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Search Engine Visibility (First Edition) errata

Due to the ever-changing search engine environment, this section will be dedicated to any new and updated knowledge about search engine visibility that was stated in the book. This is the errata for the first edition.

Tools, Techniques and Tips - Related Searches
Meta Tags
Alternative Text
Power Combination Strategy
Robots exclusion and CSS

Tools, Techniques and Tips - Related Searches (p. 53)

Figure 2.3 is a small screen shot of HotBot showing related searches. In December 2002, HotBot no longer offers this great feature in its search results.

HotBot's search results allow you to perform the same search on different search engines (currently Inktomi, FAST Search, Teoma, and Google). Although both FAST Search and Teoma offer a version of a related search, you will have to go to their actual sites, AlltheWeb.com and Teoma.com, to see this feature.

Meta tags (p. 75)

When I wrote Search Engine Visibility, I did not format some of the example tags in XHTML. Since this is the industry standard, some of the tag formatting should be adjusted slightly.

With XTHML, all tags should have an opening tag, and a closing tag. For example, if you open a paragraph with a paragraph tag, <p>, you should always close it with a </p>. A forward slash indicates that you have closed the tag.

Well, some HTML tags do not have naturally occurring closing tags. So, in XHTML, to close that type of tag, all you have to do is put a forward slash at the end of a tag. One of the tags that should be formatted like this is the meta tag, both the description and the keywords attribute.

So, instead of this (as shown on p. 75):

<meta name="description" content="Page description goes here.">

Add a forward slash at the end:

<meta name="description" content="Page description goes here." />

Now it's XHTML compliant.

Alternative text (p. 81)

The img tag is another HTML tag that should be formatted with a forward slash at the end of it to make it XHTML compliant.

So instead of this (as shown on p. 81):

<img src="images/home.gif" height="25" width="60" alt="TranquiliTeas Organic Teas home">

Add a forward slash at the end:

<img src="images/home.gif" height="25" width="60" alt="TranquiliTeas Organic Teas home" />

Power Combination Strategy (p. 68)

I always believe in giving credit where credit is due. And in my haste to complete Search Engine Visibility, I forgot to credit James Gunn (who works at Intrapromote) with coming up with the phrase "Power Combo."

I originally created a typical techie name for it. But after I heard James' phrase, it just grew on me. I've been using it ever since he mentioned it.

Now I gotta get James to send me a photo of him. Maybe he'll wear a cool Versace suit like Mikkel has, and some wraparound sunglasses. Knowing James, I won't hold my breath on that one. <grin>

Robots exclusion and CSS (p. 235)

A number of people have noticed that I put a warning not to robots exclusion a CSS directory on page 239 after saying it was okay to do so on page 235.

I wish I could give you a definitive answer. One of the Google reps specifically told me NOT to exclude the CSS directory due to spam abuse, hence the warning on page 239. In the past 3 years, none of the other search engines reps said not to follow that specific strategy.

So it's up to the web site owner to make the decision to exclude that directory. If Google is important to your business, then I recommend not placing the robots exclusion on the CSS directory.

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