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Search Engine Optimization

Roger Gonzales

The most popular engines

Search engines keep their algorithms secret and change them often in order to prevent webmasters from manipulating their databases and dominating search results. They also want to provide new sites at the top of the search results on a regular basis rather than always having the same old sites show up month after month.
An important difference to realize is that search engine and directories are not the same search engine use a spider to "crawl" the web and the web sites they find, as well as submitted sites. As they crawl the web, they gather the information that is used by their algorithms in order to rank your site.
Directories rely on submissions from webmasters, with live humans viewing your site to determine if it will be accepted. If accepted, directories often rank sites in alphanumeric order, with paid listings sometimes on top. Some search engine also place paid listings at the top, so it's not always possible to get a ranking in the top three or more places unless you're willing to pay for it.
Let us now look at a more detailed explanation on how search engine work. Crawler based search engine are primarily composed of three parts.

While all search engines do follow the same basic rules of relevancy, location and frequency, each search engine has its own special way of determining rankings. To make things more interesting, the search engines change the rules from time to time so that the rankings change even if the web pages have remained the same. One method of determining relevancy used by some search engines (like HotBot and Infoseek), but not others (like Lycos), is the Meta tags. Meta tags are hidden HTML codes that provide the search engine spiders with potentially important information like the page description and the page keywords. 

Meta tags are often labeled as the secret to getting high rankings, but Meta tags alone will not get you a top 10 ranking. On the other hand, they certainly don’t hurt. Detailed information on meta-tags and other ways of improving search engine ranking is given later in this chapter. In the early days of the web, webmasters would repeat a keyword hundreds of times in the Meta tags and then add it hundreds of times to the text on the web page by making it the same color as the background. However, now, major search engines have algorithms that may exclude a page from ranking if it has resorted to “keyword spamming”; in fact some search engines will downgrade ranking in such cases and penalize the page.  

Link analysis and ‘clickthrough’ measurement are certain other factors that are “off the page” and yet crucial in the ranking mechanism adopted by some leading search engines. This is quickly emerging as the most important determinant of ranking, but before we study this, we must first look at the most popular search engines and then look at the various steps you can take to improve your success at each of the stages – spidering, indexing and ranking.

The most popular search engine: Yahoo, Google, and Inktomi

Google is a privately held company that was founded by two Stanford graduates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. Dr. Eric Schmidt, the CEO joined in 2001 and by the end of the year the company had shown a profit. 

Yahoo

has shown sales of around $ 225 million in the second quarter this year (inching close to the 1 billion mark over the year), and a net income of $ 21.4 million. Yahoo is a portal and not a pure play search engine company. It was founded by Jerry Yang. Google is the search engine that powers the search directory for Yahoo. This partnership started in the year 2000 and recently there was a report that the contract is being extended. Last year, Yahoo paid Google about $7.2 million for Web search services. Inktomi has been a contender too for Yahoo’s business. Google also provides an Apple-specific Search Engine specifically tailored to deliver highly targeted results related to Apple Computer and the Macintosh computing platform.The Apple-specific search engine, located at www.google.com/mac.html, makes searching for everything from Apple's corporate information to product-related news faster and easier.

Inktomi

has a robust networking business and a foothold in enterprise search. However, it recently posted deep losses. The company reported a wider net loss in the second quarter 2002, with lower revenue. Its loss broadened to $104 million or 72 cents a share, from $58.3 million, or 46 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue fell to $30.8 million from $39.5 million a year earlier. To stay healthy and competitive in consumer search, Inktomi introduced in the last year a program that generates fees from Web sites listed in its database. Inktomi charges companies such as Amazon.com and eBay to list more than 1,000 Web addresses; they might pay anywhere from 5 cents to 40 cents per click when Web surfers jump to their pages from Inktomi's database. The revenue generated from paid inclusion is shared with partners such as MSN and Overture. For March 2003, according to a study by Jupiter Media Metrix, there were an estimated 114 million Internet users online in the US at work or at home, 80 percent of whom are estimated to have made some type of search request during the month.  

