Search Engine Optimization

Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:59:00 +0000

Official Google Blog: Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:15:00 +0000

Based on eye-tracking studies, Google tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query.

The heatmap above shows the activity of 34 usability study participants scanning a typical Google results page. The darker the pattern, the more time they spent looking at that part of the page. This pattern suggests that the order in which Google returned the results was successful; most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page.

What Google’s Matt Cutts Sees In 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:07:00 +0000

Google Search Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:41:00 +0000

A clip from DL.TV on search tips for Google. Patrick Norton interviews Matt Cutts of Google.

Latent Semantic Indexing

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:09:00 +0000

Google’s new techniques of analyzing web pages have created a huge fizz in the web circle. Yes, the latent semantic indexing (LSI) technique has greatly changed the course of web network.

When you search for any information in the search engines sometimes you might not get the desired result, which you expect. Search engine algorithms are changing and there is consistent effort to improve the relevancy of the results.

So before I dig deep into this topic let us understand what does semantic means exactly

In simple words, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is the means by which the search engines attempt to associate various terms with a concept in a web page. In fact, the latent semantic analysis helps the search engines to discover everything about a web page. For instance, the words ‘web design’ and ‘web graphic design’ are associated with ‘ website design’. Here, the search engines can easily understand the semantic relationship among the words and get an idea that the web page is about web design.

Well understanding search engine algorithms and how they rank a site for a particular search term in the SERPs requires some good understanding of search engine functionalities.

In the past, SEO experts were obsessed with stuffing too many keywords in a web page to ensure high page ranking. A keyword or key phrase was repeated many times in a web page. This black hat SEO technique pushed up the ranking of many websites.

In order to overcome spamming on the web, Google adopted the LSI technique to its indexing algorithm. The latest latent semantic indexing has proved to be a very fruitful way to display accurate search results. Usually, the search engines faced difficulty in displaying results according to the queries of the visitors. Search engines do not retrieve information if the searched terms are missing from the query. Use of synonyms in queries also creates confusion to the search engines to display accurate number of results. Here, the LSI method helps the search engines to think like a human and determine the meaning of the words in a web page.

Now, the search engines work intelligently with the aid of LSI system. The web robots can easily decipher co-occurrence of words and phrases, associate and relate the meaning of it in a web page.The LSI method helps the search engines to understand the semantic relationship between the words and this would be the future of search engines.

How To Optimize Video Based Website

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:57:00 +0000

Now days videos are gaining popularity as we find in most of the sites that contain some video to demonstrate their products or simply put up to add some fun for the visitors.

With millions of people now days on Google & YouTube are all getting their video fixed. So its essential to get your video based website properly optimize so that it reaches your targeted audience.

Optimizing a video based website is not that difficult only there are certain points that need to be taken care off while optimizing the website.

1. For every website meta tags are the most important part of a webpage (With Title being the most important) and including the most relevant and targeted keyword in the meta tags is essential for a site to do well in the search engines so use the most relevant and targeted keyword in the title, description and write a short heading tag specially a H1 incorporating your targeted keyword in it. Proper keyword placement in the file name as well as in the URL helps search engine spiders to crawl your site properly and eventually boosting your SERPs and hence drives more traffic to your site.

E.g. - If your video is all about car racing then use a filename like: “carracingvideos.mov” instead of “race01.mov”.

2. Offer your audio and video content in as many formats as possible and also mention the downloading time primarily based on the connection speed.

3. Keep your web page content as unique as possible because search engines like fresh content and so do the visitors. Video with good quality audio content is always interactive. Give proper text to the video and audio content with the due purpose that it is readable to the search engines and easily comprehensible to the different target audiences.

4. Creating new web pages for each video helps to make your search optimization efforts even more effective.

5. Use RSS feeds to publicize the multimedia files: RSS feeds are very much useful as they contribute a great deal in popularizing websites. It is, therefore, very important to use appropriate RSS feeds in order to publicize multimedia files.

6. Multimedia files and web videos Meta data properties must be reviewed from time to time. Metadata information for a video file can be controlled at the time the video is created, saved or encoded.

7. Add a video sitemap in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN as it really help your site get indexed fast.

8. Submit web videos in online video sharing sites: it is essential that the web videos must be submitted in all video sharing sites such as YouTube, Google Video etc.

