What Are Search Engines And How Do They Work?
| Category: Search Engines | Date: 2001-03-12 |
Having a great website is not enough. You also have to bring people to it. The fastest and easiest way to get visitors to your website 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 websites, 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 cant all come up top!
Which search engines should I register with?
All of them, well most of them wouldnt 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 isnt really a search engine, but rather a directory. There are hundreds for you to choose from.
How do I register my website with these search engines?
You can submit your website manually at each search engine or you can save yourself a lot of time and use one of the many site submission services, such as our Free-Submit. It will submit your site to 50 search engines and web directories, for free!
How long does it take to be listed?
Dont 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. The URL you submit to AltaVista and Excite usually shows up within 24 hours, but the others will take longer. Most search engine crawlers typically retrieve only a few pages from each site on each visit and visits can be weeks apart.
Search Engine
Alta Vista
Excite
Hotbot/Inktomi
Infoseek
Lycos
Northern Light
Web Crawler Submitted Pages
1 day
1-3 weeks
within 2 weeks
within 2 days
2-3 weeks
2-4 weeks
1-6 weeks Non-Submitted Pages
1 day-1 month
3 weeks
2 weeks
1-2 months
2-3 weeks
2-4 weeks
1-6 weeks, if at all!
This report is just a small part of a very comprehensive report found at the "Search Engine Watch" website. For the full report visit searchenginewatch.com.
Yahoo is not featured here as it is not classified as a search engine, but rather a web directory. Yahoo does not used crawlers/spiders to collect information from your web site. Instead all submissions are checked by one of their surfers. I understand that they have such a backlog that it usually takes a minimum of 6 weeks before youre likely to be indexed and they reject 90% of web sites. Yet they are probably the most popular search engine/web directory, so it is worth persevering with them.
How do I get my website to the top of search engines?
I have read so much that if your website doesnt appear within the top 10 of search engine listings, then people arent likely to find you. This may be true, but its not the only place where people can find you and with millions of websites our there, we cant all be in the top 10! I have found a lot of new websites by links from other websites. There is no simple trick that will get your website 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, I wouldnt 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 websites.
by Michael Wong. eBoz!
About the author
Copyright, Jan. 2000, Michael Wong, Editor and Webmaster at eBoz!. eBoz.com is listed as one of the Top 101 Best Business Sites by Windows Magazine. eBoz! offers webmasters & web marketers free valuable resources to help them build successful websites. Visit his site today!
michael@eboz.com
http://www.eboz.com
How do search engines work?
Search engines use automated software (known as robots or spiders) to follow links on websites, 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 cant all come up top!
Which search engines should I register with?
All of them, well most of them wouldnt 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 isnt really a search engine, but rather a directory. There are hundreds for you to choose from.
How do I register my website with these search engines?
You can submit your website manually at each search engine or you can save yourself a lot of time and use one of the many site submission services, such as our Free-Submit. It will submit your site to 50 search engines and web directories, for free!
How long does it take to be listed?
Dont 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. The URL you submit to AltaVista and Excite usually shows up within 24 hours, but the others will take longer. Most search engine crawlers typically retrieve only a few pages from each site on each visit and visits can be weeks apart.
Search Engine
Alta Vista
Excite
Hotbot/Inktomi
Infoseek
Lycos
Northern Light
Web Crawler Submitted Pages
1 day
1-3 weeks
within 2 weeks
within 2 days
2-3 weeks
2-4 weeks
1-6 weeks Non-Submitted Pages
1 day-1 month
3 weeks
2 weeks
1-2 months
2-3 weeks
2-4 weeks
1-6 weeks, if at all!
This report is just a small part of a very comprehensive report found at the "Search Engine Watch" website. For the full report visit searchenginewatch.com.
Yahoo is not featured here as it is not classified as a search engine, but rather a web directory. Yahoo does not used crawlers/spiders to collect information from your web site. Instead all submissions are checked by one of their surfers. I understand that they have such a backlog that it usually takes a minimum of 6 weeks before youre likely to be indexed and they reject 90% of web sites. Yet they are probably the most popular search engine/web directory, so it is worth persevering with them.
How do I get my website to the top of search engines?
I have read so much that if your website doesnt appear within the top 10 of search engine listings, then people arent likely to find you. This may be true, but its not the only place where people can find you and with millions of websites our there, we cant all be in the top 10! I have found a lot of new websites by links from other websites. There is no simple trick that will get your website 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, I wouldnt 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 websites.
by Michael Wong. eBoz!
About the author
Copyright, Jan. 2000, Michael Wong, Editor and Webmaster at eBoz!. eBoz.com is listed as one of the Top 101 Best Business Sites by Windows Magazine. eBoz! offers webmasters & web marketers free valuable resources to help them build successful websites. Visit his site today!
michael@eboz.com
http://www.eboz.com
Copyright © 2005-2006 Powered by Custom PHP Programming