100 Questions about Spiders

I haven't gone to 100 yet but here's a handful. Hope to hear from you!

1. How relevant are URLs with keywords to spiders?
2. What do spiders do when they see a keyword in an anchor text? For example, if a website describes my site as an Entertainment Resource what effect will this have when a spider follows the link to my site? Will it consider my site relevant to enterainment?
3. Are the spiders responsible for classifying a website? Such that they are the counterpart of human editors for the OpenDirectory?
4. How come it is believed that spiders weigh terms that are higher up the page more? So if the first thing a spider sees in my site is the word "subscribe" what does it mean to a crawler?
5. They are said to have problems crawling dynamic URLs, but are beginning to get better at it. With that in mind do you think they will still have a problem crawling this http://www.abc.com/abc/headlines/article_display.jsp?abc_content_id=1003019013
6. If the first thing they see in a homepage is a sitemap will it still read the rest of the homepage or will it just follow links from the sitemap?

1. How relevant are URLs with keywords to spiders?
- They play a role. I believe they play a larger role than a page title or a header title, but Google and other search engines won't elaborate on this. There are over 100 various elements (some out of your control) which contribute to your site's placement in results.

2. What do spiders do when they see a keyword in an anchor text? For example, if a website describes my site as an Entertainment Resource what effect will this have when a spider follows the link to my site? Will it consider my site relevant to entertainment?
- Spiders just crawl a site. There are then algorithms which look at the site's content as a whole (I would assume). Entertainment is a very broad subject. One anchor text should not change the ranking of your site. Implement anchor text in all images and make them relevant to your content. Make sure that the site is consistent and relevant, that is your best method to please your audience and the search engines/spiders.

3. Are the spiders responsible for classifying a website? Such that they are the counterpart of human editors for the OpenDirectory?
- You are responsible for classifying your web site. A spider just crawls the site and puts together a 'picture' of the site, if there is one.

4. How come it is believed that spiders weigh terms that are higher up the page more? So if the first thing a spider sees in my site is the word "subscribe" what does it mean to a crawler?
- I think that information is probably outdated at this point. I think the search engines weigh elements in H1,H2,H3 tags heavier than they do having something higher on the page. I could be wrong on this though.

5. They are said to have problems crawling dynamic URLs, but are beginning to get better at it. With that in mind do you think they will still have a problem crawling this http://www.abc.com/abc/headlines/article_display.jsp?abc_content_id=1003019013
- Once again, this information seems outdated. Spiders have no trouble crawling dynamic pages. They do slow down the crawling process when they see the '?' character from what I've read. The search engine folks just ask you to use as few parameters as possible.

6. If the first thing they see in a homepage is a sitemap will it still read the rest of the homepage or will it just follow links from the sitemap?
- Spiders will read the rest of the homepage. They will also follow the links on the homepage. I would suggest not making your hompepage a sitemap because your audience may leave quickly if your homepage is just a bunch of links.