Understanding HotBot Search Results

Related Searches offer searches that are similar to your original query to help narrow your results. Related Searches automatically list either more specific or more general search choices, depending on your search query. If you click on one of the Related Searches, you will see a completely new Top 10 list along with the general search results.

Search Within These Results
In the HotBot Search box on the results page, you will see a checkbox labeled Search Within These Results. Clicking on this unique feature enables you to conduct another search within the results of your previous query. Search Within These Results automatically sorts through the Web results of your first search and allows you to tailor your initial results pool to find sites more relevant to your query. For example, if you run a search for "cars," a wide variety of search results will be generated. Click on Search Within These Results and enter a more specific car search, such as "bmw." From your total search results of "cars," HotBot will automatically sort through these sites and return only "bmw"-related results from "cars." (Note: All of the queries you run are saved in the Search box in the order in which you input them. So don't be concerned when all you see in the box is your first query string. The others are in there.)

Directory Results
Directory Results offer you even more search options from the HotBot Directory. Depending on your search, you will see a list of Directory matches that can help you search even further on HotBot. Our HotBot Directory is the largest human-edited directory, organized from general to very specific categories. The Directory is like a "users choice" of Web sites with site recommendations provided by category editors.

Revise Search
The results page feature, Revise Search, allows you to modify your initial query. For example, if you enter a query with the search settings set to 25 Results, and you want to change your results setting to 100 Results, click on Revise Search. You'll see that your initial settings still appear. Simply revise them and submit a new search.

New Search
New Search allows you to quickly start a completely new search after initiating a query. If you find that your search is not producing the results you had hoped, click on New Search. You will be taken back to the HotBot Frontdoor for a fresh start.

Advanced Search
Advanced Search allows you to take your search directly to the HotBot Advanced Search page, where you can use the Advanced Search settings to specify and narrow your search. After you click on the Advanced Search button, your initial search settings will be incorporated automatically into the Advanced Search page. Advanced searching allows for high-level customization for the most relevant of search results.

Web Results
The HotBot Web Results you receive when you conduct a search are made up of three categories of listings: Top 10 site results; the HotBot Directory results, which have been reviewed by directory editors; as well as a listing of general Web search results (delivered by Ask Jeeves). If you enter a popular query, your search will likely generate a Top 10 list of the most popular sites in that category, followed by the edited Directory results, and then the general Web results. On the second page of your results (items 11-20), you can see the total number of results that your search produced.

Top 10 Results
Top 10 results are determined by monitoring a number of factors, such as the frequency with which sites are chosen by users in search results, and the overall positioning of sites relative to one another.

Main Results
If your search generates a Top 10 list, you won't see the main (general) search results until you go to the second page (items 11-20) of the results listing. Our search results are based on comparing the user's search query to the content of millions of Web pages. There is no list matching certain search terms or keywords with special results. Basic factors affecting a page's ranking are the words in the title, keyword meta tags, word frequency in the document, and document length.