To help you understand what it takes to achieve a high ranking on the top search engines it is important to make three distinctions: There are Crawler-Based, Human- Based, and Hybrid-Based search engines/indexes and directories. For example, AltaVista is a crawler based search engine, and Yahoo is a human based search engine directory.

Crawler-Based (CB) search engines automatically "crawl the web," visit web pages and then add them to their indexes. If you make changes to your web pages, the CB engines will eventually find these changes and update their data. Placing page titles, keywords, descriptions and other "hidden" elements in your WebPages, all play an important role to get good ranking.

Human-Based (HB) search engines such as Yahoo depend on people to create the listings. A (HB) engine will not list your web page if you do not register it with them. Submit a short description to the directory for your entire site. The downside is that their editors will then visit your website and write a review as they see it.

"Hybrid" - added to the mix. In the web's early days, it used to be that a search engine either presented CB or HB listings. Today, it is common for both types of results to be present. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another. For example, a MSN search is more likely to present HB listings. However, it also presents crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially so for more obscure queries.

Directories often have partnerships with spider-based search engines. For example, Yahoo currently has a partnership with Goggle. MSN Search currently has a partnership with LookSmart (a pay-per-click directory) and Inktomi (a crawler-based search engine).

When listing your website with indexes and directories be sure to place page titles, keywords, descriptions and other "hidden" elements in your pages. One last thing to do-be sure to re-list your website every 30 days.
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Copyright (c) 2005 Revised 2009
Author Diane Hess