You’ve probably used a search engine to look for information in your own
journeys into the online world. If you have, you understand how valuable they
are to users looking for sites on the Web. Without them, we’d all be forever
lost in a sea of information.
Search engines try to organize the Web into orderly subjects so us humans can
find what we’re looking for. They fall into two main categories – true search
engines and indexes.
The true search engine uses the Web page contents to categorize and index the
page. They do this by periodically releasing a software program called a
spider or bot out to the Internet to gather data about Web pages. The spider
returns this data to a computer that organizes the data and indexes the page.
True search engines are machine driven. There is little or no human
intervention involved in the whole process. And, it’s all automatic.
Indexes are another story. They are built and controlled by people. A good
example of a human-driven Web index is Yahoo!. Web sites must be
submitted to Yahoo! for review. Only after someone looks at the site and
determines what category it belongs in is the site added to the index.
Yahoo is the most used Web index, so it’s critical that you get listed – and get
listed in the right place.
Getting your site listed in an index, especially Yahoo!, can take months to
accomplish. And, the site owner has little to say about how his/her site is
listed. The person doing the reviewing and indexing has the final say.
Getting your site changed after it is included in the index is next to
impossible. So, make sure you do this right the first time. Have a list of
keywords, your site title, and other information well thought-out and saying
exactly what you want it to say.
journeys into the online world. If you have, you understand how valuable they
are to users looking for sites on the Web. Without them, we’d all be forever
lost in a sea of information.
Search engines try to organize the Web into orderly subjects so us humans can
find what we’re looking for. They fall into two main categories – true search
engines and indexes.
The true search engine uses the Web page contents to categorize and index the
page. They do this by periodically releasing a software program called a
spider or bot out to the Internet to gather data about Web pages. The spider
returns this data to a computer that organizes the data and indexes the page.
True search engines are machine driven. There is little or no human
intervention involved in the whole process. And, it’s all automatic.
Indexes are another story. They are built and controlled by people. A good
example of a human-driven Web index is Yahoo!. Web sites must be
submitted to Yahoo! for review. Only after someone looks at the site and
determines what category it belongs in is the site added to the index.
Yahoo is the most used Web index, so it’s critical that you get listed – and get
listed in the right place.
Getting your site listed in an index, especially Yahoo!, can take months to
accomplish. And, the site owner has little to say about how his/her site is
listed. The person doing the reviewing and indexing has the final say.
Getting your site changed after it is included in the index is next to
impossible. So, make sure you do this right the first time. Have a list of
keywords, your site title, and other information well thought-out and saying
exactly what you want it to say.