
require a description of 15 words, others allow up to 25 words. Think
about these before you go online.
Now that you're ready, visit the engine and look for a link on the
homepage similar to "Add URL" (Excite), "Register URL" (Northern
Light) or less elusive ones like "Add Your Site to Lycos".
AltaVista's is hidden away under "Help" and "Add/Remove a URL".
I would suggest that when you find the submission page, bookmark it
so that you can return quickly next time. Also, be sure to read the
help pages about getting the most out of that particular engine.
You don't have to submit all the pages on your site, but it would be
best to register the main sections so that the spider has a chance
of crawling effectively. If you're in Europe then perform this
process before midday - engines usually verify that a page actually
exists before giving you confirmation of the submission, and this
can take a while if you submit during peak times.
Submitting your site to directories like Yahoo! is more complicated
than with the pure engines like AltaVista and HotBot. Firstly you
need to navigate to the category you want your site to be listed
in. Then click on something similar to "Suggest a Site" in Yahoo!,
the "Submit" button in Looksmart, or the "Submit Your Site to Snap"
link at the bottom of a Snap category page. Human editors will
then decide whether to list your site in that category,
Yahoo! is famously difficult to get listed in. For the best chance
of success, make sure you choose your category carefully (for
instance, if it is a commercial site then make sure it comes under
"Business & Economy") and make sure you read all the guidance
notes. You can also suggest another category for your listing
during the submission process.
Postoperative
-------------
Now that submission is complete, you have to wait until the engines
index you. This will take anywhere from a day or two, through to a
few weeks or even more. You should resubmit periodically, and
remember regional variations. For instance, AltaVista.com and
AltaVista.co.uk don't seem to be talking to each other yet.
Watch out for redesigns: AltaVista's recent facelift resulted in many
Free Pint reader's sites not being listed any more. Check your
positioning every few weeks, tweak your keywords, and change your
content regularly. This will generally ensure a pertinent listing.
Remember that engines will automatically return to your page to
re-index it after a set time. I once heard that if a spider returns
and your pages *haven't* changed, then it *increases* the time
before it's next visit. If the pages *have* changed then the time
is *decreased*. This is reason enough to keep your pages up-to-date.
Also, if you delete a page on your site and want it removed from a
search engine, then simply resubmit that page and the engine will
remove it if the page produces an "Error 404 - File not found".
If you're too busy for all of this then there are many companies on
the Web which offer to analyse your site's suitability for submission,
submit your site to a number of search engines, and perhaps even
monitor on-going positioning of certain keywords. These include
Submit It! >.
The International Union of Architects (UIA) was founded in 1948 and
aims to unite architects worldwide. It is made up of 92 national
member sections. Its website, <http://www.uia-architectes.org>
includes links to the national member organisations and information
about the activities of the UIA. It also offers links to architecture
museums worldwide.
3. Government & Official sites
The front door for Government information is <http://www.open.gov.uk/>
The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment
<http://www.cabe.org.uk/> is a new body for promoting
excellence in British architecture. The web site is currently in its
infancy but is sure to grow as a resource.
The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
<http://www.detr.gov.uk/> is a vast site and is surprisingly easy to
navigate and search. It is a valuable information resource for
architects and includes many full text documents. Useful highlights
include:
Full text of Rethinking Construction by the Construction Task Force
(Egan Report)
<http://www.construction.detr.gov.uk/cis/rethink/index.htm>
Information from the Building Regulations Division is included at
<http://www.construction.detr.gov.uk/br/index.htm> with a
comprehensive bibliography of The Building Act and its Regulations at
<http://www.construction.detr.gov.uk/br/br04.htm>
A database of Statements of National Planning Policy, including the
details of documents such as Planning Policy Guidance notes and
Regional Planning Guidance notes at
<http://detr.niss.ac.uk/planning/npp/>
Statistics on the UK construction industry from the Construction
Market Intelligence Division
<http://www.construction.detr.gov.uk/cmi/cmihome.htm>
Full text Acts of UK Parliament (from 1996) and Statutory Instruments
(from 1997) can be obtained from Her Majesty's Stationery Office
<http://www.hmso.gov.uk/> Welsh and Scottish, and Northern Irish Acts
and Statutory Instruments are available from
<http://www.wales-legislation.hmso.gov.uk/legislation/wales/w-
stat.htm>,
<http://www.scotland-legislation.hmso.gov.uk/legislation/scotland/s-
stat.htm> and <http://www.northernireland-legislation.hmso.gov.uk/>.
4. Procurement & funding
The National Lottery site from the Department for Culture, Media and
Sport <http://www.lottery.culture.gov.uk/> has an awards database to
search where lottery money has been spent and for what projects.
There is a useful section giving information on the roles of the
various distributing bodies.
