Inktomi Optimization. A guide to optimizing for Inktomi. Part I.
http://www.v7n.com/inktomi-optimization.php


Inktomi currently powers parts of Overture, HotBot, MSN, LookSmart and a few other sad search sites.

Inktomi is Backfill Inktomi does have a wide distribution. But this does not mean that Inktomi drives a lot of traffic. In most cases - Overture, LookSmart, MSN, ETC - Inktomi's results are not the primary results. Inktomi is used as backfill. On most of these search sites, paid listings are backed up by sponsored listings, and then you'll see more paid listings. Being included in Inktomi at this point in time does very, very little in the way of increasing traffic.

It wasn't always like this. At one time, Inktomi powered AOL. One site we owned back then, Just-Contractors.com, had a top ten spot on Inktomi for the search term contractors. In fact, it was placed well for several search terms on Inktomi. Inktomi, via AOL, generated close to one-quarter of all search engine referrals for that site.

Then, on a great and joyous summer day in 2002, AOL dropped Inktomi and switched to Google.

Referrals from Inktomi-powered search engines dropped to less than 5% of all referrals across all sites where we are monitoring traffic.

Here is a sampling from one such site:

Google referrals - 58.8 %
Yahoo - 27.7 %
AOL (Google) - AOL 6.6 %
Netscape (Google) - 0.9 %
AltaVista - 0.6 %
MSN - 0.4 %
Ask Jeeves - 0.4%
EarthLink (Google) - 0.4 %

Other search engines delivering under 0.4% of the search engine referrals include: AllTheWeb, Teoma, Excite, Dogpile, Virgilio, DMOZ, MetaCrawler, Fireball, Hotbot, Mamma, WebCrawler, Kvasir, Hotbot, Seznam.cz, InfoSpace, Lycos, Sympatico, Bluewin, Go.com, Ask Jeeves UK, WISENut, Jubii, Mirago, Looksmart and Overture.

So then We address Inktomi optimization at this time due largely to the speculation that Yahoo, having purchased Inktomi in a round-about way, will be using Inktomi's search technology in place of Google sometime in the near future.

If that does not happen, please forget all about this and go back to business as usual.