Introducing search engines. (Searching Data).

Search engines-everybody uses them, but how many know how they really work? If your business has its own website then an understanding of the main features of search engines is important to ensure that your site gets listed Having your website listed by one or more of the major search engines is usually the most effective way of attracting visitors to your site.

Different search engines find requested information in different ways. Broadly speaking, search engines can be either "crawlcrs" or "directories" along with numerous hybrids of both types. In "crawler" type search engines, programs automatically crawl or spider their way through the web, read the contents of millions of pages and index the words found, giving them a score based on their importance on the page. Next, hundreds of computers analyse the links, and adjust the ranking. This process is repeated at regular intervals to ensure an up to date index. When a keyword search is submitted to the search engine by a user, a further program sifts through the index of pages and produces a list of results ranked according to relevance. Google is an example of a crawler typo search engine. It is possible to alter your website to make it more attractive to crawler based search engines as explained below.

In "directory' type search engines results are generated from lists of submissions or reviews of sites which are created by human editors. Yahoo and Looksmart (Looksmart generates results for MSN) are examples of directory based search engines. Listings with directories may also help your site to be picked up by crawler search engines because crawlers pick up on the numbers of links to a site. However, unlike crawlers, altering the composition of your site will not affect whether your site is listed by directories.

Getting your site listed

You can submit your site to most search engines free of charge, but many operate paid inclusion programs which will speed up the listing process. For crawler search engines paid inclusion programs can be useful as some crawlers can otherwise take a couple of months to list a site once it is submitted

Most directories accept free submissions to non-commercial categories but charge for submission to their commercial categories. See the area on these search engine home pages where you can click to "Suggest A Site" or "add URL. You will be required to choose a category, provide your site's URL and a brief description of your site. This description should be carefully prepared to include the key search terms which you hope will be used by people searching for sites such as your own.

But listing does not guarantee results Even when your website is listed this will not guarantee that your web pages will rank well in search results, it merely means that the search engine knows of its existence. Getting your website to rank highly in crawler based searches for particular words or terms is known as "optimisation". A whole industry has grown up around "search engine optimisation" (often referred to as SEO). This can be seen by the plethora of companies and websites offering advice and services on the subject. Optimisation involves the careful selection of metatags (keywords within the HTML code of a website which are picked up by crawler search engines), hyperlinks and web page titles.

Hyperlinks are analysed by crawlers in order to determine how important a page is. On the whole the greater the number of links that point to your site, the greater importance it has with crawler search engines.

When selecting metatags it is essential to avoid using trademarks belonging to others. Recent case law has shown that use of a competitors trademark as a metatag can amount to trademark infringement and/or passing off, In the Reed case (Reed Executive Plc & Anor -v- Reed Business Information Limited & ORS[2002]) it was found that use of a trademark as a metatag, albeit invisible, could give rise to an infringement because the purpose of the metatag was to suggest a connection to the trademark owner that did not in fact exist. Great care should be taken when selecting metatags for your web pages.

Alternatives

Alternatives are "Pay Per Click" or "paid listing" search engines, such as Overture which allow you to pay to be listed for certain key words. Overture works by getting site owners to "bid" for certain search terms. The highest bid obtains the top listing. As with the other Lypes of search engines, the key words/search terms must be carefully selected.

For more information on the complexities of search engines and detailed discussions on optimisation you may wish to visit the following sites:

www.searchenginewatch.com

www.virtualpromote.com and

www.searchengincrocket.com -

www.laytons.com