What is a search engine?

Search Engines and Directories

Once you build a Web site you must help people to find it. The internet is like a library, but the books are in no order and someone's turned the light off. How can you find what you want?

This is where search engines come in. They catalogue the library and deliver relevant topics when asked. There are over 6 billion pages on the Web. That's SIX BILLION - or one for nearly every person on the planet today.

Search engines and directories are the means that people use to find what they're looking for. They scour their index for sites that mention the keywords (the topics) that have been typed in, and display the results.

Types of Search Engine

There are two different types of Search Engine. To put it simply, they are Directories (like Yahoo) and Search Engines like AltaVista or Google.

Directories

The directories are compiled by humans, the page is generally much more confusing and split their subjects into categories. Search engines 'crawl' the web and index what they find.

In either case, you need to tell it where to find your site in the first place - for Search Engines and directories the process is called Submission but is somewhat different.

A submission to a search engine prompts a robot (spider) to visit the site and take back details about the site for the engine to index
With a directory, submission generally prompts a visit from a human who then decides if, where and when to include the site in the directory: in either case, submission is no guarantee of acceptance or inclusion.