This explanation is going to be broken down into a few posts, because it LOOKS as if there is a lot of information to take in, when there really isn't. So, I am going to try to explain all of this in very simple terms.

Have you ever used a search engine to locate something on the Web?

That's a silly question, isn't it? We all use search engines at one time or another. If we're looking for a site about kilts, we go to Yahoo, or MSNSearch or the G and type in 'kilts'.

I just Goobered (pardon my irreverence, I'm not a fan of the big G) 'kilts' and on page three, I saw a link to this Web site. Goober knows this site contains information about kilts. (remember that page number, there will be a quiz)

How does Goober know this site is about kilts? I didn't tell them, did you?

If you look at the What's Going On? module, on the forum home page, you will see a block that lists all the guests we've seen in the last 24 hours. And look at all those spiders and bots! 2519 Yahoo Slurpies, alone!

OK, but what is a spider?

A spider or a bot (short for robot) is a script written by the programmers at the various search engines. These scripts, or spiders as I typically refer to them, visit Web sites and they crawl all of the available files on that site. They are "reading" the files, looking for keywords. And yes, they are programmed to almost "read" the files, just like you and I would read them.

They typically start at the top of a file and work their way down to the bottom. If they "see" a word being used often (in this site's case, the word 'kilt' occasionally pops up ), then the spiders make note of that word. What is interesting is that the spiders will "see" words in bigger fonts easier than words in smaller fonts. They're a bit like me, getting up there in years and losing my sight.

Anyway, when these spiders report back to Search Engine Central about this site, they say, "Whew, that site is all about kilts." So, the search engine associates the word 'kilts' with this site.

And that is how Goober comes to know X Marks the Scot is about kilts.

(Now just watch - someone who has read Aaron Wall is going to point out that I've left out a tremendous amount of detail. That's OK, really, it will be alright.)

So, what we want to do is make the job easier for the spiders. Some of the changes you've seen around here are to accomplish that goal.

Someone pointed out all of those numbers appearing at the bottoms of each page. They're forum links, that is all. It lets the spiders move from page to page in a more efficient manner. If you visit X Marks and you land on the CMPS page, but you want to read the Off Topic forum, you have to click on the forum link to get to the forum home page. Then you have to scroll down to the Off Topic forum. Two steps to get there. With those numbers in place, the spiders eliminate one step, they can drive straight to the forum, bypassing the forum home page entirely. And that's OK, because the content I want to spiders to "read" is in the forums, not on the home page.

We've added a couple of new scripts, in our continuing effort to dangle a carrot in front of the spiders. (Do spiders even eat carrots? ) One of them is running in the back room, whatever it is that Panache calls it, and you won't have to worry about it, in the least. (I've already got a couple of hours invested in it, and I'm less than 1/2 way home, but I'll muddle through.)

The other script is one that I'm going to ask each one of you to help me with. It's called Thread Tags.