Ever wonder why DNS systems came into existence? Efficiency. Every computer has a distinct IP address, and Internet needed an elite method for obtaining these addresses and for managing system as a whole. Enter ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number manages DNS root of Internet domain namespace. ICANN’s role is to manage assignment of identifiers, ensuring that all users have unique names.

The DNS system is run by a series of servers called DNS servers. ICANN manages root DNS domains, under which are top-level domains. It also manages:

Organizational domains Geographical domains Reverse domains

Beneath top-level domains are other naming authorities such as Nominet, UK’s naming authority.

How does a DNS Query work?

The process occurs in two parts. Firstly, a name query begins at a client computer and is passed to DNS client service for resolution. When query cannot be resolved locally, DNS servers are queried.

For example, when a web browser calls fully qualified domain name www.discountdomainsuk.com, request is passed on to DNS client service to resolve name by using locally cached information. If query is held in cache, then process is complete.

I use several tools to monitor performance of my own websites, by regularly reviewing their progress I can see what works and what does not.

Ranking tools

Where is my listing? Want a tool that can tell you which page your site appears on by keyword?

www.top25web.com/cgi-bin/report.cgi

Top25web searches domain names by keyword for following search engines:- Google, Alta vista and inktomi, drilling down for first 500 entries on each search engine.

How many of my websites pages are indexed? Do you have a large site? – it can be a pain using site: command in Google, following tells you how many of your pages are indexed in Fast, Google, Alta Vista and MSN

www.neutralize.com creates a pie chart of % of your pages indexed in each of engines.

Meta – Tag analysers

Meta tags are much less important than they used to be, though Title tag is still very powerful.

The following are my favourites:-

http://www.sitesolutions.com/analysis.asp - select website analysis option from left hand, this is particularly good at telling if you’ve got right combination of keywords in your tags and which keyword should be where.

http://www.sitescreamer.com/from22.html - this analyses your tags, and gives a narrative opinion – excellent being best rating.

Traffic statistics

Good traffic statistics are essential for your own site, but how to get information on rivals traffic?, Alexa makes use of its own database of user and converts these to a traffic ranking.

The Alexa site can be found at www.alexa.com

Good HTML