Types of Search Engines

There are four major search engine types:

1. Crawler-Based (Traditional, Common) Search Engines: Crawler-based SEs, also referred to as spiders or Web crawlers, use special software to automatically and regularly visit websites to create and supplement their giant Web page repositories. This software is referred to as a "bot", "robot", "spider", or "crawler".

These programs run on the search engines. They browse pages that already exist in their repositories, and find our site by following links from those pages. Alternatively, after we have submitted pages to a search engine, these pages are queued for scanning by a spider; it finds our page by looking through the lists of pages pending review in this queue.

After a spider has found a page to scan, it retrieves this page via HTTP (like any ordinary Web surfer who types an URL into a browser's address field and presses "enter"). Just like any human visitor, the crawling software leaves a record on our server about its visit. Therefore, it's possible to know from our server log when a search engine has dropped in on our online estate.

Our Web server returns the HTML source code of our page to the spider. The spider then reads it (this process is referred to as "crawling" or "spidering") and this is where the difference begins between a human visitor and crawling software.
A human visitor can appreciate the quality graphics and impressive Flash animation we have loaded onto our page but a spider won't. But now google search engine can crowl these, this is the new update of google.

A human visitor does not normally read the META tags, a spider can. Only seasoned users might be curious enough to read the code of the page when seeking additional information about the Web page.

A human visitor will first notice the largest and most attractive text on the page. A spider, on the other hand, will give more value to text that's closest to the beginning and end of the page, and the text wrapped in links.

Perhaps, we have spent a fortune creating a killer website designed to immediately captivate our visitors and gain their admiration. We have even embedded lots of quality Flash animation and JavaScript tricks. Yet, a search engine spider is a robot which only sees that there are some images on the page and some code embedded into the "script" tag that it is instructed to skip. These design elements are additional obstacles on its way to our content. What's the result? The spider ranks our page low, no one finds it on the search engine, and no one is able to appreciate the design.

After reading our pages, it will compress that pages in a way that is convenient to store in a giant repository of Web pages called a search engine index.

Search Engine Index: The data are stored in the search engine index the way that makes it possible to quickly determine whether this page is relevant to a particular query and to pull it out for inclusion in the result page shown in response to the query. The process of placing our page in the index is referred to as "indexing".

2. Human-edited directories: The pages that are stored in their repository are added solely through manual submission. The directories, for the most part, require manual submission and use certain mechanisms (particularly, CAPTCHA images) to prevent pages from being submitted automatically. After completing the submission procedure, our URL will be queued for review by an editor, who is, luckily, a human.

When directory editors visit and read our site, the only decision they make is to accept or reject the page. Most directories do not have their own ranking mechanism - they use various obvious factors to sort URLs, such as alphabetic sequence or Google Page Rank. It is very important to submit a relevant and precise description to the directory editor, as well as take other parts of this manual submission seriously.

Spider-based engines often use directories as a source of new pages to crawl. While a crawler-based engine would visit our site regularly and detect any change we make to our pages but in a directory, result listings are influenced by humans. We enter a short description of our website, when searching, only these descriptions are scanned for matches, so website changes do not affect the result listing at all. The best-known and most important directories are Yahoo and DMOZ.

3. Hybrid Engines: Some engines also have an integrated directory linking to them. They contain websites which have already been discussed or evaluated. When sending a search query to a hybrid engine, the sites already evaluated are usually not scanned for matches; the user has to explicitly select them. Whether a site is added to an engine's directory generally depends on a mixture of luck and content quality. Sometimes you may "apply" for a discussion of our website, but there's no guarantee that it will be done.

Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and Google (www.google.com), although mentioned here as examples of a directory and crawler respectively, are in fact hybrid engines, as are nowadays most major search machines. As a rule, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listing over another.

For example: Yahoo is more likely to present human-powered listings, while Google prefers its crawled listings.

4. Meta Search Engines: Another approach to searching the vast Internet is the use of a multi-engine search, or meta-search engine that combines results from a number of search engines at the same time and lays them out in a formatted result page. A common or natural language request is translated to multiple search engines, each directed to find the information the searcher requested. The search engine's responses thus obtained are gathered into a single result list. This search type allows the user to cover a great deal of material in a very efficient way, retaining some tolerance for imprecise search questions or keywords.

Examples: MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) and DogPile (http://www.dogpile.com). MetaCrawler refers our search to seven of the most popular search engines (including AltaVista and Lycos), then compiles and ranks the results.

Paid Inclusion Engines: With these engines we have no way other than to pay a recurring or one-time fee to keep our site either listed, re-spidered, or top-ranked for keywords of our choice. There are very few search engines that solely focus on paid listings, most search engines offer a paid listing option as a part of their indexing and ranking system. Yahoo and Google are the largest paid listing providers, and Live Search (formerly MSN) also sells paid placement listings.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing: This is a part of business marketing efforts that is aimed at increasing traffic (the number of visitors) to the website from the search engines. Additionally, it addresses conversion (the percent of visitors who become buyers).

Search Engine Visibility: This is the position of our site in search engine results for certain keywords that people type in the search box to obtain these results. Together with the power and size of our banner / ad network, our affiliations and partnerships, SE visibility comprises a broader concept - Web visibility (online visibility).