9. Creating blogs for your website and promoting your videos through blogs is a good way of promoting your video based website.

10. Add text paragraphs with a description, video transcription, or combination to tell both human visitors and search engines more about the video on the page. At the end of each video put a incentive such as “Send To A Friend” to pass it on to others. Allow users to comment, rate and provide the embed code for the video.

How To Optimize Flash For Search Engines?

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 10:22:00 +0000

Optimizing Flash websites is still a big challenge for the SEOs. Flash animation is a great way to present complex content because it allows the designer to put more content in a limited space, without changing the page design. For technology, art and entertainment sites Flash is an ideal way to present a slide show or movie explaining a complex product. But a site build entirely with Flash suffers a great disadvantage as search engines still prefer html content.

Some Tips To Optimize A Flash Site:-

1. One of the best methods to optimize your Flash pages is to use the noembed tag, It's between the noembed and noembed tags where you should put the HML version of whatever Flash you’re using on that page. Not only does this give the search engine something to read, but it also provides an alternative to those users who don’t have Flash installed in their browsers.

2. Another method is to use div with search-engine-accessible, primary content, and a Javascript function called SWFObject() to detect when browsers are capable of viewing Flash. SWFObject is a small Javascript file used for embedding Adobe Flash content.

3. If a site has been built entirely with Flash [although most SEO practitioners strongly advise against this]. Idea is to create distinct HTML pages to represent each Flash page and install the Flash movie on each and every one of the HTML pages. When a visitor requests the page, they'll see Flash otherwise, a non-Flash visitor, such as a search engine, will be able to spider the site.

4. Use the Flash Search Engine SDK tool called swf2html. It will extract the text from the Flash file and transfer it into a simple HTML document, so you don't have to do it manually. You will thus be able to see what the search engine spiders see.

Google has always been the first to index different types of content: PDF files, .doc files, etc. Google has also made amazing inroads in being able to index dynamic content. If you enter your search term in Google, and along with that search term, use the filetype operator and restrict your search to the file extension “.swf”. This will search for your search term only in Macromedia Flash files. You should see [FLASH] just before each listing in the results page that is a Flash document.

Few Suggestions While Using Flash In A Website:-

1. Avoid creating all-Flash-sites. They lack page structure, content and internal linking, while page titles cannot be well organized.

2. Create unique and descriptive page titles and meta descriptions for each page.

3. Check that your Flash links point to HTML pages and not to other Flash pages.

4. Make sure you use a clean design for your pages and your site.

5. Allow web users to choose if they want to skip or turn off animations and sounds.

6. Make sure your site is accessible for a variety of browsers.

7. Check that your code is valid and that it complies with standards.

8. Make sure that your Flash web site functions correctly in Internet Explorer and is accessible for a variety of browsers.

What are Breadcrumb Links?

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 07:14:00 +0000

Breadcrumb links, also known as contextual links are navigational links that appear below the web page header.They provide a textual representation of a site's structure, usually a vertical hierarchy of a site.

For example

Home > Category > Subcategory > Product

On a larger site, the breadcrumb format might be the following:

Home > Category > Subcategory > New Products > Products

On a smaller site, breadcrumb links might have a very simple format:

Home > Category > Product

Usefulness of breadcrumb links and Search Engine Optimization:-

Primary Text :-

All search engines index primary text and use it to determine relevancy.Breadcrumb links are primary text. Therefore, they are used to determine keyword relevancy.If breadcrumb links are formatted using important keyword phrases, these keyword phrases will be indexed and "counted" toward relevancy by the major search engines.

Keyword Focus:-

Breadcrumb links are an easy way to make a page appear more focused on targeted keyword phrases, particularly on graphics-intensive pages. The reality is that many times, a graphics-intensive page often has a higher ROI than a text-intensive page.

Keyword Prominence:-

Breadcrumb links are typically placed high up on a page, and search engines give importance to keywords placed high up in the webpage.

What is robots.txt ?

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 07:58:00 +0000

robots.txt is a text file that is present in the root directory of a website and is used to stop search engines from visiting a particular webpage or a particular section in that particular website.

Often website contains certain files and folders that are not relevant for search engines and there presence might hurt your site as far as search engines are concerned, so therefore creating a robots.txt file can actually improve your website indexation.

