SEO Manchester UK Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing - SEM Specialists
Main Search Engines and Directories
We introduce ourself as a leading SEO Company of Manchester UK.
For webmasters, the major
search engines are the most important places to be listed because
they can potentially generate so much traffic.
For searchers, well-known,
commercially-backed search engines generally mean more dependable
results. These search engines are more likely to be well maintained
and upgraded when necessary, keeping pace with the ever-growing Web.
As a rule of thumb, submit manually, submit to all the major search engines and monitor those engines to see if your site is indexed (listed with the search engine). Once it’s listed don’t resubmit. Submitting your site multiple times to a search engine does not improve your chances of positioning well. It’s essentially like telling you where the corner store is. At first it may be helpful but once you know where it is, being reminded frequently just gets annoying.
Major Search Engines And Their Add URL Pages
Please note: The percentage totals come to more than 100%.
This is due to people’s use of multiple search engines when they were unable to
find the information that they were looking for on the first engine. Data
accurate as of May 2006 based on the findings of the reputable ComScore Networks
report.
| Market | Search Engine | Add URL | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 49.1% | >Add URL | Easy and free. By far the most important of all the search engines to submit to. |
|
| 22.9% | Yahoo! | Add URL |
They have a few submission options. You will have to choose free or paid depending on your budget and what you hope to accomplish. |
| 10.6% | MSN | >Add URL | Similar to Google, this one is easy and free. While #3 on the list today MSN is sure to increase it’s percentage of marketshare over the next couple years making this engine critically important. watch for it’s integration into the upcoming OS (Longhorn) from Microsoft slated for launch in the fall of 2005. |
| 6.4% | AOL | AOL gets their main results from Google. | |
| 2.6% | Ask.com | Add URL |
You will need to be a member and note that there are fees for submissions. |
| 2.3% | My Way | MyWay get their results from Ask.com. | |
| 0.5% | iWon | iWon get their results from Ask.com. | |
| 0.5% | Dogpile.com | >Add URL | They get their listings through the Enhance Interactive PPC engine. This give a $25 bonus when you open an account of $50 or more. |
| 0.5% | Earthlink | Earthlink gets their results from Google. | |
| 0.4% | SBC Yellow Pages | Renamed AT&T Yellow Pages through acquisition this is just the yellow pages. |
Details
The search engines below are all excellent choices to
start with when searching for information.
Google
has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching
the Web. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive
coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It is highly
recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are
looking for.
Google provides the option to
find more than web pages, however. From the top of the search box on
the Google home page (Google OneBox), you can easily seek out
images, videos, maps (local search) and news from across the Web, or
you can perform product searching. The more link provides access
to blogs, books, froogle, groups and patents, etc.
Google is also known for the
wide range of features it offers, such as cached links that let you
resurrect dead pages or see older versions of recently changed
ones. It offers excellent spell checking, easy access to dictionary
definitions, integration of stock quotes, street maps, telephone
numbers and more. See Google’s help page for an
entire rundown on some of these features. The Google Toolbar is also very
popular due to its easy access to Google from the Internet Explorer
and Firefox browsers.
In addition to Google’s unpaid editorial results, the company
also operates its own advertising programs. The cost-per-click
AdWords program places ads on Google as well as some of Google’s
partners. Similarly, Google is also a provider of unpaid editorial
results to some other search engines.
Google was originally a
Stanford University project by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin
called BackRub. By 1998, the name had been changed, and the project
jumped off campus to become Google.
Yahoo
Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the
Web’s oldest directory, a place where human editors organize web
sites into categories. However, in October 2002, Yahoo made a giant
shift to crawler-based listings for its main results. These came
from Google until February 2004. Now, Yahoo uses its own search
technology.
In addition to excellent
search results, you can use the tabs above the Yahoo home page search box to
seek images, video, local and shopping search. Click for more, and
you´ll get answers, audio, directory, jobs and news. The Yahoo
Directory still survives. You’ll notice category links below some
of the site lists in response to a keyword search. When offered,
these will take you to a list of web sites that have been reviewed
and approved by a human editor.
It’s also possible to do a
pure search of just the human-compiled Yahoo Directory, which is how
the old or classic Yahoo used to work. To do this, search from the
Yahoo Directory home page, as
opposed to the regular Yahoo.com home page. Category links are
listed in the left column, providing top web site matches drawn from
all categories of the Yahoo Directory. Within the categories, you
will also find sponsored results to the right and below the natural
listings.
Sites pay a fee to be included
in the Yahoo Directory’s commercial listings, although they must
meet editor approval before being accepted. Non-commercial content
is accepted for free.
Like Google, Yahoo sells paid
placement advertising links that appear on its own site and are
distributed to others. These are sold through Yahoo Search Marketing
(formerly Overture).
