Special Report: Search Engine Marketing

To rank well in HotBot, use keywords in the title and meta tags, Clay says. Use high-frequency keywords in the body, and use longer documents.

Offering both organic and paid search, Lycos, one of the oldest search engines, changed from a straightforward search engine to a Yahoo!-type directory that includes news, shopping, personalized sections and a search engine component, Clay says. Lycos has partnered with Terra.com, a Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking online company. Terra Lycos now owns several Web properties, including HotBot.com, Matchmaker.com, Quote.com, Rumbo.com, Webmonkey.com and WhoWhere.com.