In the ongoing gunfight at the e-corral the battle is over the eyeballs of the 150 million people already connected to the Net worldwide and the untold millions about to join them. One obvious rule may be not to shoot till you see the whites of their eyes - but it's remarkable how there hardly seem to be any other rules. Until, that is, the sheriff rides into camp to point out that we're digging for cybergold right smack on top of somebody else's claim. In the online environment of exploding content and fickle users, luring visitors is no easy matter. Maximizing hits has become a valuable art and a sophisticated science.
Practitioners know that search engines can make or break their sites.
If a URL fails to appear among the top ten search results, most surfers won't even see it - much less click on it. Hit-based advertising revenue consequently will languish. According to a Dentsu report, Japanese Internet advertising grew 86 percent last year to JPY11 billion. Many search engines take account of topical information hidden behind the visible text. Metatags are supplied by site designers in HTML code.