Overture was originally called
GoTo until late 2001. Overture purchased
AllTheWeb in March 2003 and acquired
AltaVista in April 2003. Yahoo gained ownership of these search
engines from its subsequent purchase of Overture later that
year.
Technology from AltaVista and
AllTheWeb was combined with that of Inktomi to make the current
Yahoo crawler. Yahoo purchased
Inktomi in March 2003.
Microsoft Live
Search
http://www.live.com/
Microsoft Live (formerly MSN
Search) was originally powered by LookSmart, which gained top marks
for having its own team of editors that monitored the most popular
searches being performed to hand-pick sites believed to be the most
relevant.
Subsequently, MSN Search used
Yahoo listings to power its database for a while. Recently,
Microsoft started using its own crawler-based technology and changed
its name from MSN Search to Microsoft Live Search.
Getting Listed:
You don´t have to
submit your site to be indexed by the MSNBot crawler. Microsoft´s
Live Search Guidelines for Successful Indexing provides
technical and content guidelines, as well as a list of items and
techniques that are discouraged.
Ask.com
Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves)
initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as the natural language
search engine that lets you search by asking questions and
responding with the right answer.
In reality, technology wasn’t
what made Ask perform so well. Behind the scenes, the company at one
point had about 100 editors who monitored search logs. They then
went out onto the web and located what seemed to be the best sites
to match the most popular queries.
Today, Ask depends on
crawler-based technology to provide results to its users through
the power of
the Teoma algorithm known as ExpertRank
Getting Listed:
The Ask
crawler will
find pages by following links (HREF tags in HTML) from other pages,
so you don´t have to submit or register you site to be found. Ask´s
Webmaster
page answers most questions. Paid listings on Ask come from
Google AdWords, described above.
Others to Consider
The search engines below are good choices to consider when
searching the Web.
AOL
Search
http://search.aol.com/(external)
AOL Search provides users with editorial listings that come
Google’s crawler-based index. Indeed, the same search on Google and
AOL Search will come up with very similar matches. So, why would you
use AOL Search? Primarily because you are an AOL user. The
internal version of AOL Search provides links to content only
available within the AOL online service. In this way, you can search
AOL and the entire web at the same time. The external version
lacks these links. Why wouldn’t you use AOL Search? If you like
Google, many of Google’s features such as cached pages are not
offered by AOL Search.
The sites below are major in the sense that they
either still receive significant amounts of traffic or they’ve
earned a reputation in the past that still causes some people to
consider them to be important. For various reasons explained below,
they are not among our top search choices. However, certainly feel
free to try them. They could turn out to be top choices for you.
AltaVista
AltaVista opened in December
1995 and for several years was the Google of its day in terms of
providing relevant results and having a loyal group of users that
loved the service.
Sadly, an attempt to turn AltaVista into a portal site in 1998
saw the company lose track of the importance of search. Over time,
relevancy dropped, as did the freshness of AltaVista’s listings and
the crawler’s coverage of the web.
Today, AltaVista is once again
focused on search. Results come from Yahoo, and tabs above the
search box let you go beyond web search to find images, MP3/audio,
video, and news results. If you want a lighter-feel than Yahoo while
still getting Yahoo’s results, AltaVista is worth
considering.
AltaVista was originally owned
by Digital, and then taken over by Compaq with the purchase of
Digital in 1998. AltaVista was later spun off into a private
company, controlled by CMGI. Overture purchased
the search engine in April 2003, and it subsequently became part of
Yahoo with the purchase of Overture.
Lycos
Lycos is one of the oldest
search engines on the web, launched in 1994. It ceased crawling the
Web for its own listings in April 1999 and now provides access to
crawler-based results from Ask and paid results from
Google.
Netscape
Search
Owned by AOL Time Warner,
Netscape Search uses Google for its main listings. So why use
Netscape Search rather than Google? The main difference between
Netscape Search and Google is that Netscape Search will list some of
Netscape’s own content at the top of its results. Netscape also has
a completely different look and feel than Google. If you like either
of these reasons, then try Netscape Search. Otherwise, you’re
probably better off just searching at Google.
Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project
uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo,
it was launched in June 1998. AOL Time Warner-owned Netscape
acquired it in November 1998, and the company pledged that anyone
would be able to use information from the directory through an open
license arrangement.
While you can search at the Open Directory site itself, this is
not recommended. The site has no backup results that kick in
should there not be a match in the human-compiled database. In
addition, the ranking of sites during keyword searching is poor,
while alphabetical ordering is used when you choose to browse
categories by topic.
To scan the valuable
information compiled by the Open Directory, consider using the
version offered by Google, the Google Directory. Here,
keyword searching uses Google’s refined relevancy algorithms and
makes use of link analysis to better propel good pages from the
human database to the top. In addition, when viewing sites by
category, they will be listed in PageRank
order, which means the most popular sites based on link analysis
will be listed first.
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