IMAG Studios Search Engine Optimization > Search Engine

Search Engines

Today it's difficult to imagine a day on the Internet without search engines. From the Internets humble beginnings early search is very unlike what we experience today.

In the early day web and internet directories reigned supreme, but it was only a matter of time until search engines became a force helping people find relevant websites all over the world.

Technically speaking a search engine can be used to describe any mechanism by which a user (human or computer program) is able to parse information from a database. That database might be small and relate to the internal search of a website or even a customer datbase.

Or it may be massive, and require thousands of computer systems such as Google or Yahoo which index webpages all over the internet.

How Search Engines Work

Early google search engine diagram

Public Search Engines can be extremely complex in their operations. The primary gateway to a search engine begins with the search engine robot, also known as a crawler or spider.
From there the information found on the webpage is processed and parsed through the system.

Being crawled by a search engine alone is no guarantee that your website will be included in the public search results, just as being included in the public results does not guarantee your website will have a search rank anywhere near the top of the engine where most people would be able to see it.

To be sure search engines are the force in generating traffic to websites today. Few other methods can generate a long term stream of traffic, and any business or website owner who takes the internet seriously must strive to gain high search rank on search engines through various Internet Marketing tactics such as SEO Search Engine Optimization.

Here is a brief list of search engines to consider:

Google Search Engine (Google Search Engine Optimization Techniques)
MSN Live Search Engine (MSN Live Search Engine Optimization Techniques)
Yahoo Search Engine (Yahoo Search Engine Optimization Tactics)

There are literally thousands of search engines on the Internet. The major search engines listed above cover nearly every topic, they are considered "General Search Engines"
There are also niche specific search engines which cover only specific topics.

List of Lesser General Search Engines:

Altavista Search Engine
Excite Search Engine
Big Search Momma Search Engine
Ask Search Engine

List of Business Search Engine Examples

Business.com Search Engine
Lexis Nexis Search Engine

List of Job Search Engine Examples

CareerBuild Search Engine
HotJobs Search Engine

List of Medical Search Engine Examples

WebMD Search Engine
PubMed Search Engine

There are a countless number of search engines online targeting various genres. Specific engines such as Hotjobs or CareerBuilder are internal search engines which do not actively crawl the internet or look for outside content. Others such as business.com however will post outside content for it's users.

Generally speaking many of the minor search engines will index upi just by locating you on major search engines. This is another reason why search engine submission services are a scam. It's always best to use a search engine optimization firm to run a detailed optimization and internet marketing campaign for your business website.