Ensuring your webpages are found by the University search engineThis page contains guidelines and tips for ensuring your webpages are found by the campus-wide search engine. It does not extend to the much larger world wide web search engines (such as AltaVista). More information on having your pages found by the large internet search engines can be found at the Search Engine Tutorial.
The campus search engineThe campus-wide search engine is ht://Dig, a world wide web indexing and searching system designed for a small domains. When a search is conducted, ht://Dig locates all the pages on the site which match the query (or part of the query). The matches are then displayed according to their relevance. Thus, the best method of ensuring your page is listed where and when it should be is to format it so that it will have a high relevancy score. To find out how to do this, read on....Using word weighting to influence page relevance in search resultsOne of the most important factors in determining a page's relevance is word weighting. Words are weighted according to their "type". As you can see in the list below, the words in a heading or in the title of a document have a much higher weight than those in the general text. Similarly, words formatted as a "Heading 2" will have a higher weight than "Heading 4" words. A document's overall word weighting (ie the total weighting of the words relevant to the search query) will determine where it will be displayed in the results list. The Flinders webpage word weightings (pre determined by the server administrator) are as follows:
For example, a blank page with the word "Anthropology" in the title will be ranked higher than one with Anthropology included as normal text. Using Meta tagsThe second major means of attaining high relevancy is to use <META> tags. Meta tags, with their relatively high weights, increase the likelihood of your page being found and/or achieving a high rank.Meta tags are placed in the head section of the document (between the <HEAD> </HEAD> tags) and consist of two elements: "meta name" and "content".
The keyword meta tag (htdig-keywords)This tag contains a list of keywords relating to the page and takes the form:<meta name="htdig-keywords" content=...........> The content part of the tag consists of a blank separated list of keywords. This tag can be used to get around some problems with common synonyms, as seen in the example below: Example 1: Telephone directory. <HTML><HEAD> As common alternative terms are listed as keywords, the document should be found regardless of the terms used in the actual document and by the searcher.
The description meta tagThis meta tag (which also has the highest weight) allows you to specify the description which will appear in the search results. The description tag takes the format:<meta name="description" content=.......> where content= is the description of the page which you would like to appear (where a description is not specified ht://dig automatically generates one). In Example 2 below, the description tag has been used in conjunction with the keywords tag. Words which appear in the description have not been repeated as keywords however synonyms and alternative spellings/formats have been included. Example 2: Examples of possible meta tags for this page. <HTML><HEAD> Inserting meta tags into a webpageThe examples above both demonstrate the actual HTML involved in creating meta tags. Although the HTML may look uninviting, by your third page you will be wondering why you ever thought it was difficult... (trust me!).There are a number of methods by which you can insert/create meta tags using a general web authoring programme (such as Claris HomePage or FrontPage): by opting to view your page in HTML and adding the meta tags directly or by working with your page in the "normal" view and using the "Insert HTML" (or similar) option. It is simply a matter of investigating to find out which option will work in a particular programme. Some programmes may even have an option to include meta tags. You will need to ensure, however, that the tags follow the same format and location as described and demonstrated above. Summary: ensuring your page is found
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