The Official Journal Supplement S of the European Community is
available via TED (Tenders Electronic Daily)
<http://ted.eur-op.eu.int/ojs/html/index2.htm>, a database which
covers all tender opportunities published in the Official Journal.
Constructionline <http://www.constructionline.co.uk> is the UK's
largest register of qualified construction contractors and
consultants. An application to join the register can be filled in
online.
The HM Treasury site <http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk> includes full
text documents on procurement guidance and the Private Finance
Initiative for the construction industry
<http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/guid.html>.
The threshold values for the EC Procurement Rules are included
<http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pub/html/docs/cup/ecpro/main.html>.
5. Other organisations
The following is a list of other organisations, all of which are worth
investigating.
The Building Research Establishment <http://www.bre.co.uk/>,
with a link to the government's energy efficiency initiative BRECSU at
<http://www.energy-efficiency.gov.uk/>.
The Construction Industry Board <http://www.ciboard.org.uk/>,
including information and guidance on the millennium bug.
ARCLIB, the Architecture Schools Librarians Group
<http://www.livjm.ac.uk/lea/misc/arcweb.htm>, ARLIS, the Art Libraries
Society <http://arlis.nal.vam.ac.uk/> and CIIG, the Construction
Industry Information Group <http://www.archinet.co.uk/ciig/> are all
organisations where information professional can exchange information
and ideas.
Movement for Innovation <http://www.m4i.org.uk/> arose from the Egan
Report, Rethinking Construction, and brings together representatives
from all sectors of the construction industry. It includes details of
demonstration projects and includes full text documents.
6. Product Information
The bulk of an architect's library comprises construction product
catalogues, reflecting the heavy use made of these resources. There
is a correspondingly wide range of directories available in paper,
microfiche and CD-ROM format. Increasingly, these are appearing on
the Internet. It will be some time yet before these can be relied on
to replace the other media.
ASC - Webindex <http://www.ascwebindex.com> covers over 7000 products
held in two databases, UK and international. Details can be accessed
by Uniclass and CI/SfB classification systems, and by alphabetical
lists of products and suppliers. Product information may be searched
by keyword. Links to manufacturer websites are included. Users can
download free Computer Aided Design data of standard design details in
AutoCAD and/or DXF format. ASC - Diskindex can also be downloaded
which provides access to the paper version ASC (Architects Standard
Catalogues). This also provides links to architecture, engineering and
surveying practices and an index of UK trade & professional
associations.
Building Information Warehouse <http://www.biw.co.uk> was launched in
1994 as part of a Government initiative to improve construction
industry use of the Internet. The site comprises a database of
products and companies with links to their websites. It also includes
the Construction Directory where contractors, architects and engineers
can register their details.
RIBA Product Selector Online <http://productselector.co.uk> is the
online version of the paper Product Selector, one of the standard
reference tools for sourcing products. The Internet version provides
a searchable index of UK manufacturers providing product and contact
details with links to suppliers' own websites. The database can be
searched by product group, company name and CI/SfB classification
code.
Leonardo UK Construction Materials & Technologies Index
<http://leonardouk.com> can be searched by company name and keyword.
A useful resource, though a search on stages and platforms led to a
company providing heated mirrors!
7. Standards and testing
Standards can be one of the most vital and expensive components of an
architect's library. There are now several sites available where the
status and currency of standards can be verified and ordered online.
The British Standards Institution site <http://www.bsi.org.uk>
contains information on over 35,000 current, draft and historic
British Standards. Users can register for free and view summary
details of standards giving details of cross references and
amendments.
The International Organisation for Standardisation <http://www.iso.ch>
is the worldwide federation of national standards bodies.
The National Standards Authority of Ireland is at <http://www.nsai.ie>
The British Board of Agrement <http://www.bbacerts.co.uk> is the body
in the UK responsible for the issue of European Technical Approvals
for construction products. It provides searchable indexes of BBA
approved products and installers.
8. On-line Journals
There are over 600 architectural journals, and looking at magazines is
one of the key ways in which architects keep up to date with news and
events. They also use magazine articles for inspiration and to keep
an eye on what their competitors are up to. A variety of journals are
available on the Web, and most of them offer links to architects,
products, and lists of other architectural resources. Some of them
are web-versions of conventionally published journals:
Architecture: <http://www.architecturemag.com>
Architectural Review: <http://www.arplus.com>
Architecture Australia: <http://www.archmedia.com.au/aa>
Metropolis: <http://www.metropolismag.com>
Urban Design Quarterly: <http://rudi.herts.ac.uk/ej/udq/udq.html>.
Others are only available on the web:
Design Architecture: <http://www.cornishproductions.com/index.html>
Architronic: <http://saed.kent.edu/Architronic>
Archinet: <http://www.archinet.co.uk/>, this popular site is a
magazine and gateway combined, and for example, has links to worldwide
architectural competitions.