Few examples to show how this is done:-

This example allows all robots to visit all files:-

User-agent: * ["*" specifies all robots ]
Disallow:

This example keeps all robots out:-

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

An example that tells all crawlers not to enter into two directories of a website:-

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/Disallow: /tmp/

Example that tells a specific crawler not to enter one specific directory:

User-agent: BadBot
Disallow: /private/

Example that tells all crawlers not to enter one specific file:-

User-agent: *
Disallow: /directory/file.htmlNote that all other files in the specified directory will be processed.

Example to show how comments can be used:-

# Comments appear after the "#" symbol at the start of a line, or after a directive

User-agent: * # match all bots
Disallow: / # keep them out

An Extended Standard for Robot Exclusion has been proposed, which adds several new directives, such as Visit-time and Request-rate.

For example:-

User-agent: *
Disallow: /downloads/
Request-rate: 1/5 # maximum rate is one page every 5 seconds
Visit-time: 0900-0100 # only visit between 9:00 AM and 10.00 AM UT (GMT)

The first version of the Robot Exclusion standard, does not mention anything about the "*" character in the Disallow: statement. Modern crawlers like Googlebot and Slurp recognize strings containing "*", while MSNbot and Teoma interpret it in different ways.

Link Baiting

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 04:27:00 +0000

In my earlier threads I have written about the importance of link building as far search engine rankings are concerned.Google appreciate quality and relevant backlinks. We all know Inbound links are the ideal ones to get for any website and its the most difficult one to get.

The first question that comes to everybody's mind is that why would a webmaster give an inbound link to someone as giving an inbound link would mean losing traffic and some PR value.
Link baiting means enticing a webmaster to place a link of your site in their website i.e, you are getting an inbound link. And they will do so only when they find that your site is having quality content and it will provide valuable resource for there visitors.

Thats the reason why content is called the king. So build quality and relevant content in your site because good content will entice more visiors to come to your site and there are more chances of getting inbound links. This will not only help your search engine rankings but boost your Page Rank too.

Check out the sites like wikipedia etc, do they ever exchange links? No because they are not concerned about it.

Its a wrong idea that if your are giving an inbound link to someone you are losing traffic and some PR value. Yes do upto some extent but in return you gain the much important Trust Rank. If you are giving an outbound link to some relevant and authority sites (e.g wikipedia) actually you gain Trust Rank. Google will see that you are sending your visitors to an
authority site and gradually google will start to trust your website.

Once google starts trusting your website it will automatically boost your search engine rankings and the rankings will be more stable on the SERP.

Yes inbound links are important but giving outbound links to some of these authority sites do not harm you either.

Has Google Banned Your Site?

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:03:00 +0000

Few Symptoms that your site might have been banned.

1.Significant drop in ranking.

2.Significant drop in google crawling.

3.Showing zero backlinks.

4.Use Google operators and search for these if you find these results

-Your search - cache:yourdomain.com - did not match any documents
-Your search - site:yourdomin.com - did not match any documents.
-Your search - link:yourdomin.com - did not match any documents.

Follow the steps below to check whether your site has been banned or not.

1.Check Log Files Or Web Analytics Reports For Search Engine Activity.

2.Check The Index Count.

A site's index count is the number of pages that are included in a search engine index.
E.g Site:yourdomain.com

3.Check Link Count.

A site's link count is the number and quality of links pointing to a Web site.
E.g Link:yourdomain.com

4.Review And Fix Possible Technical Issues.

Google might be having a difficulty crawling your site due to technical reasons.

-URL structure
-Robots exclusion protocol
-Server redirects which are improperly formatted
-Poor navigation in the site.
-Password protection.

5.Review Spam Penalty Checklist.

6.Resubmiting Your Site In Google.

Even though its not required but still After fixing all possible technical issues, you can resubmit your site to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl.

Importance Of Domain Name

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:53:00 +0000

There are questions around that if you have a domain name that is relevant to your business it helps in search engine rankings.So my question was, Is that a benefit that this websites are getting over other websites whose domain name doesnot pertain with their business.I have taken advices from many seo experts and there where lots of debate over these topic.

Let me discuss all these points with you....

Let me start by asking a question, why does the url gets highlighted if it contains the keyword when you are searching for something using that keyword in google?

