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Whether you own a web site, or you're a webmaster or just a casual web surfer, the search engines are more than likely a mystery to you except you may not be aware of it!

This article will attempt to shed enough light on the truth about search engines to help you make wiser choices on how to search and how to properly position your web site so it can be found.

First, let me just give you the facts, and then I'll give you my advice based on those facts!

For starters, the number of publicly indexable web sites is around 320 million (according to a survey conducted by Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles at the NEC Research Institute, April 1998) with thousands more being added each and everyday. Now of the major six engines, only between 3 percent (Web Crawler) and 34 percent (HotBot) of the entire Web is indexed on any one engine. Did you noticed that I did not mention Yahoo? That's because Yahoo is not a search engine, it is a directory. Search engines use robots called "spiders" to index and sort their pages. Directories are manually reviewed and not all submissions are indexed. In fact Yahoo's database contains less than 1% of all web sites, but they are considered by most to be the creme of the crop. Also, Yahoo receives the most unique visitors of all engines and directories, and twice as much as number 2, Excite with around 15.4 million visitors per month. Then Infoseek, Lycos, HotBot, AltaVista and Web Crawler. Those are the major and most important ones to be listed on. There are many minor search engines and directories totaling somewhere around 500 to 600. A list of the most popular are listed complete with links to their submission pages.

Now for site owners and web masters, are your web pages optimized for keyword relevancy? If the terminology is foreign to you then it is a safe bet to say that your pages are not! On the other hand, if your pages are extremely keyword relevant, then they may only rank high on just one or two of the major engines. This can be very frustrating to the unlearned web master or site owner and many false or misleading promises have been made concerning information on how to achieve a top ranking. As with all purchases, buyer beware! With a little research one can save a ton of time, frustration and money, when it comes to designing and promoting your website to the search engines.

So now, are you ready for some sound advice? Unless time or money is no object for you, I suggest a little research before you spend a dime. First, if you are going to choose a designer, ask for references, and check with 3 or 4 and make sure that they received all that they were promised, such as a functional site as well as one designed to rank high on a particular search engine or two. Look at the site and check their rankings on the search engine. If you can not find a designer that meets with your approval, then I would suggest the aid of a search engine placement consultant and get the ground work laid out so that you have the blueprints for your designer (which will rarely be one in the same) to carefully follow as they design your site. This is just my opinion, but if everyone did this then the search engines would all be returning many, many more relevant search results. But alas, that isn't the case nor may it ever be!

Now for a quick word about searching. Everyone has there favorite search engines, but if you are not finding what you're looking for may I suggest, Infoseek or HotBot. Start with at least a 3 word search phrase. If you are looking for ice cream cone, entering it as such will result in 1,499,033 pages on Infoseek and 5,306 on HotBot! Entering +ice +cream +cone results 562 on Infoseek and 5,306 on HotBot! Entering +ice +cream +cone -vanilla results 450 on Infoseek and 4,029 on HotBot! But entering +title:+ice +cream +cone -vanilla results 118 on Infoseek and 693 on HotBot! Then you can also select the "Search within these results" any where along the line to narrow your search to the fewest pages possible.

In conclusion, I know that I may have left you with more questions than answers, but to accurately address all the issues, I'd need to write a book and probably every other month as things that work today may not, in a month or two. Therefore, I would like to invite your questions and I will do my best to answer them or at least lead you to where the answers can be found. Since I do not have the time to answer individual emails, the next best thing is to subscribe to my mailing list to ask your questions and or receive answers to questions you may not have yet considered.

Sharon Greenwood
Women Owned Business Directory
Women Helping Women Succeed In Business