Organic Search Engine Rankings: Organic rankings are results that we get for free. That is, we create Web copy and publish it, then after a certain period of time a search engine robot finds it (either by itself or as a result of our submission). Finally, the robot reads our content and puts our site into its index. Now our site will be found by this search engine when people query for some words contained within our pages. This way to get position in search engines is known as “Organic Search Engine Ranking”.

Paid Listing: Pay a search engine and it guarantees the inclusion of our site in the index. Many search engines offer advanced pay-for-performance programs, such as showing our site / ad in the search results for keywords of our choice. These are the so-called "sponsored" results. Most commonly, we will have to pay a specified rate for each visitor that comes to our site from this search engine that clicks on these ads.

The following are the main goals of Search Engine Marketing:

1. Improve Web visibility and get as much traffic as possible.

2. Improve traffic quality: get high rankings for exactly those keywords that bring visitors with the best conversion rate.

3. Decrease expenditures by switching off advertising for underperforming keywords.

Search Engines Marketing Methods:

Search Engine Optimization: SEO is about changing the HTML code of our pages and the structure of our site in such a way that when an SE robot reads the site, it can understand that the pages have valuable content related to our keywords, and then rank them high. SEO also tells about ways to increase our link popularity - the number of links from other high-ranked pages to our site. This is important because most search engines consider our link popularity a vital ranking factor.

Bid Management (PPC): This is about controlling bids, the amount of money we spend maintaining our visibility in the sponsored listings. Usually we try to detect the best converting keywords and keyword groups, in order to increase bids on them; as well as decrease or take off bids on keywords that don't break even. Attention also should be paid to leveraging our paid and organic listings, so to spend less on paid advertising campaigns when we get enough traffic from natural results, and invest in paid advertising when an algorithm changes or strong competitors force we out from the top positions in the organic listings.

Web Analytics: This is about getting, analyzing and using the information about our visitors, their details, their behavior on our site, the ways they have found our site, the efficiency of referrers and advertising, conversion rates, and, together with all that, E-Commerce information.

Some Things To Know before Getting Started with Online Marketing

Online marketing deals with websites and web pages, search engines, email and the Internet as the base of the World Wide Web. All of these areas are used to advertise and sell goods and services.

World Wide Web: "www" or simply the web is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents (Web Pages) reside on web servers that runs over the Internet.

Web Servers (Host): These are special computers that receive requests for Web pages and can "serve" them to the requesting side. Each server can hold one or many websites.

IP Address: Each Web server (host) has its unique global address used to find it over the Internet. This address is called an "IP address". A typical IP address looks like four numbers separated by dots.

For Example: 63.146.123.0 is the address of the server where google.com is situated.

Website: A website (Web site) is a collection of Web pages, typically bound to a particular domain name or sub-domain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. A website is identified uniquely by its domain name, e.g. www.google.com. Domain names are translated into IP addresses by the global DNS (domain name system).

Domain Name system: When we type www.google.com in our browser, the latter first sends a DNS request, and receives the IP address of the server where www.google.com is hosted. The browser then connects to that server directly and asks for Google’s home page.

Web Page: Each website is composed of many Web pages. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML, that is always accessible via HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), a protocol that transfers information from the website's server to display in the user's Web browser.

User Agent: With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. A client program called a "user agent" retrieves information resources, such as Web pages and other computer files, from Web servers using their URLs.

Web Browser: Most commonly, the user agent is a kind of Web browser like Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Opera, Netscape or the program that we use to view this lesson. It retrieves content from remote Web servers and displays it on our computer. We can then follow hyperlinks in each Web page to other World Wide Web resources, whose location (including their domain name) is embedded in the hyperlinks. The act of following hyperlinks from one website to another is referred to as "browsing" or sometimes as "surfing" the Web.

Search Engine: Search Engine is a program where we search the specific keywords and it retrieves the web pages on the SERP, related to that specific keyword, from where that keyword is found. There are 3 top search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN (Windows Live Search).

These search engines are most preferred by Web surfers and every site owner strives to get included in their databases. If people can find our website through search engines, this search engine creates an invaluable source of traffic for we, which translates into income if we sell goods or services.

Electronic Mail (Email): This is a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.

To get latest information about the search engine marketing follow the SEO Expert India

Introduction into Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing: It means that the use of the Internet to advertise and sell goods and services. It includes Banner and Text Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Interactive Advertising, Affiliate Marketing and Search Engine Marketing (including Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click Advertising).

Search Engine Marketing: SEM is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

Social Media Marketing: It is devoted to the numerous social media channels on the Web. Blogs and micro-blogging services, social networks, social news sites, media sharing sites, wikis etc., offer a valuable opportunity to moderate and share content. Social media channels are a perfect place to interact with existing or potential consumers; a good viral marketing campaign within the online community creates buzz around your brand and may result in new inbound links to your site appearing on the Web.

Email marketing: It is an independent branch which has to be dealt with separately and does not have much in common with SEM.

Banner networks: It relate to SEM as long as they touch upon your link popularity (which is a component of SEM).

Affiliate Marketing: It is a popular method for promoting web businesses when with few marketing dollars marketers can establish a presence and earn a profit recruiting affiliates. Such partner networks can grow with your company business projects and add its profit to your marketing budget.

Web Analytics: It is an essential measure for continually improving web business performance, advertising campaigns, organic search engine results, ranking positions and others. Generally, Web Analytics deals with the traffic already generated at the previous stages. Its primary goal is to improve traffic quality and enhance conversion.