Example: Suppose you have domain www.abc.com and you if you search for abc in google then you will find that the url has been highlighted which means google takes keyword rich domain into account.

Since it gets highlited it must have some importance as far as rankings are concerned but now another question, Is there any similarity between www.yahoo.com and its content? The answer is big NO.

Keyword in domain name has got a very little significance, nominal but not zero.
Too get a good rank in google its all about getting quality and relevant backlinks from sites whose content pertain with yours.

So the bottom line is if you get a domain name that is relevant to your business(keyword rich domain) its good but if you don't get a keyword rich domain nothing to worry about because eventually it all boils down to content and backlinks as far rankings are concerned in Google.

Domain name should be as such that should be easy to remember and which will help branding.

Google SandBox Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:07:00 +0000

There are many controversies regarding Google sandbox effect whether it exits or not.Its a theory that sites with newly registered domain are kept in a sandbox (a holding place in the database of Google) because the website is not having a high TrustRank.

Google tends to be stricter with the new domains because google doesnot know your website and so it doesnot know if it can trust your website, hence its difficult to get good ranking with new domains.

The new domain has to prove their trustworthy before they start getting good rank in Google.
It can happen like your site gets good ranking then it completely disappears for several months.

High TrustRank means Google has started to trust your website.

-Age of domain: Number of links pointing to your website.

-Site is having quality relevant inbound links.

-The site has not used spam techniques.

So to show that your site is trustworthy you have to get quality relevant backlinks from other sites.
Don't use any spam techniques.(Might produce good results initially but it will hurt you in long run.)

Try and build quality content in your site which will entice more visitors to come to your site and you might get more inbound links.

Google Supplemental Index

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:18:00 +0000

A supplemental result is just like a regular web result except that it is taken from the supplemental index of google instead of the main index.It depends on a number of factors that might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in the google main index.

Some of the reasons why a site goes into the supplemental index of Google are:

(1)Duplicate Content:-

One of the main reasons why site goes into the supplimental index of google.So try and make your content as unique as possible.

(2)Same Title And Description In A Page:-

Make sure you have separate title and description in each page.

(3)Canonical Issues:-

Use 301 redirect to redirect your site from without www to www(e.g http:/ /www. domain name .com/)

(4)Lack Of Content:-

Build a site with good combination of text and images.

(5)Lack Of Backlinks:-

Concentrate on link exchange and get as many quality backlinks as possibles from sites whose content pertain with yours.This will not only increase your ranking postion in Google but also your site will gain good PR .The advantage of having a high PR is that your site will be crawled more frequently than a site whose PR is low.

Quality backlinks does prevent sites from going into the supplemental index of Google.

(6)Orphan Pages:-

Pages that no one links to.So make sure you have clear navigation in your site.

(7)Dynamic URLs:-

Pages with too many query strings in the URL.Search engines don't like them so always use static URL.

Make sure you follow the above mentioned points which will help your site come out of the supplemental index of Google.

Black Hat Seo Techniques

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:40:00 +0000

Black Hat seo techniques are unethical seo techniques which are used to boost search engine rankings.

These black hat seo techniques might provide you with good results initially but in the long run it will hurt you badly, Implementing these black hat seo techniques run the risk of being penalized by search engines.

Now days search engines are much more sophisticated to discover all these kinds of spam techniques and ultimately leading to banning of your website.

Some of the popular Black Hat seo techniques are:

1. Keyword Stuffing
2. Cloaking
3. Hidden Text
4. Doorway Page

Now let me discuss all these techniques in details:-

1. Keyword Stuffing:-

Keyword stuffing is an unethical seo technique which is used to get high search engine rankings. Keyword stuffing as the name implies means stuffing of the keywords in the meta tags and in the body of the webpage. Even though now days search engines don’t give importance to meta keywords tags but still if your are using them don’t repeat the same keyword unnecessary.

2. Cloaking:-

Cloaking refers to the process through which a site displays different versions of the same page to the visitors as well as to search engines at the same time.
It involves optimizing one version of the page for the search engine and another version of same page is designed for the visitors. It’s another spam technique which should be avoided in order to get your site from being blacklisted by search engines.

3. Hidden Text:-

Hidden text is another form of black hat seo technique and is most commonly achieved by setting the background color same as the font color. Idea is to fill the page with more keywords only for search engine purpose and visitors cannot see it because of the same color of the text and background.

