Search Engines
When you own a website, Internet Search Engines will be one of the most important sources
of new visitors. Therefore when considering website
marketing strategies it is useful to have a basic understanding of what search engines are and how they work.
What is an Internet Search Engine?
In its simplist form a search engine is a website that provides information about websites or other internet
resources. Internet search engines are losely divided into two categories:
- Directories
- Search Engines
What is an Internet Directory?
A Directory is a searchable list of websites or other internet resources which can be found by browsing
through categories of information with a common subject. Typically if you were looking for a local flower shop, you
might select the country in which you were interested, from a list of counties within that country you then select
the county . From the county you might see a list of towns and then businesses within that town. Hopefully
from the list of businesses you would select a flower shop which is suitable for your purposes.
The key factor which distinguishes a Directory from a true Search Engine is that the Direcory is normally
built and edited by humans.
What is an Internet Search Engine?
While an Internet search engine stores similar information to a Directory, the way that the information is
indexed and searched is different. You normally find information from a search engine by typing keywords into
a search box. The keywords are used to search the search engine's database and results are returned that
relate to those keywords. The key difference, however, is that a true search engine collects its data using
software called a search engine spider. Spiders navigate the internet following hyperlinks between websites.
As they move from page to page they index the content of the pages and add that content to their database.