Search Engines

Search Engines

SEW identifies Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com as the top search engines on the Internet. Ask.com may be more familiar to users as AskJeeves.com; the company simplified its name in 2006. All three of these leaders began with proprietary methods and technologies. Google's search engine is the most widely used by others under license. Yahoo, which began by using human indexers, began to shift its data acquisition processes to crawlers in October 2002 after a period of using Google technology. Ask.com's basic search engine was developed by Teoma, a company that it owns, but Ask also developed an expert-based indexing technique that, in the past, enabled it to serve more "human language" queries.

In a second tier SEW lists AllTheWeb.com (powered by Yahoo), AOL Search (powered by Google), and HotBot (using Google, Yahoo, and Teoma—currently merged with Ask).

Under a category SEW calls "Other Choices," it lists AltaVista (using Yahoo), Gigablast (a tiny engine with propriety technology), LookSmart (compiled by people), Lycos (using HotBot and others), MSN (Microsoft's search engine, developing proprietary methods), Netscape (using Google), and Open Directory (using Google).

As is evident from this listing, the number of proprietary technologies widely used is much smaller than the search engines on offer—many of them on the Web using Google and Yahoo. But each of the search engines has its special features and add-ons.

Metacrawlers

Chris Sherman, writing for Search Engine Watch, defined this category as follows: "Unlike search engines, metacrawlers don't crawl the Web themselves to build listings. Instead, they allow searches to be sent to several search engines all at once. The results are then blended together onto one page." Thus metalcrawlers, also called metasearch engines, have carried the basic strategies of search engine companies a step further: they simply use search engines, being an intermediate between others. Sherman listed 21 such metacrawlers operating in 2005. Those that had won SEW awards included Dogpile, Vivisimo, Kartoo, Mamma, and Surfwax.

GETTING VISIBILITY

From the viewpoint of the small business hoping that its Web site is found as often as possible by searchers on the Web (traffic equals sales, after all), the chief issue regarding search engines is how to be found by them and—more importantly—how to be ranked high enough actually to be seen at all. Being 82nd in a list of 200 hits is almost equivalent to invisibility. On a typical Google search result, the entry will be on the 9th page—and rare the user who will examine nine pages of a search.

Creating, promoting, and structuring a company's site for maximum visibility is a very complex subject and will require substantial homework or expert advice. A good beginning point is SEW's Web page entitled "Search Engine Submission Tips." It provides a systematic tutorial on the major aspects, including registering the site with search engines, which may be free or may have to be paid for, using advertising services such as Google's Adwords program, and internally structuring the Web site to present the most favorable features to Web crawlers. Rankings go up when a site offers multiple links to other sites—and also when many other sites point to one's own. Self-contained sites (one might say solitary or self-centered sites) tend to be ranked low. Search engines inherently favoring a communal spirit of interconnectedness—the very essence of the Internet. The small business intent on maximizing its exposure should engage an experienced Web page design firm. Such organizations typically have the know-how to structure the Web page appropriately and also to guide the owner on additional steps to take.

FRUSTRATIONS AND PLEASURES

A discussion of search engines would be incomplete without pointing to the frustrations and pleasures of using such services. Thus, for instance, it may be possible to find 700-some-odd pages on an ancient Chinese emperor—but frustrating sometimes when a specific phrase is sought, usually entered into the search engine between quotes, and getting the standard "Your search—'X—did not match any documents." At the same time, it is often quite easy, remembering just a little snatch of a song's lyrics, to enter that truncated phrase and to get pages and pages of hits with the lyrics—and more: the music itself, played on the sound system to bring back the tune. This experience—whether in a serious business context or just for fun—is exhilarating. And things are moving so rapidly that by the time this text is out in print or visible on the Internet it may well be possible that search engines will provide genuinely helpful suggestions when the "did not match" message appears. Currently the advice is next to useless. But just wait a while.

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