Search Engines – What They Are And How They Work
Posted by Derek Robson on Tuesday, October 5, 2010 Under: Websites, domains, SEO
The main purpose of search engines is the indexing of thousands and millions of web pages. Once you look for a word or a phrase, the search engine scans automatically the entire database, where it has the stored all indexed pages and it returns to you, a list containing the most relevant results for that search.
The only criteria the number of pages found and their relevance depend on, are the capabilities of the used search engine.
Search engines first appeared in the early 90’s when Alan Emtage, a student at the McGill University in Montreal, created the first search engine like tool. It was called Archie. Its purpose was to search through the information available on all FTP servers.
The files on these servers were available to anyone, but one couldn’t access them, unless you knew the exact address of the server and of the file. Archie looked through this database and gathered lists of files for each server. It was used by people to match phrases and characters, in order to take them to the server address, where the file was stored.
Archie is now an old, redundant method, but its creation was the first step in the search engine rally that is going on now. As the public grew more and more aware of the existence of the internet, the need for a better search tool became apparent.
So, first there were some software robots, using the concept of spidering to index the web, following links from one site to the other and saving the text from all visited websites in a database.
Between 1994 and 1995 three important search engines appeared: Lycos, WebCrawler and AltaVista. At about the same time Yahoo! appeared but Yahoo! is not a search engine. Yes, it has a search engine function, but Yahoo is really a director of data and articles, providing different services, such as email and hosting.
Recently Yahoo has signed contracts with other search engines, like Google, for both of them to provide more search results.
Today search engines are in a continuous competition. There are thousands of search engines, but just a few big names. This small group of top search engines, is responsible for more than 90% of all online searches.
But, the question arises: if search engines are free and they can be used by everyone, then what keeps them going, financially? The answer to that question is very simple: advertising and traffic. The more visits they have, the more traffic, then the more money they can make by providing promotional advertising space.
Search engines are constantly competing to develop the best formulas and algorithms, to evaluate the web pages, accordingly to the keywords provided.
If someone is looking for a top position in search engines, then he has to be sure that his site is projected in such a way that search engines would find it easily, and being relevant for the keywords and phrases the owner wants it to be found by.
Find out how to get free Google ads. Get this system here: http://www.linkbrander.com/lb/7424
Derek Robson has been a successful Internet marketer since 2003. He has a vision of empowering others, particularly fellow South Africans and other non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success on the internet, by finding solutions to the many obstacles facing them. He is a syndicated article writer. He and his wife Sally, have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. For informative articles on making money, setting up a simple business that actually makes money, Internet marketing, South African online business, list building, affiliate marketing, article marketing, blogging, seo, the law of attraction, rugby and other general topics, such as gardening and fitness, visit Derek and Sally at their blog, part of http://dersalsites.com/
The only criteria the number of pages found and their relevance depend on, are the capabilities of the used search engine.
Search engines first appeared in the early 90’s when Alan Emtage, a student at the McGill University in Montreal, created the first search engine like tool. It was called Archie. Its purpose was to search through the information available on all FTP servers.
The files on these servers were available to anyone, but one couldn’t access them, unless you knew the exact address of the server and of the file. Archie looked through this database and gathered lists of files for each server. It was used by people to match phrases and characters, in order to take them to the server address, where the file was stored.
Archie is now an old, redundant method, but its creation was the first step in the search engine rally that is going on now. As the public grew more and more aware of the existence of the internet, the need for a better search tool became apparent.
So, first there were some software robots, using the concept of spidering to index the web, following links from one site to the other and saving the text from all visited websites in a database.
Between 1994 and 1995 three important search engines appeared: Lycos, WebCrawler and AltaVista. At about the same time Yahoo! appeared but Yahoo! is not a search engine. Yes, it has a search engine function, but Yahoo is really a director of data and articles, providing different services, such as email and hosting.
Recently Yahoo has signed contracts with other search engines, like Google, for both of them to provide more search results.
Today search engines are in a continuous competition. There are thousands of search engines, but just a few big names. This small group of top search engines, is responsible for more than 90% of all online searches.
But, the question arises: if search engines are free and they can be used by everyone, then what keeps them going, financially? The answer to that question is very simple: advertising and traffic. The more visits they have, the more traffic, then the more money they can make by providing promotional advertising space.
Search engines are constantly competing to develop the best formulas and algorithms, to evaluate the web pages, accordingly to the keywords provided.
If someone is looking for a top position in search engines, then he has to be sure that his site is projected in such a way that search engines would find it easily, and being relevant for the keywords and phrases the owner wants it to be found by.
Find out how to get free Google ads. Get this system here: http://www.linkbrander.com/lb/7424
Derek Robson has been a successful Internet marketer since 2003. He has a vision of empowering others, particularly fellow South Africans and other non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success on the internet, by finding solutions to the many obstacles facing them. He is a syndicated article writer. He and his wife Sally, have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. For informative articles on making money, setting up a simple business that actually makes money, Internet marketing, South African online business, list building, affiliate marketing, article marketing, blogging, seo, the law of attraction, rugby and other general topics, such as gardening and fitness, visit Derek and Sally at their blog, part of http://dersalsites.com/
Tags: seo search engines search engine optimization google ads ppc
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