How do search engines work?

Re: How do search engines work?


Submission forms to search engines are there only for those who will not be satisfied without using one.

For the most part it's pointless.

Google will add it to be spidered but won't add it to their index unless the page meets their criteria. Their criteria is one that is heavily weighed on backlinks.

There is only one search engine (Gigablast) with a submission form that actually gets you indexed (and sometimes even within 5 minutes).



It's a distributed database, so sometimes you are getting results from one box sometimes from another.

Google's database updates also are not instant, so as Google is updating you will get different results based on which box your search results are pulled from.



When it doesn't meet their page rank criteria it will not be listed. They do **not** list all pages.

If they have indexed you but you show up sporadically it usually means you are getting results from different google databases.



Google uses Title tags very much. Google uses the description tag a bit. Google almost ignores the keyword tag entirely.

Meta tags are kiddyscript SEO. And they are ignored by any engine worth their salt. Caveat: Yahoo has said they want better meta data for use in their engine but how they want to use them remains to be seen.



Yahoo is no longer powered by google. Yahoo is taking on Google in the search wars.

They have recently combined the Yahoo, Alltheweb and AltaVista sites to use one Yahho-spidered database.




Yes, some will. But not Google, as they simply ignore the submissions. ;-)

They want to find your pages through links to them and they also use the Google toolbar to alert them to pages.

The submit for is pretty much just there so they don't get emails asking where it is.



The truth is that they simply ignore it for the most part.



No, Zeal is a directory that used to provide results to MSN. I edit some high ranked categories there but now the work is useless. MSN is going to be completely rid of them and Looksmart's distribution is now insignificant.

This is a website that will die or be sold. Looksmart has already been folding up overseas.



Depends on what you think your time is worth. Since they stopped feeding MSN I haven't deemed it worthwhile.

what's a backlink?

I have a buddy trying to get his site on to goole but it's a mixed bag.
if you seach with the domain.org no results - if you search with the name you do a little better.

a backlink is another site linking to you.

Any more info on SEO? - reagular site not PHPBB or can it work the same?

What do you wanna know? SEO covers a lot.

That's kinda like asking "anything else I should know about computers?"

If you have a specific question I can answer it.

hi, all.

So, I have a site I am trying to get up. I have hosting, and even though the site is "live" it is not complete or operational yet.

I just checked my stats and I am showing 43,834 hits April 1-27. Some are from clickbank since I registered there already in prep for my site. But, almost all others are from Mozilla, which I thought was just a browser. What is that about?

Is there a backlink somewhere on Mozilla that I do not know about?

BTW, I am pretty sure I am not coming up on any search engines yet. So, where is the traffic coming from?

Are you seeing that as a referrer string or as the browser used to view the page?

Remember that the referrer string can be spoofed so sometimes browsers will do this.

I don't use Mozilla but maybe they are spoofing the referrer string with their own name.

Could be fake, could be you. Without seening the logs it's all just a guess.

1.
The best do's and don't for getting your website (non-forum) listed on on the big place like google and such.

Do: Get backlinks.

Don't: Use "Black hat" techniques like cloaking, search engine spamming, automated positioning, hidden links etc.

Have you been to www.foresight.org
or
tried:
Update: The Web Enhancement group has since produced Crit, a web-based service enabling annotation and backlinking on any public web page. Try it out and obtain the software at http://crit.org/

husker,

What is it that you want me to see in those links? It seems like you are sending me to random links again. ;-)

foresight had this SEO info (deep) on backlinking and SEO wich I wondered if you'd been there and same for crit that also got me to a place called gorank.

didn't mean to drop you off the deep end there - but heck - I'm beginning to think that's my personality flaw

Google has been the easiest - or most reliable - search engine to optimize for.

Yahoo does not make sense. I've seen it list others in my field that barely have any text or links to thier site on the internet. And the sites are not all that well designed.

Google is very reliable if your site is rich in related text and if there are several or more links to your site.

I found that I was able to bring my site from more than result #300 up to #11 in two days by adding a word in plural with "s" on the end.

Plural and singular vocabulary makes a difference.

Our web site is now the highest ranking on Google for practically every facet of our industry. We come up fairly high on Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Ask Jeeves, etc..

It was apparent that it's pointless to optimize for every engine. So I picked one of the most popular and most efficient - Google.

It's amazing how many people call or email me to try and sell services to optimize our site better, telling us it is not good enough. I just tell them to go to Google's page and type "Portland Landscape Designer"...

The phone call ends very soon after.

Optimizing for MSN or Yahoo is just as easy as Google, you just need to know the differences.

i.e. MSN counts multiple backlinks from one site as more valuable than Google does in their current algo (still beta).

i.e. Yahoo places more importance on on-page optimization than Google.

Getting ranked well for a 3 work query like that is child's play in any engine.

What are hidden links?