New Moderator

[ihelpyou]

We filled up the last forum with markymark as the new moderator! :cheers:

Although poor o'l Hotbot seems to be sinking, maybe markymark can lite a fire under it. :)

[markymark]

Wouldn't go that far Doug. But as Hotbot is a pure Ink. search engine, it still has some value and for some searches gets a surprising number of hits. I doubt there will be many questions here, but I will try to instigate some debate and maybe make people give it a second glance.

[Blue]

Way to go markymark! :cheers:

[MsSearch]

congrats... :cheers:

[highman]

:cheers:

[Lead]

Hello Markymark,

I will see if we can wake up the Hotbot board for you.

I have two sites on the same subject.

I have a junky site I never promote, haven't optimized, is totally out dated and near the top of Hotbot with a terrible DMOZ listing.

Then I have a site with a good DMOZ listing. I have several pages on Ink.Position tech, A good Looksmart listing, and is optimized, and currently updated with good new info, and it is on the 8th page. Almost every other search engine has it in the top 3 or 4.

I see no rhyme or reason to how Hotbot lists sites.

What are the ways you get penalized on Hotbot? I guess that is the real question.

Thanks,
Lead :hi:

[markymark]

It's pretty tough to get penalised on HotBot, actually. Unfortunately, there is a tendency for the more spammy pages to do well here. Your LS listings will have no effect on the rank of your page in HotBot.

Without you posting the URLs I can't give an accurate assessment of why the success of one of your pages over the other. Please post the URLs and I'll take a look.

[MakeMeTop]

Congratulations on the appointment :cheers:

Does anyone get ANY traffic from HotBot anymore? I don't do too badly on it but see a handful of referrals a day. Still 1 referral is better than none at all ;)

[markymark]

If you ever have clients selling or providing MP3s, you might see HotBot in a different light. Particularly if the MP3s are not kept off site - there's traffic to be had here. Not as much as Google or Yahoo, but for one client HotBot outperforms MSN (and these do have a top rated LS listing as well as Ink inclusions). It's that tick box saying 'this page must include mp3' that does it.