Search
Engines FAQ
- What is a search engine?
- What's the difference between a search engine and a search
directory?
- How do I submit my site to the search engines and directories?
Basically, a search engine is a website that you may visit, enter a query,
and receive a list of websites related to your query.
From TechTarget.com:
"On the Internet, a search engine has three parts:
- A spider (also called a "crawler" or a "bot") that goes to every page
or representative pages on every Web site that wants to be searchable and
reads it, using hypertext links on each page to discover and read a site's
other pages.
- A program that creates a huge index (sometimes called a "catalog") from
the pages that have been read.
- A program that receives your search request, compares it to the entries
in the index, and returns results to you."
For more basic info on search engines please check out the Kansas City
Public Library's Introduction
to Search Engines.
The main difference between a search engine and a search directory is how
they acquire their indexes.
- A search engine uses programs to "crawl" through the web (hence the
term "crawler") and the results it provides to queries is provided from
it's findings.
- A search directory usually has human editors that sort through the multitudes
of URLs that are submitted. These people take your site and put it in an
appropriate category which can be browsed.
For more on this please read Search Engine Watch's How
Search Engines Work.
For information on how to generate traffic by submitting your site to the
search engines and directories please visit the
Search
Engine Exposure page.
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