HotBot

The Hotbot search engine was launched by Wired Digital in May 1996. Wired Digital had performed quite a bit of marketing research and determined that people wanted a better search engine than was currently available on the web (I know it is hard to believe, but the search engines in those days were pretty poor). They partnered with a professor and student at the University of California Berkley. These people happened to be doing research on searching technology for another engine called Inktomi, which was just what Wired Digital needed. (Lycos purchase Hotbot from Wired Digital in 1998).

Since that time, Hotbot has become a very popular search engine. It is quicker than most of the engines, and your site tends to show up in the listings faster.

I've always liked Hotbot because it seems to have a better selection than most of the other engines. If I just want to find every possible web page, then using a combination of Hotbot and Altavista seems to work best.

Hotbot uses Metatags to determine your sites keywords, author and description. Hotbot limits the length of the description to 150 characters and the keywords to 75. The title is also used to describe your site in the listings.

To get your pages listed quickly, you must submit each one (limit of 50 per day from the same domain) separately. If you just submit your home page Hotbot will index your entire site (only to a couple of levels deep, however) on it's regular schedule, which is roughly every 60 days.