Search Engines

I promised a post about search engine submissions. So here it is.

Many search engines (Yahoo!, MSN Search, Google, and others) employ the use of "robots" or "spiders," as they are sometimes called, to travel the web from link to link indexing web pages. They are simply computer programs that connect to web pages just like you or I would via a web browser. The information they find about a web page is brought back to the search engines servers and computers for analysis and indexing. These robots typically travel from one page to another by links and will never find your site unless you are linked to by another web page or site. To overcome this you must submit your site or page to some search engines and maybe get someone to host a link to your site.

To submit all you need to do is head to the links below. You type in your site address and maybe confirm it by typing in a code or by signing up for an account (as is the case with yahoo).
Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html
MSN Search - http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2
Yahoo! - http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Now, submitting will never ensure that you'll be added to the search index for any of the above search engines. Also note that it may take up to a month for a search engine to put your web page into its index once it has been submitted.

To ensure that you'll get in the index make sure that you focus on content. Web pages should always be about content first and any other items second. Most people really like web sites that are informative and helpful. Google's robot is "smart" in this way. It can interpret meanings of word groupings and it will rank your page based on your content.

If you want to improve your we site for searchability check out Google's Site Owner section on their About Google page. You'll learn about how Google and some search engines rank pages for credibility and popularity.

Over and out!