> 1) my question is that will my website be in the resultant list?

Yes, providing you've set up the META tag and description and TITLE
correctly. There are quite strict rules on this. But even then it will
only be on the search engines who send out robots/web crawlers to index
the sites. Sites such as Alta-Vista and Google work this way, but as
Tristian points out, there are search engines such as Yahoo where the
directory is compiled and checked manually and involves you sending in
your site and then somebody checking it and classifying it for you. You
can find tips on how to use meta tags most efficiently and check your own
site's meta tags with Northern Web's meta-medic tool at
http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html.
 
> 2) What will determine the ordering of the results? The number of hits?

No, I don't believe so. It's often something to do with the number of
times the search criteria appears on your web page or throughout your web
pages and your web pages being short and to the point. If it consistently
appears on every page as one of the only words, you'll probably be at or
near the top.

Disreputable sites will often include the search criteria words several
times over, even when the site doesn't include much information on a
particular topic, to ensure a high search engine rating. Search engines
are cracking down on this kind of "spamming", with the punishment being
exclusion from the search, but I'm not sure in reality how they can check
this effectively. So, if your site is the most comprehensive oil reference
ever, but only mentions the word oil once, the webcrawlers won't have you
at the top of their lists.

It's also due to the specific policy of the search engine. People like
Infoseek include relevance ratings, which never seem to reach 100% even if
the search word is plastered all over the site. So, part of the
positioning must be the patented and no doubt secret algorithms the search
engines use when generating the lists. Check each individual search
engine's instructions on how they grade sites for clues on how they do it.
Some sites such as Altavista are more help than others.

> 3) Is the web spider or robots got to do with this? And any good references
> to gain the knowledge in this area?

As answered previously, yes they do have a lot to do with it, references,
well now I know much more about it, I wish I'd covered it in Instant HTML
on the bit more about the META tag and using it correctly. I've
accumulated my knowledge from sites on the Internet which offer tips on
meta tags. This page has some good tips and offers a gateway to several
good links on the subject http://www.sofer.com/research/searchmain.html

Any more queries please just leave them on the forum,
Chris Ullman (List Moderator)