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About SEO

How Do Search Engines Work?

The internet is a vast universe of information contained in billions of websites. Search engines help people find what they are looking for on the internet. Major search engines have huge databases of web sites that they have indexed. Search engines look through these databases of indexed websites for the text that the user types into them. The major search engines send out spiders or robots that follow links from web sites and index all web pages that they find. Search engines have their own formulas or algorithms for indexing pages. Some search engines may index the whole site while others may only index the main page. Different search engine algorithms can give different weights to the same factors. The different weight that is given to each factor influences the particular search engine's results. Search engines use a combination of different factors and weights to formulate their own particular algorithm for ranking web pages. For example, some sites may use link popularity as the most important criterion, while others may use Meta tags.

Directories are completely different than search engines. In directories, people review websites that are submitted and they index the links. Directories focus on categorizing websites accurately during submission. Because websites that are submitted to directories are required to meet strict guidelines, their indexes are smaller and cleaner. Some directories require a payment for inclusion. Examples of directories are the Yahoo directory and LookSmart.

Hybrid search engines are a combination of a search engine and a directory, to provide relevant and complete search results. Most of the top search engines are hybrid.

Website rankings are not based on luck. Websites that rank high in search engines have invested in search engine optimization techniques to achieve their search engine rankings. Your business can do the same.

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