AltaVista

AltaVista is one of the oldest and most well-known search engines. It was launched in December 1995. It was owned by Digital, then run by Compaq (which purchased Digital in 1998), then spun off into a separate company, which is now controlled by CMGI. Over the years it has lost its prominent position to Yahoo and Google.George McMillan is the CEO of CMGI, Inc. that owns AltaVista. According to the last financial report (fiscal 2001) by parent company CMGI, the "search and portals" division of the company, of which the majority comprises AltaVista's operations, generated $37 million in revenue with an operating loss of $72.7 million. In March 2002 AltaVista has launched its new release of Enterprise Search v2.0 software that it sells to the Enterprise search market, similar to Inktomi and Verity. AltaVista recently launched important freshness and relevancy initiatives, crawling key areas of the Internet four times per day and increasing relevancy by 40%.AltaVista also executed an agreement pursuant to which Overture Services, Inc. will distribute its 'Pay-For-Performance' search listings on AltaVista's North American sites. The companies signed similar agreements in both Germany and the U.K. during the third quarter. Under the terms of these agreements, AltaVista and Overture will share the revenue resulting from user click-throughs to Overture's customers' Web sites.

 Overture (formerly GoTo)

Overture returns search results based on the amount of money an advertiser has paid. This system has made Overture one of the few profitable Net businesses. Yahoo has already signed a three-year deal with Overture to provide paid search results. As this write up does not cover pay per click advertising, we are not focusing much on Overture. 

 AOL Search

America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of nearly three years

 Verity

We thought it worth mentioning Verity in this, although this is not relevant to search engine optimization. Verity is amongst the leading providers of enterprise search software (Inktomi is another well known player in this). This software is used by numerous enterprises for offering information search within their own sites, portals, intranets/extranets and e-commerce sites. Several software OEMs providing portal or enterprise software also bundle such software in their offerings. Verity (VRTY) went public in 1995 and has achieved sales worth $ 145 million in fiscal 2001. It is a profitable company. If you wish to provide search facilities to visitors within your site, this may be an option, particularly if you have a large site with lots of information. 

Meta Search Engines Dogpile

Dogpile is a meta-search engine that searches the Internet's top search engines such as About, Ask Jeeves, FAST, FindWhat, Google, LookSmart, Overture and many more. With one single, powerful search engine, you get more relevant and comprehensive results. When you use Dogpile, you are actually searching many search engines simultaneously.Dogpile, founded in 1996, is the most popular Internet meta-search engine. The site joined the InfoSpace Network in 2000 and is owned and operated by InfoSpace, Inc.

 Mamma

Mamma.com is a "smart" meta-search engine - every time you type in a query Mamma simultaneously searches a variety of engines, directories, and deep content sites, properly formats the words and syntax for each, compiles their results in a virtual database, eliminates duplicates, and displays them in a uniform manner according to relevance. It's like using multiple search engines, all at the same time.Created in 1996 as a master's thesis, Mamma.com helped to introduce meta-search to the Internet as one of the first of its kind. Due to its quality results, and the benefits of meta-search, Mamma grew rapidly through word of mouth, and quickly became an established presence on the Internet. Mamma.com's ability to gather the best results available from top Internet sources and to procure an impressive array of advertisers during the Internet boom of the late 1990s caught the interest of many potential investors. In late 1999 Intasys Corporation (Nasdaq: INTA) invested in a 69% stake of the company and in July 2001 bought the remaining shares and now fully owns Mamma.com. 

IxQuick

A search engine is only a tool. It's only as smart as the people who master-minded it. If IxQuick™ is smarter and more relevant in its findings than other metasearch engines (and many highly qualified people would agree that it is), it's because it was conceived to meet the needs of some of the most inquisitive minds in the world - those of researchers, educators, scholars and the world scientific community.When a user enters a query at the IxQuick.com website, their powerful proprietary technology simultaneously queries ten major search engines and properly formats the words and syntax for each source being probed. IxQuick™ then creates a virtual database, organizes the results into a uniform format and presents them by relevance and source. In this manner, IxQuick.com provides users with highly relevant and comprehensive search results. . .....more on

Human powered directories

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