Hidden texts are hard to be seen by visitors but search engines can find them easily and you might have to pay the ultimate price of getting your website banned.

4. Doorway Page:-

Doorway page is a webpage build for the purpose of capturing traffic.They are specifically designed for the search engines. Once the visitor reaches the page they are redirected to another webpage or website with a fast meta refreshed command.

This is called doorway page because you are not reaching the goal page immediately it's through a meta refreshed command through which you are reaching the goal page.

Doorway pages are also known as portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages and entry pages.

So avoid using all the above mentioned spam techniques and any other unethical seo techniques for promoting your website.

Off Page Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:47:00 +0000

Like On Page Optimization, Off page factors are important too.Off page factors should be carefully considered and implemented to achieve high search engine rankings.The most important Off page factor is the link popularity of a site(inbound links and outbound links) and the sites link popularity can be increased by building links.

Some of the advantages of link exchange are:-

Increase Traffic.
Increase link popularity.
Search Engine benefits.
Increase Page Rank.

Some of the factors considered important by search engines while evaluating off page optimization are:

1.Its crucial that the websites linking to your site are relevant to the content on your site.

2.The number of sites linking to your site matters.Quantity of the links will boost your Page Rank whereas quality of the links will boost your search engine rankings so the choice is yours.

From my experience suppose a site abc.com is linked to 10 org authority sites and there is a another site cba.com whose backlink is showing 100 with most of them as the .com extension.
abc.com is going to rank higher than bca.com and its a fact.So building Quality content in your site is the only way of getting links from such authority sites.

3.The anchor text which you are using in your links is important.The anchor text indicates the area of relevance the linking site places on your site.This anchor text should include your targeted keyword for the webpage.The text in the linkinganchor text should not be the same in every site linking to your site.This is not seen as natural linking by the search engines. You need to get variability in the anchor text.

4.Is the link to your site a reciprocal link,one-way link or a three way link?

Few important terms as far as off page factors are concerned:-

Inbound link:- When site a.com links to site b.com, site a.com has an outbound link and site b.com has an inbound link.

Outbound link:- When site b.com links to site a.com, site b.com has an outbound link and site a.com has an inbound link.

Anchor text:- A visible text in hyperlink.

Where ABC is the anchor text.

So for a site to do well in search engines I think both off page and on page optimization plays an important part.

On Page Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:41:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimization Can Be Broadly Divided Into Two Categories :-

(1)On Page Optimization:-

(2)Off Page Optimization:-

In this article I would be focussing mainly on the On page factors which should be done to get good search engine rankings.

On page optimization means optimizing the meta tags and the on page contents of a webpage.

This includes the following:-

1.Title
2.Description
3.Keywords
4.Header tags
5.Alt Text
6.Keyword Prominence
7.keyword proximity
8.Keyword Density
9.Body Content

Let us understand the importance of each of these factors and how to optimize them in details:-

1.Title:-

Page title is probably one of the most important factors in getting high search engine rankings. Choosing the right title for your webpage is very important,your title must include the targeted keyword for your webpage.Search engine gives importance to keyword placed in title and it also help to increase the Click Through Rate(CTR) from the search engine result page.
Always give unique title for each page, giving the same title in more than one page will raise duplicate content issuesand google might penalize your site and you might find your site in the supplemental index of Google.

A title should contain a maximum of 60-66 character(including spaces).

2.Description:-

Meta description is the snippet that search engines show while listing your site in the SERP.

Always give unique description to each of the pages you have in your site.Make your description short and relevant your page content and donot stuff keywords in your meta description so that your left with keywords only and nothing else.Make sure that the description don’t exceed 100-150 characters(including spaces)

Nowdays Meta descriptions are not required for pages that have large amount of textual content(In that case search engines will automatically make one for you.)

3.Keywords:-

Nowdays search engines donot give importance to meta keywords but still I prefer using them because you never know in future search engines might again start giving importance to them.

Meta keywords should be kept within 20 keywords and it should not exceed 200-225 characters(including spaces).You can use commas or spaces as keyword separators.

Use only those keywords which are relevant to your page content and don't stuff it.

4.Header Tags:-

Page headers are another important aspect of on-page optimization.Search engines assign a higher importance on keywords placed within the page headers. So use the header tags wisely to boost up your search engine rankings.

