Re: [htdig] What do the star ratings mean?

[Jerold S. <je...@sa...>]

On Friday, August 1, 2003, at 03:20 PM, Doug Schasteen wrote:

> I=92m very confused by the stars, and everyone I have shown the search=20=

> engine to so far has asked me what it means and I basically just BS=20
> about it. I honestly don=92t understand it. Sometimes the search will=20=

> find 50+ documents and give 4 stars to two items, and 2 stars to about=20=

> six of them, and the other 40+ only have one star. Yet, some of the 1=20=

> star and 2 star items have all the items I was searching for right=20
> there in the excerpt. But some of the 4 star items only have a few of=20=

> the items I was searching for in the excerpt. In fact, one time I=20
> found 700+ documents and only 1 item had 4 stars. That one item had=20
> none of the search items in the excerpt, but had 1 of them in the=20
> title. How did it get 4 stars above the others, which had bold items=20=

> in the excerpt?
>

You can find a discussion of how to affect your rankings at=20
http://www.htdig.org/confindex.html and looking for (probably among=20
others):

title_factor
description_factor
text_factor
heading_factor
keywords_factor
backlink_factor

Words showing up in the title, by default, will be 100 times more=20
effective than words showing up in the paragraphs.

You can also go to http://www.htdig.org/confindex.html and do a search=20=

on "ranking" or "factor" to find past discussions on this topic. You=20
might find http://www.htdig.org/mail/2000/03/0130.html helpful.

The FAQ (4.25) at http://www.htdig.org/FAQ.html also has a short=20
discussion of ranking.

Jerry
je...@sa...
http://www.sandiego.edu/~jerry/
Serra 188B/x8773
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