BASIC UNDERSTANDING
Search Engines are very important for getting visitors to a web site.
Different search engines have different rules that determine the visibility they give to different web sites; and those rules can change from time to time: without warning.
A site may have a high visibility on a search engine one month; and a low visibility the next…We feel it our job to stay on top of those rules and changes to give you the best service for your dollar.
It is very important to understand how search engines work.
Some search only within their own data base. Other search engines search within both their own data base, and also data bases of other search engines. The scope and nature of data being searched, both have a significant effect upon the value of the search. Some search engines tend to have higher profile, and attract more visitors than others. The number of visitors to a search engine does not alone determine it’s value. A search engine that attracts smaller numbers, but a specific type of visitor (who is more relevant to you), will be of greater value for you to have a listing with.
Search Engines
There are two major types of search engine:
1 – Directories To get listed in these search engines, you must submit your website (or web page) to the service to be manually reviewed and listed. Yahoo and Looksmart are a couple of the largest directories and therefore charge for their services. Some directories (such as these large ones) organize all types of websites into different categories…others are more specific and list only websites from certain areas of interest (such as a directory that lists only car sites).
2 – Crawlers
Crawlers are search engines that have a ‘spider’ program that goes out and indexes pages it finds on the Internet. To get started you can (but don’t have to) submit your website to the crawler. Once your site is in the crawlers ‘to do list’ it will ‘crawl’ through your site and index as much information as it can (depending on the specific rules of the crawler). When a crawler reaches your site, it tries to follow all of the links to each page and collect data on each page. Crawlers also follow links to external sites to link them as well.
This is very important to understand as many search engines put more ‘popular’ sites further up their lists. What this means is that if your site has links coming from various external sites (and the crawler finds your site through these links), it will regard your site as ‘popular’.
This is why sites like Microsoft and IBM list so high in their categories; they have thousands of other websites linking to theirs. NOTE: Many search engine directories use data from other crawlers as ‘secondary data’ when someone performs a search.
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