On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Patrick Corliss wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 08:07:46 +0800, Kim Davies wrote:
> 
> > The fact is, many people think they are valuable. If anyone here wants
> > to convince them that they are not then I think you are probably wasting
> > your time. Let them find out for themselves.
> 
> Hi Kim
> 
> Sometimes this thread gets complicated so excuse me if I am repeating someone
> else or, indeed, if you or others don't get what I am saying.
> 
> Logically,
> 
> IF "many people *think* they are valuable" (and are prepared to pay good
> money) THEN they *are* valuable.  That's just supply and demand.

That's not inherent value, though. 

> Whether or not they work as a search mechanism is not relevant.

The justification used by proponents of generic names is that they will
result in more exposure of the content hosted behind the name. Whether or
not they work as a search mechanism is relevant because this exposure to
content can happen in one of four ways:

1) a user knows the URL and types it in
2) a user does not know the URL but guesses it
3) a user uses a search engine and is sent to it
4) the URL is linked to from another page

The proponents of generic names suggest that (2) will happen more often
because people like to guess at generic names (in the face of logged
evidence to the contrary).

Where the 'search engine ranking' has relevancy is with respect to (3): if
a search engine will rank a URL higher because of its domain name, it
makes sense to get a domain name which will automatically be given a
higher ranking (because of the increased exposure).

And Kim,

No, search engine operators do not disclose their source code. But yes,
they do tell people how URLs are ranked (sometimes not *fully*, where
proprietary, but most search engines have a place where you can get *some*
information about ranking):

Altavista:
http://au.altavista.com/help/tagging?t=28
"AltaVista ranks websites in two ways: 

                                              
1.Location & Frequency of Keywords 
Keywords in the title.  Keywords near the top of the page i.e. headers or
headlines.  Frequency of keywords in the body of the page.

2.AltaVista is one of the few search engines which also uses META tags
(description tag & keyword tag) for obtaining higher relevancy from
websites."

Google:

http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its
vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In
essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page
A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes,
or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote.
Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and
help to make other pages "important.""

Regards,

Saliya