Registering with Search Engines
and Directories
Which of the hundreds of search engines really matter? Obviously, those that are
well-known and well-used. A search engine that promotes itself well, or has good strategic
alliances, is more important to webmasters than others.
For example, Infoseek's strong tie to Netscape guarantees that many people will use the
service. The World Wide Web Worm has no Netscape tie and no major commercial backing, so
fewer people probably use it.
Referrer data from sites I've managed reflects this: Infoseek brings far more traffic
to sites than does the World Wide Web Worm. No doubt other webmasters would report the
same.
Does the world come to an end if your site can't be found easily in any of these
"major" search engines? Not necessarily. If you want to reach apple farmers,
then getting a link to your site from an obscure apple-farming web site may bring in much
more meaningful traffic than by being indexed by all the general search engines in the
world.
Search Engines vs. Directories
Before naming names, it's important to explain the difference between search engines
and directories. The two are commonly confused.
Search engines: Also called "spiders" or "crawlers," search
engines constantly visit web sites on the Internet in order to create catalogs of web
pages. It usually requires no work on the part of webmasters for their sites to be
included in the catalog created by search engines. Alta Vista is an example of a search
engine.
The way a site appears in a search engine can be greatly influenced by design. Page
titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.
Directories: Unlike search engines, directories are created by humans. Sites
must be submitted, then they are assigned to an appropriate category or categories.
Because of the human role, directories often provide better results than search engines.
Yahoo is an example of a directory.
Design plays no role in how a site appears in a directory, with the only exception
being that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to influence a review to
include the site. For the most part, things that are useful for improving a site's
appearance in a search engine have nothing to do with improving a site's listing in a
directory.
This guide deals with only search engines, with one exception: Yahoo. Yahoo is such an
important directory that some information is provided.
Hybrid Search Engines
To further confuse matters, some search engines also have an associated directory.
These are sites that have been reviewed or rated. For the most part, these reviewed sites
do not appear as the "default" when a query is made to a hybrid search engine.
Instead, a user must consciously choose to view the ratings.
Being included in a search engine's directory is usually a combination of luck and
quality. There is generally no way to submit in the sense that a site can be submitted for
indexing. Reviewers usually keep an eye on sites submitted to announcement places, then
choose to add those that look appealing.
Deep Search Engines
- This type of engine uses a robot or a spider which constantly roams the
World Wide Web searching for new or updated pages (what a wonderful job eh?) When the
robot visits a page it reads the whole thing, including any sub-pages on the same server
connected to the page it's reading, then it looks around on the rest of the server to see
if there's anything new there, then it visits all the external links on the pages it's
read...and so on, you get the idea.
The point is that all the while it's storing every
word on every page it visits, then compressing the information down and storing it all in
its database. Now, you may be thinking "Wow! I'll always use a deep search engine to
find things in future." but in practice the deep ones are useful for finding specific
or obscure information using long search strings, but if you're looking for something
popular like games (you thought I was going to say hotels didn't you?) then you'll
probably get a search results list running into the millions which isn't much use.
What this means to you:
In theory, the deep search engines will find your page whether or not you register with
them. In practice, it could take months for them to find you so it's best to fill in the
form to tell the robot "come and visit my page". Normally, all you'll need to do
is to fill in your URL and nothing else. Easy. To attract the attentions of deep search
engines (to put your page high on results lists) you need to tailor your page itself which
is discussed later.
Examples of deep search engines are:
- Lycos
- Webcrawler
- Alta Vista
Standard Search Engines
- Don't be put off by the heading, these are often more useful than the deep engines for
finding useful, relevant information on general or popular topics.
The only
information held in the database is what is input by the people, like yourself,
registering their pages by the use of input forms provided by the administrators of the
engine. This makes the standard search engines the focus of your attention when
considering your promotion strategy.
Example of a standard search engine:
Hierarchical Databases
- No search engine is involved. Information is held in 'categories' just like the
directories on your hard disk, and the categories contain lists of titles, linked to the
URL, with short descriptions underneath. The most important thing here is to place your
page in the most relevant category where you think people will look for your
product.
Example of a hierarchical database:
-
Categories - Very important
- When given a choice of categories, your first choice should be the top category
alphabetically. If this happens to be 'Aardvarks', go for it! This is because the search
engine, once it has found the hits, will display them first in order of category, then in
alphabetical order within each category. It's no good having a caption beginning with 'A'
if you're listed in the 'Z' category.
Once again, those pesky humans at Yahoo! have to
make things difficult. You will also have to ensure that the categories you choose are relevant
to the subject of your page, but here's a good one: place your site in the highest
directory in the hierarchy. For example, a listing placed in
/hotels/regional/uk/cities/london will appear way below one in /hotels. Yahoo! allows you
two categories. Choose one category at the beginning of the alphabet and/or hierarchy, and
another in the most apt category in order to target the people who browse the Yahoo!
hierarchy.
The words listed in the category title (e.g. Aardvarks) are now in effect listed as
keywords for your page so if any of the keywords you prepared match the category title
they're now duplicated, but there's no harm done.
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