No Comments Written by Robert on April 10, 2008 – 1:14 am

Search indexes or engines are the predominant type of search tools you’ll run across. Originally, the term search engine referred to some kind of search index, a huge database containing information from individual Web sites. Large search-index companies own thousands of computers that use software known as spiders or robots (or just plain bots) to grab Web pages and read the information stored in them.

These systems don’t always grab all the information on each page or all the pages in a Web site, but they grab a significant amount of information and use complex algorithms — calculations based on complicated formula — to index that information.

Search directories

A directory is a categorized collection of information about Web sites. Rather than containing information from Web pages, it contains information about Web sites. The most significant search directories are owned by Yahoo! (dir.yahoo.com) and the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org).

Directory companies don’t use spiders or bots to download and index pages on the Web sites in the directory; rather, for each Web site, the directory contains information, such as a title and description, submitted by the site owner. The two most important directories, Yahoo! and Open Directory, have staff members who examine all the sites in the directory to make sure they’re placed into the correct categories and meet certain quality criteria. Smaller directories often accept sites based on the owners’ submission, with little verification. Here’s how to see the difference between Yahoo!’s search results and the Yahoo! directory:

1. Go to www.yahoo.com.
2. Type a word into the Search box.
3. Click the Search button. The list of Web sites that appears is called the Yahoo! Search results, which are currently provided by Google.

Why bother with search engines?

Why bother using search engines for your marketing? You may have heard that most Web site visits begin at a search engine. Well, this isn’t true. It was true several years ago, and many people continue to use these outdated statistics because they sound good “80 percent of all Web site visitors reach the site through a search engine,” for instance. However, in 2003, that claim was finally put to rest. The number of search-originated site visits dropped below the 50-percent mark. Most Web site visitors reach their destinations by either typing a URL a Web address into their browsers and going there directly or by clicking a link on another site that takes them there. Most visitors don’t reach their destinations by starting at the search engines. However, search engines are still extremely important for a number of reasons:

The proportion of visits originating at search engines is significant. Not so long ago, one survey put the number at almost 50 percent. Sure, it’s not 80 percent, but it’s still a lot of traffic.

According to a report by eMarketer published early in 2005, 21 percent of American Internet users use a search engine four or more times each day; PEW Internet estimated that 38 million Americans use search engines every day.

A study by iCrossing in the summer of 2005 found that 40 percent of people do online research prior to purchasing products.

Of the visits that don’t originate at a search engine, a large proportion are revisits people who know exactly where they want to go. This isn’t new business; it’s repeat business.

Most new visits come through the search engines that is, search engines are the single most important source of new visitors to Web sites.

Some studies indicate that a large number of buyers begin at the search engines. That is, of all the people who go online planning to buy something or looking for product information, perhaps over 67 percent use a search engine, according to a study in 2005 by iCrossing.

The search engines represent a cheap way to reach people. In general, you get more bang for your buck going after free search-engine traffic than almost any other form of advertising or marketing.

The following list runs down the world’s most popular search sites, based on one month of searches during 2005 — 4.5 billion searches — according to a Nielsen/NetRatings study. These statistics are for U.S. Internet users:

Google.com 46.2%
Yahoo.com 22.5%
MSN.com 12.6%
AOL.com 5.4%
My Way 2.2%
Ask (AskJeeves) 1.6%
Netscape.com 1.6%
iWon 0.9%
Earthlink 0.8%
DogPile 0.9%
Others 5.3%

Remember, this is a list of search sites, not search systems. In some cases, the sites have own their own systems. Google provides its own search results, but AOL doesn’t. (AOL gets its results from Google.)