Search Engines

Of all the traffic that reached my WoodbridgeWuffolk.info site from a Search Engine, it was split by source as follows, at April 2006 - in 2001, Google hardly showed

  •  82.7% Google
  •    6.9% Yahoo
  •    4.0% MSN
  •    3.4% AOL
  •    1.9% Search
  •    1.0% Ask
  •    0.2% AltaVista
        • Total of 93.% via the top three Search Engines but almost all eclipsed by Google

Therefore, I would question the point of spending ANY time, let alone money, registering your site with more than a two search engines that are most successful at finding your site. Or maybe, because adding a site to Yahoo is complicated, why bother with anything other than Google!?

  • Why pay $xx to be "registered in 500 search engines" when a few minutes of your time, plus zero cost will get you 90% of what you are aiming at, maybe more?

First, make sure you know what each search engine is looking for. Read their FAQs.  They don't all work the same.  Some work on Title, others work out the keywords themselves by 'reading' the site (None use Meta Tag Keywords now).  Some might put a premium on the number of links out of your site, but Google highly values QUALITY links TO your site.

Another point to remember with Search Engines is... do not cheat.  Some people advocate putting 'hidden text' on your pages (using the same colour for text as background and/or a miniscule font) or using 'interesting keywords' that have nothing to do with your site content (and will not be found in your site) but attract a lot of surfers.

  • First, the Search Engine algorithms are getting better and better. They not only spot cheats, they can and do positively exclude sites for 'trickery.'
  • Secondly, why bring someone to your site with the hope of finding "unique blue widgets" when your site only has information on common or garden red widgets, or doesn't even sell widgets at all but is simply an information source about boll weevils.  The surfer is disappointed.  The chance of him ever being a customer is seriously limited. You wouldn't open a hamburger stall with a sign saying "FREE CAR with every book purchased" when you are selling 'burgers and giving away nothing. Why do it on the web?

Recommendation:
Manually register with Google and MSN, and recommend that your clients registers with the Yahoo section of their choice and host your website with a company that provides detailed Web Statistics. Alternatively, sign up to a counter service, such as CQCounter.com to monitor which search engines work for you.

To find out what's going on with Search Engines, visit Search Engine Watch.