Re[2]: Lycos' HEAD vs. GET
Shadrach Todd (shad@pathfinder.com)
Mon, 25 Nov 1996 10:01:25 -0500 (EST)
David Banes <dbanes@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> Otis Gospodnetic wrote:
> >
> > I looked at our access logs here and noticed that Lycos' Web Robot(s??) uses
> > GET to request all non-image files/documents (.html. .txt, .ps....) and uses
> > HEAD to request various image files (.gif, .jpeg...)
> >
> > what I don't understand - why doing even HEAD on the image files ? What is
> > the benefit of verifying the existance of images on the Web ? I can't think
> > of any .....
> >
> > Does anyone know the reasoning behind Lycos' HEAD requests for images ?
>
> Yes, Lycos indexes image files, so you can search for them, it's a new
> gimmick they have to hook users. I'm guessing that they actuallt index
> the alt="This is an Image of a house" element to the "img src=" tag.
That's what I thought, too. It seems as though they are indexing the
text inside an anchor link, though: <a href="house.gif">Click here for an
image of a house</a>, which I assume they found gave better results?
Shad
>
> David Banes.
> http://www.coolbananas.com.au/~dbanes
_________________________________________________
This messages was sent by the robots mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail
to robots-request@webcrawler.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the body.
For more info see http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html