Another Look at Search
Engines
They always keep popping up don’t they? We are really at
their mercy and there’s not much we can do about it. So, the
best way is to try to better understand and work with them
and not against them.
I have talked about the abuses that occur. This will always
be the case but my own experiences are telling me to not
focus so much on satisfying the search engines. The true
success of my business is my customers and there is where my
focus needs to be. I now strongly believe that if I just go
about my business and concentrate on providing a top quality
web site for MY customers, the search engines will come to
me – so to speak. This would be a “naturally” occurring
event and in the long run everyone will benefit.
I have also talked about how none of us know the formulas
used by search engines but some of us pretend we know. The
truth is we all are just creating educated guesses. Over
time we see what we think are trends from the results of
searches and therefore make conclusions based on what we
see. As I said earlier, there is a general consensus on
certain aspects of the searches and over time, it becomes
clear that each of the search engines has its’ own
personality.
Obtaining a better understanding of these personalities will
help us as web developers to not make so many mistakes in
the creation of our sites. This may appear to be a negative
approach to web design but if you look at the entire picture
it is not.
We have determined that designing your site for your
customers is best. At the same time if you integrate many of
the things that search engine robots like, it is only that
much more beneficial to you. So, let’s take a few minutes
and look at the personalities of the 3 major search engines
– Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Google – Presently Google is the dominant search engines
used the most by web surfers but they are getting strong
competition from the others. This is good for everyone as we
know competition usually benefits the consumer.
Google wants to be the leader and with that mindset, a lot
of their focus is on developing new products for Internet
search. Because of this, some web design professionals
believe they focus too much on that and not enough in making
what the have better.
Google’s robots crawl many pages and crawl them deeply for
content. It is easy to say that they are focused on and put
value in web site and page content. With that said, it
becomes clear that if you want good page ranking, you need
good page content.
They also put strong emphasis on naturally occurring links.
Those are the links we talked before about that web
designers create to provide their site with good relevant
links. This makes the search engine robots believe the site
you linked to “naturally” is a good site. The result is
better page rank.
There is one more aspect of Google that I would like to talk
briefly about. In the professional world of web design geeks
and nerds, there is a phenomenon referred to as the “sandbox
effect”. Many believe that when a new web site is created,
Google will at some point send their robots to crawl the
site. Once this is done, they give you an initial page
ranking and you will basically sit there in that ranking for
upwards of 6 months. After this 6-month “trial” period, then
you join the rest of Cyberworld and if you are doing good
things with your site, you will begin to make improvements
in search engine results.
Why do they do this? Well, the theory is that you need to
pay your dues and convince Google that you are in this
business to stay. Personally, I think it is a crock of BS.
Would you open a business at the Maine Mall if you knew that
once you got open, for 6 months you had to leave your
windows covered and couldn’t let customers in? Or they let
you set up your store in the back somewhere and then if you
could survive that, you could come and play with the rest of
us? I don’t think so and therefore, I think Google is making
a big mistake here. Their success depends on happy customers
just like any other business. If they continue to anger
business owners and customers can’t find good web sites, of
which many of these new ones are, they will find and use
another search engine.
Yahoo! – Yahoo decided a while back that they wanted to
compete with Google in the search business. They spent a lot
of time and money to give Google a run for their money. Many
people are loyal to Yahoo and like the results they get from
them. I find that many of the results from Yahoo are similar
to those of Google except Yahoo doesn’t put you in a sandbox
for 6 months – that I am aware of.
Yahoo values content similar to Google but does not crawl as
deeply. They put more emphasis on keywords and meta tags. In
my opinion, Yahoo can better determine a web site’s theme
and place you accordingly. Look at the logic for a moment.
If I am looking for ball caps to buy, I would much rather
find sites dedicated to selling ball caps than a site that
in passing, mentioned the words ball and cap.
MSN – A relative newcomer but owned by Bill Gates and the
Microsoft company. Bill Gates is not going to sit idly by
and watch Google and Yahoo rake in money from the search
engine business. MSN has launched an all out effort to be a
competitor with Google and Yahoo and I think they are on the
right track.
Their robots crawl deeply and crawl often. They focus on
meta tags, keywords and content. To me, it appears their
formula for page ranking can better determine a site’s theme
and content better and search results are more relevant to
the keywords or key phrases used by browsers.
There is one thing that is certain. Search engine robots
like active sites. By this I am not referring solely to how
much traffic your web site generates. I’m talking about you
the web site owner, keeping your site up to date and growing
all the time.
Once the robots find your web site and begin crawling it,
the robots will come to your site often – sometimes
everyday- looking for new or changed content. If they find
it, they add the information to their database and move on.
If you do nothing to your site for long periods of time, the
frequency of your site being crawled drops off as well. An
active site and one that is always growing, is a huge
benefit to you as far as page ranking. It only stands to
reason that a business that is flourishing is a business
that reaps the rewards.
I was adding some pages and information to one of my sites
one day and I later found out that within minutes of getting
new information up, the robots were right there gathering
the new information. That’s fast!
That is a quick look again at the beasts of the Internet,
the search engines. I would strongly urge you to at least
take time to use each of these search engines and do
searches using your keywords or key phrases. See how you
rank with each of the search engines. Do this from time to
time – perhaps once a week – and see if you are move up in
page rank. If not, perhaps there is more you can do. Revisit
your web site and take a look and see what is going on. Get
your statistics from your web hosting company. They will
tell you many things. If your hosting company doesn’t
provide you with at least some basic statistics, it’s time
for a new company.
You should be able to tell how many visitors come to your
site, where they came from and what the keywords are that
they used to find you. Without tracking information, what
you do with your website is only guesswork. And guesswork
doesn’t pay many bills.
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