Uh, What?

[I.Q. bandit]

Alright here's what's happening. I noticed through my "tracker" on my site that the AOL indexing spider, or bot stopped by. So I figured I'd go and see if my site is listed. This is weird though.

I type in MY keyword. And I mean my keyword as in NO ONE else on the WHOLE internet has it(I've look far, and wide to find this out). And what happens is sites that link to my site show up! I mean like 6 sites that link to my site showed up when I typed in MY keyword. I don't understand this at all.

Sure I helped some people get a Number one listing under my unique keyword, but I wanted MY site to be listed under that word. What's going on here?

[JuniorHarris]

AOL is a weird bird, and one must be careful when reviewing those logs. AOL uses a proxy service to feed page requests to users, this proxy service can also act as a spider since it is capable of pre-fetching pages in anticipation of user requests. I've read several comments regarding the ability of this proxy service to spider and cache pages, however these do not go into the index, but instead are served to users through the proxy service.

I have no evidence that AOL even performs any real spider crawling, however it's been awhile, I was thinking they may use one for integrating/checking ODP listings and/or verifying existing pages. Anyone else have some real evidence to add...

[Advisor]

Are those 6 sites using your keyword? Or they're just linked to you, but aren't using the word anywhere?

Jill

[I.Q. bandit]

Yeah I didn't even think of that webwhiz. They have links to my site, and my keyword IS in the URL of my site. I guess that would explain it. ;)


Junior says-----------this proxy service can also act as a spider since it is capable of pre-fetching pages in anticipation of user requests. I've read several comments regarding the ability of this proxy service to spider and cache pages, however these do not go into the index, but instead are served to users through the proxy service. ----------------


Hmm, AOL is very strange. Interesting information Junior. I guess this is the next thing I need to start learning. How SE's index their sites.