9. History, General Interest & Fun!
We have listed below some of the websites, which offer information to
anyone interested in architecture.
The journalist and critic Hugh Pearman's website Gabion,
<http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/park/di25/cwa1.htm> has the full
text of many of his published articles, on subjects that range from
Durham Cathedral to the Stade de France, together with an exhibition
on Lottery funded building projects and extracts from his book
Contemporary World Architecture.
The Great Buildings site <http://www.greatbuildings.com/> allows you
to search by location, building or architect to locate images, potted
histories and other information.
Archinform <http://www.archinform.de/start.en.htm> started life as an
image database of interesting building projects from architecture
students, but has moved on to become a huge online-database, covering
over 8000 built and unrealized projects worldwide. It includes
bibliographic references.
About.com's guide to architecture
<http://architecture.about.com/arts/architecture/> provides links for
architecture related sites from Feng Shui to architecture clip art, as
well as news, discussion and Frank Lloyd Wright's definition of
architecture.
Find out all about the world's tallest buildings on the website of The
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat
<http://www.lehigh.edu/~inctbuh/inctbuh.html>.
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Kaye Bagshaw trained as a librarian after taking a French degree and
is an Assistant Librarian at the RIBA Library. Dylan Evans is the
Ribanet Helpdesk Officer at the RIBA. Originally he trained as a
librarian and has since worked mainly in the field of construction
industry information.
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Related Free Pint links:
* Respond to this article and chat to the author now at the Bar
<http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar>
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>>> NOW'S THE TIME TO WRITE FOR FREE PINT <<<
Thanks to all those readers who have written to say how much they
enjoy the variety of topics we cover in Free Pint. As always, we have
some interesting articles lined up for your future enjoyment but there
are some subject areas where authors seem shy to come forward. Don't
forget that many of our authors are fellow Free Pint readers who made
that call.
I particularly welcome potential contributions on Web resources for
the arts and humanities, also geographical, historical and social
science information for future issues.
So why not send me an article outline today and if you are burning to
share your tips and techniques with other readers or have pet
interests you want covered, please contact me now.
Rex Cooke, Editor,
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libraries (1565), promoting a website selling hand-made, decorative
candles (1576), where one can find a list of venture capitalists
interested in ecommerce (1637) or where to find full-text sources on
photography and small businesses (1581)? Can you satisfy an
unrequited desire for sources of non-UK company account
filings (1606)? I hope the person looking for information on
training via the intranet feels her desire has been requited with the
succinct reply given (1592). The munificent one also takes questions
on acronyms, it seems. On the subject of intranets, do you have
experience of setting one up (1660)? This petitioner is interested
in the experiences of information professionals, and if you can direct
her to reports or reviews of such experiences, she'll owe you a drink.
If you are looking for discussion forum software (1615), you might be
able to get it free, on open source. If you don't have the technical
skills you can find consultants who have by following this thread.
There's no shortage of low cost, bulk email software (1611) and we
are told that good remote database software can also be obtained at
little or no cost (1571). If you have experience of using any of
these packages, please do share them with us. And what's the best
electronic address book (1661)? Well, do you agree?
Browsers and search engines continue to occupy the thoughts of
several in the Bar. How many people are using version 4 or higher of
IE and Netscape? There is a multitude of sites which list any sort
of information your heart desires on browser matters (1597).
Interest in bookmark facilities continues and you can find out about
converting them into Word format (1646). On the search engine front,
one imbiber asks how the .co.uk and the .com versions of Altavista
are related (1608). The answers given suggest that the relationship
is not too clear and that one needs to be very careful when
submitting URLs. Have you had any odd experiences with the
Altavistas? If you have several URLs and want everything to go to
one, you'll find advice on how to achieve this here (1610). Do you
know where to find a ready made index or list of subjects for
someone creating a web directory (1639)? I've mislaid mine.
The review of a book on legal resources in the last issue of
Free Pint prompted a posting about a great article in Information
Today, which lists and describes legal resources on the web (1554).
There is also a free Millennium edition of Searcher (1544) and
several other useful resources for the taking. And if you are
interested in online communication channels for library and
information professionals the Bar is a good place to look (1590).
Also, do you know any good sites for Java developers (1575)?
If you do, please own up. We always appreciate information on good
resources and facilities, so don't keep them to yourself.
Finally, you might like to find out more about the history of the
Free Pint community by reading super searcher Marylaine Block's
latest guru interview for Ex Libris with William Hann available
online at <http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib39.html>.
Simon Collery, Business Development, Free Pint
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About this Newsletter
- Publication Date: 20th January 2000
- Plain text
- Link: https://www.jinfo.com/go/newsletter/54
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