[ic] IC and search engines

[Ryan Hertz]

At 08:46 PM 2/27/02 -0500, Mike Heins wrote:
>Quoting cfm@maine.com (cfm@maine.com):
> > On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 07:34:54PM -0500, sphen boyle wrote:
> > > has anyone figured out a way to trick search engines into ranking the
> > > interchange pages?  looking at past logs, we used to get a lot of people
> > > finding us at google and other search engines, and ever since we started
> > > using interchange, our orders have gone down and our rankings have
> > > disappeared.  i would think that this would be a very important issue
> > > regarding interchange.  any ideas would be great.
> >
> > There are all sorts of ways.  Most of them will depend on your web server,
> > not on IC.  Search the mailing list archives for rewrite.
>
>One way that works real well is to link Google into your individual
>product pages. Experience has shown that if the product description is
>in the <title>, it gets ranked higher when that is the search term.
>
>(NOTE: Google's link-based algorithms sometimes make all this moot.
>This method really worked well back in the days of Altavista; sometimes
>my clients would be a consistent 1-3 at Altavista when searching for
>a particular product.)
>
>Make a page that does a single line link to each product:
>
>i.e.
>
>         [loop search="
>                 fi=products
>                 st=db
>                 ra=yes
>                 ml=10000
>                 "]
>         <A HREF="http://__SERVER_NAME____CGI_URL__/[loop-code].html">
>                 [loop-field description]
>         </A><br>
>         [/loop]

I would have to definitely agree with this method -- it's called a sitemap 
-- and regardless of running Interchange, it is probably the best way to 
get your site indexed.  Some customers find it useful, too.