Search Engine Specifics

Search Engines bring a lot of traffic to your site. They are the principal route used by internet consumers to find anything from frogs to sex to you and your products. So, it's worthwhile knowing a little about them.
 
Thinking has added this section to their website. It is by no means exhaustive (there are over 1500 search engines), it is a beginning that will slowly grow and expand as more information is collated and added. Here are some facts about specific search engines to help you formulate your search engine marketing strategy.
 
AltaVista: www.altavista.com, www.goeureka.com.au
Pages in index: 150 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: One to two days. Time it takes to index crawled pages: One to 30 days.
 
How to check if your page is on the index: In the search box, type: +url: yourcompany.com/yourpage.htm. How to check how many pages link to your site: In the search box, type: link:yourcompany.com. To narrow your search to a particular directory or page: link:yourcompany.com/ourpage.htm. To eliminate from the results all the pages within your own domain that link to each other, use the -url command: link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com. Supports frame pages: Yes. Supports image maps: Yes.

Ask Jeeves www.askjeeves.com/
Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question. If it fails to find a match within its own database, then it will provide matching web pages from various search engines. The service went into beta in mid-April 1997 and opened fully on June 1, 1997. Results from Ask Jeeves also appear within AltaVista.
 
HotBot: www.hotbot.lycos.com
Pages in index: 110 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: Two days to two weeks. Time it takes to index crawled pages: About two weeks. How to check if your page is on the index: Select the advanced search options and enter your page URL.
 
How to check how many pages link to your domain: In the search box, type: linkdomain:yourcompany.com. To eliminate from the results all the pages within your own domain that link to each other, use the -domain command: linkdomain:yourcompany.com -domain:yourcompany.com. To find the links to only a particular page, enter your URL into the search box, then choose the "links to this URL" option. Supports frame pages: No. Supports image maps: No.
 
Excite: www.excite.com,
Pages in index: 55 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: About two weeks. Time it takes to index crawled pages: Up to six weeks. How to check if your page is on the index: In the search box, type in the full URL of the page.
 
How to check how many pages link to your site: Not available. Supports frame pages: No. Supports image maps: No.
 
Go / Infoseek www.go.com/
Go is a portal site produced by Infoseek and Disney. It offers portal features such as personalization and free e-mail, plus the search capabilities of the former Infoseek search service, which has now been folded into Go. Searchers will find that Go consistently provides quality results in response to many general and broad searches, thanks to its ESP search algorithm. It also has an impressive human-compiled directory of web sites. Go officially launched in January 1999. It is not related to GoTo, below. The former Infoseek service launched in early 1995.
 
GoTo www.goto.com/
Unlike the other search engines (except for AltaVista), GoTo sells its listings. Companies can pay money to be placed higher in the search results, which GoTo feels improves relevancy. Non-paid results come from Inktomi. GoTo launched in 1997 and incorporated the former University of Colorado-based World Wide Web Worm. In February 1998, it shifted to its current pay-for-placement model and soon after replaced the WWW Worm with Inktomi for its non-paid listings. GoTo is not related to Go, above.
 
Google www.google.com/
Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them.
 
LookSmart: www.looksmart.com/   www.looksmart.com.au
LookSmart is the closest rival Yahoo has, in terms of being a human-compiled directory of the web. In addition to being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to AltaVista and many other partners. AltaVista provides LookSmart with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's reviews. LookSmart launched independently in October 1996, was backed by Reader's Digest for about a year, and then company executives bought back control of the service.
 
Lycos: www.lycos.com
Pages in index: 50 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: Two to four weeks. Time it takes to index crawled pages: Two to four weeks.
 
How to check if your page is on the index: Not available. How to check how many pages link to your site: Not available. Supports frame pages: Limited. Supports image maps: No
 
MSN Search http://search.msn.com/
Microsoft's MSN Search service is powered by Inktomi. On the MSN portal site, other search engines are also featured, along with directory results. MSN Search went live in October 1998 with its Inktomi results, although it had existed in various formats and under different names previously.
 
Northern Light www.northernlight.com/
Northern Light is another favorite search engine among researchers. It features the largest index of the web, along with the ability to cluster documents by topic. Northern Light also has a set of "special collection" documents that are not readily accessible to search engine spiders. There are documents from thousands of sources, including newswires, magazines and databases. Searching these documents is free, but there is a charge of up to $4 to view them. There is no charge to view documents on the public web -- only for those within the special collection. Northern Light opened to general use in August 1997. 
 
Yahoo! www.yahoo.com, www.yahoo.com.au
Yahoo! is the most popular directory on the Web, yet many websites have difficulty getting listed. Some estimates are that fewer than one of 10 submissions gets listed. Moreover, for those that get listed, it takes an estimated four to 15 weeks.
 
Some companies have had to resubmit sites four times over several weeks or months before getting listed (but be careful; resubmitting too often is spamdexing--see last week's article). But regardless of the difficulty, one thing is certain: You must get into Yahoo! Yahoo! brings some sites more than 50% of their business. Yahoo! also offers an express submission service whereby you pay $199 for a response to your submission within seven days. It doesn't guarantee a listing, but at least you get to know quickly if you got listed, and if not, why. These links will help you get into Yahoo:
 
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

http://howto.yahoo.com/chapters/10/1.html

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/99/03-yahoo.html

 
WORTH IT?
This may seem like a lot of information and work, and you may not want to bother. That would be a mistake. Consider the value of high search engine rankings this way: The top search engines charge $52,000 and up per year for banner ads tied to keywords. It costs so much because the exposure is effective. If your website comes up in the top 10 or 30 results, it's as if you're buying $260,000 worth of advertising per keyword.
 

This information was compiled from a number of sources. The most prominent being WebPromote and SearchEngineWatch and Top 100.