What is a search engine?

Search Engines and Directories

Once you build a Web site you must help people to find it. The internet is like a library, but the books are in no order and someone's turned the light off. How can you find what you want?

This is where search engines come in. They catalogue the library and deliver relevant topics when asked. There are over 6 billion pages on the Web. That's SIX BILLION - or one for nearly every person on the planet today.

Search engines and directories are the means that people use to find what they're looking for. They scour their index for sites that mention the keywords (the topics) that have been typed in, and display the results.

Types of Search Engine

There are two different types of Search Engine. To put it simply, they are Directories (like Yahoo) and Search Engines like AltaVista or Google.

The directories are compiled by humans and split their subjects into categories whilst the search engines 'crawl' the web and index what they find. In either case, you need to tell it where to find your site in the first place - this is called Search Engine Submission.