FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PR: Scientific study helps webmasters to obtain better rankings on search
engines

Cologne, Germany. April 30, 2002 - Most Internet surfers use search engines
to locate web sites but only a minority of them look beyond the top 10
search results. Therefore, obtaining a high position on search engine
result pages is essential for every online business.

But how do search engines rank a web site?

The "Search Engine Ranking" study, released today, endeavors to answer this
question for all the major search engines, Google, Altavista, iWon/Inktomi,
AllTheWeb, Wisenut and Teoma. 144 attributes of 103,260 top 10 web pages
were examined in the study, making it the most comprehensive search engine
ranking study available today.

"Until now, there was no tenable information on how search engines rank web
sites available. Internet marketing professionals depended on speculation
and meager pieces of information that the search engines were willing to
give away." explained Johannes Selbach, co-author of the study. "The key to
promoting a web site to search engines is to understand how they index and
rank web sites. Once you know the facts, you can use this knowledge to
ensure your web site's search engine compatibility."

Among the findings are:

* Should a domain name include a keyword for best results?
* Does it help if you put keywords in bold?
* Does the age of a web site influence the ranking?
* What's the ideal size of the TITLE tag?
* How often should your keywords appear in the META keywords
tag?
* What's the ideal search term density in the body text?
* Do keywords in IMG ALT attributes really matter?
* Do you really need a lot of links to your web site for a
top ranking?

The search engine ranking study gives surprising answers to these and many
more questions. It helps webmasters to find out what's myth and what's fact.

Further information can be found at
http://www.vse-online.com/se-studies
Copies are available for purchase online at
http://www.vse-online.com/se-studies/order.html

For further details, contact Johannes Selbach at
selbach@vse-online.com or visit the study web site at
http://www.vse-online.com/se-studies/

VSE home page: http://www.vse-online.com
Study: http://www.vse-online.com/se-studies/
Image: http://www.vse-online.com/images/se-study-book.gif