Search Engine

The term "search engine" is often used to describe both crawler based search engines and human powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in very different ways.

Crawler-Based Search Engines

Crawler-based search engines like Google create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then show what they fiond to people searching for keywords If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines find these changes, and that can affect how important the search engine thinks you are

Human-Powered Search Engines Directories

A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory (ODP) , relies on humans to create the directory. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. With Human Powered Search Engines changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free more than a sub-standard site.

"Hybrid Search Engines" Or Mixed Results

In the web's early days, it used to be that a search engine either presented crawler-based results or human-powered listings. Today, it extremely common for both types of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another. For example, MSN Live Search is more likely to present human-powered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially for more obscure queries.

The undisputed king of the search engines is Google Search and by a big margin some say as much as 70% of all searches - if you are serious about people finding your website you need to concentrate on Google



Related Articles


Custom Search