Terra Lycos Directory Service

Lycos started out as a search engine, depending on listings of its own, gathered by spidering the web. One of the oldest search engines on the web, launched in 1994, it ceased crawling the web for its own listings in April 1999, and instead began providing access to human-powered results from LookSmart for popular queries and crawler-based results from Yahoo.

Today Lycos is owned by Tera Lycos, a company formed with Lycos and Terra Networks when they merged in October 2000. Lycos Search uses Inktomi, Looksmart and WiseNut for search results and they own the HotBot search engine as well.

Lycos Paid Listings

Paid listings are above the main search results and along the right-hand side of the page in colored boxes. Generally, these sponsored links are the top four advertisers for a particular word in the Google AdWords program provided by Google above the regular web results and Lycos AdBuyer paid listings down the right hand side.

If there are not enough AdWord paid listings available for a particular term, then some or all of the inline sponsored listings along the top will be provided by the Lycos AdBuyer Program.

Above the sidebar listings, you'll sometimes see a Start Here link. This tool is a paid listing sold by Lycos, and more information can be found about this tool from the 24/7 Real Media Website.

Lycos Search Web Results

Lycos web results are provided by Inktomi. Inktomi's results are relevant and on-target, designed to give you what you're looking for. In addition to search results from Inktomi, Looksmart’s editorally-reviewed results are within the first ten displayed Lycos web results when they are relevant.

Lycos also integrates editorial content from the Lycos Network as the first result only if content is available or relevant. It will be labeled as "from the Lycos Network" next to the result component. The web results also include paid inclusion brought to you by Looksmart and WiseNut.

LookSmart directory listings are likely to appear for popular, commercially oriented queries. When this happens, you should find that the bottom of the Lycos search results page will say "Portions powered by LookSmart."

Lycos Search Web Directory

Lycos still uses The Open Directory for data, but it's been moved from their front page to a subdirectory, and it doesn't get updated very frequently, but then neither does the Open Directory.

Their main directory located at the bottom of their search results page uses a number of different resources ... for example the "Health" menu, is powered by WebMD.

Lycos Sidesearch

With Lycos Sidesearch you have at your finger tips a quick and easy way to search the internet like you've never searched it before. Sidesearch displays a second opinion without the hassle of opening multiple browsers. It's the a nice comparison companion.

Web Search compares a second opinion from Lycos side-by-side with another search engine.

• Launch comparison box automatically from major search engines
• Quickly compare results with one click
• Eliminate multiple screens with results window
• Search for new results within the side pane

Shopping on Lycos will bring you thousands of online stores.

• Compare prices from thousands of trusted stores
• Review consumer store ratings
• Save time and money by relying on the Sidesearch results
• Find bargains from millions of products

Lycos Search Engine and Directory Submission

If you are already located in, or back linked to, any of the Lycos partner search properties, such as Inktomi or Looksmart, you may very well find yourself in the Lycos search results without submission ... but it will take time.

Lycos Add URL Page.

There are other options at http://insite.lycos.com

• AdBuyer ... relevant targeted traffic at lower prices, pay per click advertising similar to Google AdWords or Overture PPC.
• Bid Manager ... multiple PPC campaigns.
• Guaranteed Search Engine Submission ... offers easy tools to add URL's to the FAST Partner Site and Inktomi SiteSubmit paid inclusion programs.

Lycos relies on software to identify spamming and will exclude pages that they discover spamming.

The spider revisits all sites periodically. If it cannot connect to your site after a few attempts over a 4-week span, it deletes the web site from their catalogue.

Lycos Search Engine Placement Tips

The Lycos web crawler does not weigh meta tags very heavily, although indexing is based on an algorithm that takes a look at components of the URL name, meta title, text body headings and subheadings, how frequently words appear, where these words appear in relationship to one another, as well as a document abstract (based on full body text).

Any web page that does not have a minimum of 75 words is not indexed.

Lycos does not care about case sensitivity.

The Lycos spider does not recognize the following symbols in URLs:

• ampersand (&),
• percent sign (%),
• equals sign (=),
• dollar sign ($); or
• question mark (?).

According to Lycos, the best way to optimize your page is to include your keywords in the title tag, and then repeat them again in a heading tag and mention them very early on in the page.

Link popularity also counts in the Lycos relevancy rating.

You should limit descriptions to 150 characters and keywords to 75 characters.

Lycos does full-text indexing but does not index hidden text or text too small to read. The spider automatically excludes this type of text when it finds it. Lycos indexes Alt text, but not comment text.

The thing to remember is that you must have suitable URL content and be engineered to beat your competition within Lycos Search Engine and Directory Listings before you register your pages, and remember that simply registering with Lycos does not assure a suitable ranking.