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Your Web Site has to be FOUND!
The term "Search Engine" is used extensively whenever people think or talk about the Internet, but what does it really mean? First of all, when people use the term, they are usually referring to both true search engines and directories, and sometimes other kinds of "search sites" as well, such as "FFA's" and "meta-search engines". We'll get into those distinctions in a little while, but the main purpose of a search engine is to help people to find web sites on the World Wide Web.
| Understanding Search Engines
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| The concept is relatively simple,
but in reality, there are a variety of things to learn about before you can really understand how
they work. And more importantly, you need to learn how to use that information to submit your site
so that it will come up high in the search engines and bring lots of prospective customers to
your site! If you're like most people, there is so much information thrown at you that promises
"The Secrets Of Search Engine Rankings", and even people who say "We Will Guarantee a Top 10
Ranking", but truthfully, such statements are very misleading. Once you understand how they
really work, you will know just what steps you need to take, without parting with a truck-full
of your hard-earned cash!
Before we get on to the topic of how search engines work, there are a few things that you should be aware of. First, Cognigen is the best business opportunity you will find on or off the Internet. Second, your Cognigen web site provides endless possibilities for marketing. Third, despite that, as Patrick Oborn, Cognigen Webmaster, says, "Though this cutting edge technology is great for automatic order tracking, it's not so great for marketing. Most major Search Engines will truncate, or remove any characters encountered in a URL string after a "?" so as to eliminate multiple entries from the same domain. What does this mean to you? Simple. You now have a great working (and great looking) website that will not register in most Search Engines." As a result, there's very little you can do to use the Search Engines unless you have your own web site (preferably with your own domain name). For most people that will mean either a Mirror Site. they create themselves, or an Umbrella Site. that can be created for them. For those who are considering building their own mirror site (the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph) we should also add that because of the way most search engines work, the "frames technique" for mirror sites will significantly limit how well they will perform in the search engines. This is because with this technique there is essentially no content to the page from the perspective of the search engine. While meta tags and the page title can provide some information, a great deal of the information the search engines use to "index" your home page comes from the actual text on the page. When there is no text there (it's just a "frameset" that displays the pages on your Cognigen site, your rankings will suffer, and in fact some search engines will not even accept a web page that has fewer than 75 words of text. |
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| "True" Search Engines
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| The "true" search engines
are responsible for the great majority of traffic to most web sites. These sites include such familiar
names as
Alta Vista,
AOL Search,
Ask Jeeves,
Excite,
HotBot,
InfoSeek (GO Network),
Lycos,
MSN Search
and Netscape Search. Others that may be less familiar to you
include
Google,
iWon.com,
Magellan,
Northern Light,
Web Crawler,
Direct Hit and
Fast Search. You may have also seen recent TV advertising
by a company called Inktomi, which interestingly does not have its own search site, but instead powers
other search engines such as AOL, HotBot, GoTo.com, and MSN Search.
These "true" search engines pretty much all work in the same way. When someone types in a word or phrase, they search their "database" of web sites (sometimes more than one database) and present the visitor with a list of web sites that fit that search in priority order according to their analysis. For the most part, they all have a different database of web sites and they all decide what is "relevant" in their own way. So, from our perspective, it can be somewhat frustrating to find that every different search word or phrase will yield a different list of sites on the same search engine, and different still on different search engines. And to make matters worse, if you're searching for a multiple-word phrase (which most people do), you can usually search for "any word", "all words", or "the exact phrase" (although it may take some work to find out how to do that and their terminology will vary). And once again the results will be different for each type of search, each word or phrase, and each search engine. Finally, and most importantly, is the process the search engines go through to determine "relevancy" and hence, how high up on the list your site will appear for a specific search. When a new web site is submitted to a "true" search engine, it is normally put into a rotating list of sites to be visited and analyzed or "spidered". This means that their specific software will visit your page and determine exactly how it will be placed in their database. There are literally dozens of things that are considered, and each search engine does it in a different way, which is why results vary from one to the other. And of course they don't stay the same either. They make changes fairly frequently, which again will cause results to vary. And because of this, it's especially important to "prepare your site" properly before you submit it to the search engines. This can be a fairly complex topic in its own right. |
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| Directories
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| The second category of
"search sites" that you should be aware of are the directories. These search sites list web sites
under appropriate categories, usually under several levels of "sub-categories". So for most of them,
rather than typing in a search phrase, you would pick a category, which would then display a list of
sub-categories. Once you select one of these you will get another list, and eventually you will find
a very specific page that lists lots of web sites all conveniently categorized by the type of site
or business. The granddad of all directories is of course Yahoo.
And most would still say that Yahoo
is the single most important place to have your site listed. It's getting more competition all the
time, but it is still the single most visited web site on the entire Internet.
Yahoo is one of a select few directories that are especially important. The others include Open Directory, LookSmart, and Snap, and they're all characterized by two things. First, they are highly selective and have human beings who review every web site they list. And second, their databases (other than Yahoo) are used by other important sites for some of their results, including some of the major "true" search engines. The category has gotten somewhat confused as search sites are often now using results from several sources. But in this case, just remember that these 4 directories are especially important places to list your site. In addition to the major "human reviewed" directories, there are literally hundreds of other directories, some much more popular than others. Examples include Galaxy, InfoSpace, Nerd World, Pronet and many others. Generally these sites are used much less frequently than the true search engines or human reviewed directories mentioned above, but listing your site with them usually generates some traffic. They can also help with "popularity ratings" (how many other sites link to yours) that are used by some of the search engines as one relevancy factor. Also, since they don't use software or humans to review your site, the basic Cognigen web site address will actually work with most of these directories. Unfortunately, they just won't bring you a lot of traffic. |
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| Other Search Sites
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| Other search
sites that are often referred to as "search engines" include "FFA's". This name means
"Free For All", which simply means that it's a site where anyone can list their web site
and it will automatically be added to a rotating list. These sites use some fairly simple
software to do this, so there are literally thousands of them out there. Unfortunately,
your listing will likely "roll off" the list fairly quickly and they're rarely visited
by people looking for sites to visit, so they generate very little traffic. Still, some
people feel that even if they just get one or two visitors a month from listing on lots
of FFA's, it may be worth it. The price you pay, however, is usually a large number of
emails coming back from those sites trying to sell you something, especially over the
first few days. You may also find yourself on a number of email newsletter lists that
you never signed up for. The strategy of many of these sites is to use their FFA to
generate a large number of email addresses that they can use for email marketing.
Many would call that just plain spam. So, if you decide to submit your site either
directly or through a service that submits to a lot of FFA's, you've been warned!
The last group of search sites we'll discuss are the "meta search engines". These sites don't have their own databases or spidering software, but instead use the big search engines indirectly. Some of these search multiple search engines at the same time for you and consolidate the results. There are literally hundreds of these as well, and some of the better ones like Ixquick, The Big Hub, C4, C|Net's Search.com, MetaCrawler, MetaGopher (our favorite) and DogPile are well worth using. However, since they don't have their own database of sites, you can't submit your web site to them. |
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