Types of Search Engines

Indexes - There are three main types of search engines, Indexes, Directories, and Pay for View. Indexes are the most typical kind of search engine and most of this newsletter has been focused on placement within indexes. Indexing search engines use software to scour the web for links and content and "index" all of the found words and their associated web locations, assigning them rankings according to relevancy. They are very automated and simply input data into their vast databases and use the relevancy rules they create to determine how to list results from search queries. "Google," and "AltaVista," are examples of search engine indexes.

Directories - There are also some "search engines" that are not actually search engines at all. In fact, one of the most popular search engines, "Yahoo!" started out as a directory. A directory does not automatically add links to a database. Instead it relies on human editors to look at sites and determine where they belong in the directory and place links to the sites in their database. In the past, when using Yahoo! to search the web, you actually only searched the various categories, sub categories and sites that Yahoo! had determined to be appropriate for cataloging. While today's directories like dmoz.org as still helpful, they are most helpful when searching within niche interests.

Pay for view - Some search engines require companies to pay for each visitor that they send to their site, allowing them to purchase the top placement for a specific keyword. For example, a company might bid 25 cents per click to appear at the top of the results listing for the keyword "cars." However, if someone else comes along and bids 26 cents per click for the same keyword, then they will be listed above the first company. We haven't ever used these search engines for our clients, but they can drive qualified traffic to a site. Often these search engines can generate excellent search results because they filter out inappropriate sites by requiring payment for placement. Overture.com (now part of Yahoo!) was an example of a pay for view site. A search on the site, listed only companies that paid to be there - they even displayed the amount of money that companies were paying to have you click through to their site. Today, sponsored links like Google AdWords have replaced most pay for view sites.

If you would like more information about how search engines work we highly recommend the site www.searchenginewatch.com. There is a ton of free information on this site and even more detailed information if you subscribe.

The NewfangledCMS is a database driven system with "search engine friendly" URLs. In addition to this we have set up Meta tabs in each page's article definition to allow you to easily add and maintain Meta keywords and description on each site page. This helps to keep your keywords targeted and specific to your content and improve your listings and position in search engines. We also have advanced search engine optimization tools and tracking reports for the NewfangledCMS.