Search Engines
Each search engine has it’s own way of deciding
how to list websites, and what order to list them in. The formula a search engine
uses to figure out which sites will be listed first is called an “algorithm.”
Understanding the algorithms of the big search engines will go a long way towards
getting you a higher ranking with them. There is an excellent book that really
goes into the nuts and bolts of search engines and meta tags, called “Search
Engine Visibility” by Shari Thurow. I'm going to keep it really simple
for this section, just so you have a basic understanding...
The easiest way to understand how many search engines work is to think of them as libraries.
You go to the front desk and ask the librarian, Mrs. Google, for some information on say, “Website Design.” She has a group of helpers called “spiders” and “crawlers” who then run down the aisles looking at the titles on the book spines. If they see something with “Website Design” on the spine, they pull that book down and see if the word “Website Design” is mentioned in the text on the first page. They then stack the books and bring them to the librarian. She puts the stack of books on a table for you with the ones that have been checked out most often (the most popular ones) on top.
The librarian down the street doesn’t give a fig how many people have checked out the books. She tells her spiders and crawlers to look at the book titles, and then read the book jacket. The books with “Website Design” mentioned the most times in these places go on the top of the stack the librarian gives you.
This illustrates a couple of criteria, or “Algorithms” that various search engines use when deciding how to rank a site. If you want your site to have a good ranking in most search engines, you must carefully consider them.
To learn all about search engines and their criteria , go to: Search Engine Watch.
The amount of time it takes to get added to the major search engines varies almost daily and depends on several factors. Expect it to take 4 to 7 weeks before your site will show up on any major search engine, and up to 3 months for the smaller search engines, sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. And even then, there are thousands, maybe millions of websites competing for the same positions on the search engines, so don’t expect to see your site come up on the first pages of search results.