For a particular page always use this order H1 to H6.Use only one header tag atmost two preferably the and tag and don't use too many ununnecessarily.

5.Alt Text:-

Search Engine Cannot read the text within an image, for that purpose alt text(Alternative Text) is used.

Search engines crawls and index what is written within the alt tags and hence uses that text while ranking the site.Use alt texts which are relevant to the image, and don’t unnecessary stuff it with keywords.

6.Keyword Prominence:-

Search engine spiders read pages from the top left to the bottom right.So it’s always a good idea to place keywords at the top and also at the end of the page, this is what is known as the Keyword Prominence.Search engines weigh heavily keywords that are placed at the beginning
of the page and therefore assign a higher relevancy score against those keywords.

7.Keyword Proximity:-

Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords.In general, the closer the keywords are, the better.

Always keep your targeted keyword for a particular page as close as possible.

For example:-

Using Spam Techniques Affects Search Engine Rankings.

Using Spam Techniques Affects Rankings In Search Engine.

In the above two sentences, if someone searched for "Search Engine Rankings" a web page containing the first sentence is more likely to rank higher than the second.

8.Keyword Density:-

Keyword density is defined by the number of times a keyword is repeated within a document with respect to the total number of words in the document.

Keyword density for a page should not exceed (3-7)% within your document.

The various search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search consider keyword density as part of their search algorithm.Each search engine has a different mathematical equation regarding the density of keywords that is rewarded with higher search ranking placement. But nowdays keyword density are not of much importance and to me keyword should be used according to the necessity.

9.Body Content:-

Search engines appreciate rich content so build good quality relevant content in your site and keep them as updated as possible because search engines appreciate rich content.And don't unnecessary stuff your keyword in the body.

Remenber one thing its the quality of the content that is going to attract visitors and will surely help your search engine rankings.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

noreply@blogger.com (Abhishek Sircar) — Thu, 31 May 2007 12:21:00 +0000

Just to begin with Search Engine Optimization abbreviated as SEO, is a broad definition for the various methods through which a site is created,designed and maintained with the intentions of being ranked and indexed within the major search engines and online directories.

Before I dig deep into Search Engine Optimization its imperative for us to know what are Search Engines.

Search Engine:-

Search engine is a website or program that helps user find related information related to their query.Search engine maintains database of websites and use program (spiders) to collect information which are then indexed by the search engines.Withoutsearch engines, Its basically impossible to locate anything on the Web without knowing a specific URL.

Some popular search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN.Google is the most popular of the lot.

Search Engine And Directory:-

Search engine as it has been stated earlier is a program that helps user find information related to your query.Now directory is almost similar to search engines but here human beings are involved in collecting and updating information.Its basically a collection of website address organized in categories and each category into sub-categories.

The only difference between a search engine and directory is that all webpages are selected manually whereas search engine uses software programs(spiders) to automatically index the webpages.

Meta Search Engine:-

Meta Search Engines are search engines that display results from more than one search engines.They don't have a database of their own, they send the search terms to the databases maintained by different search engines and display results taken from them.

Examples:- Mamma, WebCrawler, Dogpile etc.

Few Important Terms Related To Search Engine:-

Crawling:-

The process by which search engine spiders visits your website and reads each page by following the links within your site and then add them in their database is called Crawling or search engine indexing.

Ranking:-

This is a term often confused with search engine indexing.A site indexed doesnot necessarily means that its ranking well.Ranking means,certain position where a website appears in the search engine result page(SERP).(This is where SEO is required)

Search Engine Algorithm:-

Before answering this question, A question that comes to everybody's mind: That why different search engines produces different results.Search Engine algorithm is a complex mathematical formula used by search engines to rank the webpages.Now not all indexes (Search Engine Database) are going to be exactly the same.It depends on what the spiders find or what the humans submitted.But more important, not all search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indexes.The algorithm is what the search engines use to determine the relevance of the information in the index to what the user is searching for.So the search engines use their own algorithm and searches their own database and comes out with relevant results.

Search Engine Spiders:-

Its a program that automatically fetches webpages and add them in their database.It's also called robot or crawler.

I think its better to have a sound knowledge of the Search Engine functionalities and basic guidelines before taking up any SEO project because without knowing the basics of it you can't move even a little bit.