How Search Engines Work

(The search engine info here is generally true but is dated.
Search Engine optimization has dramatically changed over the past couple of years.)

Submit Your Site to a Search Engine and a "spider" will be sent to the page that was submitted. The spider "indexes" your page into their database noting specific items as having more relevance. Each Search Engine ranks specific items on the page differently.

Spiders Return to your page in the future, re-indexes it and follows any links to more pages. They scour the internet adding and updating sites to their database. The smaller search engines may list 20 to 30 million pages, while the larger engines may list over 100 million pages. Note, Yahoo is actually a directory not a search engine.

Results from "Keyword" Searches are different on each of the search engines. The reason for this is that each of the search engines use a different set of standards to sort their listings.  ("KEYWORDS" are the actual search words that a person uses for a search engine.)

Your Ranking within a Search Engine is based on how each engine ranks the relevance, and the placement of, the words within your page. Then when someone searches for "keywords" on a search engine, the engine uses these predefined weights to rank your page within the million other pages on the web. Some engines may place relevance on the title tag and others may use the META tags. But still others may totally disregard either of these tags.

Knowledge of each Search Engine allows DLS Web Design to place your site closer to the top.

Search Engine Optimization is an option offered by DLS. We will take the search terms that you provide and build additional pages that are for specific search engines so they will rank you in the top 20 of their listings. Factors include "keyword density", meta tags, alt tags and much more. In addition we will examine Yahoo via your keywords, determine the proper sub-directory for your site, create a "Yahoo Description", and submit it accordingly.

We have much more information on search engines available.
If you are a DLS Internet Services customer.
E Mail us  for more detailed info.

Search Engine Information

Your position on search engines is critical to your site success.
Below see the top search engines as rated by unique visitors
for the month of May 2000
as ranked by PC Data Online, an Internet rating source.

Rank Site Unique Visitors
1 Yahoo 55.8%
2 Lycos 21,482,000
3 Altavista 11.8%
4 Excite 9.66%
5 Netscape.com 18,272,000
6 About.com 13,046,000
7 Iwon 14,233,000
8 Looksmart 11,678,000
9 Snap 10,462,000
10 Go.com 8.0%
11 GoTo.com 6,928,000

The above sites are either search engines or directories.
Sites that are listed in directories are actually viewed by a human.
They have the option of including or excluding your site as well as
changing the description you have submitted.


 

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1134 Julia Cr
Bainbridge, Ga 31717
912-246-5745   1-800-797-8416
Member of Bainbridge Decatur County Chamber of Commerce