home > website design services > search engines

search engines and directories

A search engine takes your search keyword or keywords and presents you a list of Web pages that it determines has some relevance to your search criteria.

To compose their lists, search engines match the search keywords you give them against their indexes of information about all the pages they have located as they trawl the World Wide Web on the lookout for new and revised material.

Trawling is performed by computer programs that go under the descriptions 'crawlers', 'robots', 'gathers' and 'spiders'. Google is an example of a crawler-based search engine.

Another type of search engine, sometimes called a 'directory', includes human input into decisions about whether or not a Web site is included in its search listings.

Yahoo! is an example of a search engine that relies heavily on directory listings. However, Yahoo! will also list crawler-based entries, though the thought is that Yahoo! gives preference to the human-input entries.

Some search engines are hybrids of the crawler and directory approaches. And Yahoo! is said to include crawler-based results, especially in response to obscure searches.

search engine submission (search engine registration)

Search engine submission, or search engine registration, is the process of making your Web site know to the search engines so that they will consider including it their listings.

A crawler-based search engine may eventually find your Web site through its own devices, even without your submission. With astronomical numbers of web pages out there for crawlers to visit, it could take weeks or months for your pages to be found by a particular search engine.

Submission, however worthwhile it may seem, should not be taken for granted as a means of reducing the time taken for a search engine to register your Web site.

A directory may require a submission if your Web site is to be listed at all. Submission does not guarantee inclusion in a directory: the people reviewing your submission may not regard your Web site as suitable for inclusion.

With hundreds of search engines and directories out there, and submission processes taking time to complete, deciding where to spend your time gainfully needs planning and preparation.

free web site submission

Most search engines do not charge for submission. However, many attach a charge to your submission if you want to achieve prominence in the listings or to reduce the delay in your pages making the listings, or if you want the equivalent of a block ad to give you prominence amongst the search results.

If you intend paying for inclusions, it is important to target those search engines that are most important for your business and to include the costs in your budget for your web site.

free web site promotion services

There are web sites that provide free web site promotion services and programs that claim to handle the task of submitting your site to the search engines. Most claim to submit to a large number of search engines once you have provided some basic information about your web site.

Using such programs or services may sound an attractive proposition, but we advise caution. Firstly, examination of the claims may show that the process does not include submissions to some of the leading search engines in which you most definitely want to be listed.

Secondly, though the claim the submissions will be made to large numbers of search engines may sound great, you may discover that the majority of these are pretty obscure - used only by the most Internet-savvy and therefore not by the vast majority of your potential clients or customers.

Thirdly, there is the concern that third-party multiple submissions services may be rejected by search engines altogether.

Now, Yahoo! says of its UK and Ireland directory that using 'a submittal service neither increases nor decreases your chances of getting listed'. Yet a strong caution about potential pitfalls was published in PC Pro magazine (May 2003, p205), the author presenting reasons for tending to give these services 'a wide berth'.

web site promotion companies

There are many companies that offer to submit and promote your web site to the search engines. Some of these, as far as we can make out, are doing no more than you might achieve yourself, though they will be saving you the time it would take you to achieve this.

Others offer a more substantial basket of services that may well include guidance on improving your site.

Always present any such company that you are considering a detailed brief, including your clear objectives for the submission process.

Before signing anything, make absolutely certain that you understand for what it is you will be paying and for how long their promotion activities extend - today's promotion may work for weeks, or months, possibly, but not for ever.

search engine optimisation

There is a huge amount of information on the Internet about how to make a Web site attractive to search engines, how to get it listed in search results and how to get it to the top of these listings for maximum impact.

Amongst all this information there is much that is relevant, much that is out of date, and much that we would say will have an adverse effect on your attempts to promote your Web site if you apply the suggested techniques.

Some search engines tell you about what they find acceptable and unacceptable in terms of Web site content and presentation. But they do not tell you everything. They are constantly adjusting to counter the subterfuges used by Web site developers to make your site list higher than the sites of your competitors.

As you adapt your Web site to improve its visibility on the Web, your competitors are likely to respond in order to maintain their positions. Thus you should regard optimisation as part of an ongoing process of promoting your site, and you will need to allocate time and resources to this process.

our contribution to web site promotion

In a consultancy role we can show you how to undertake and manage search engine submission and optimisation yourselves, and support you in your efforts. Also, we can advise on how to find the best companies to do submissions for you.

Acting as your Web site developer ourselves, we would aim to make your Web site attractive to the search engines

The majority of our clients engage us to manage promotion as part of our development schedule.