Search Engine Functions

What Are Search Engines and How Do They Work?

Having a great Web site is not enough. You also have to bring people to it. The fastest and easiest way to get visitors to your Web site is to register it with the major search engines and online directories, which is usually free!

How do search engines work?

Search engines use automated software (known as robots or spiders) to follow links on Web sites, harvesting information as they go. When someone submits a query to a search engine, the engine returns a list of sites, ranking them on their relevance to the keywords used in the search. How search engines assess your site and determine the relevance of the words often depends on how the specific search engine works. Some engines, such as Excite, use artificial intelligence to recognize concepts that frequently appear together. Other search engines, list the more popular sites first. There is no way to guarantee that your site will come up on top in a search. After all, we can't all come up top!

Which search engines should I register with?

All of them, well most of them wouldn't hurt. It is often quoted that the top 7 search engines account for 95% of web traffic combined; Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, HotBot, Lycos and WebCrawler. Actually, Yahoo isn't really a search engine, but rather a directory. There are hundreds for you to choose from.

How long does it take to be listed?
Don't expect your site to show up in search engines immediately. It can take anything from 24 hours to 6 weeks or more! It depends on the search engine. Most search engine crawlers typically retrieve only a few pages from each site on each visit and visits can be weeks apart.

How do I get my Web site to the top of search engines?

I have read so much that if your Web site doesn't appear within the top 10 of search engine listings, then people aren't likely to find you. This may be true, but it's not the only place where people can find you and with millions of Web sites our there, we can't all be in the top 10! I have found a lot of new Web sites by links from other Web sites There is no simple trick that will get your Web site to the top of search engines. Also the search engines change the way they prioritize the listings every few months, so you can spend all your time trying to beat the system.

To be honest, we recommend that you wouldn't try to hard to get to the top of search engines. Just make sure that you have organized your meta tags correctly. Then concentrate on other traffic generating avenues, such as exchanging links with other Web sites.