New York Web Design Company

 

Web Design Portfolio Search Engines and Directories

Many search engines update their index either on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. When Web searchers use a search engine to locate Web sites that are relevant to the keyword search, they are searching the SE's index.

Google, Inktomi, AltaVista, AlltheWeb and the like are all forms of search engines. These search engines write programs known as robots or spiders or crawlers that have the following functions:

  1. locate Web pages
  2. read the contents of the Web pages and
  3. report its findings back to the search engine's indexes or databases.

Yahoo!, Open Directory Project and the like are all forms of Web directories. These directories use human editors to review sites that are submitted for submission to the directory. Directories use a hierarchical tree structure to organize their database.

A directory will list Web site root home pages. A search engine will list individual pages of a Web site.

Search Engines and Directories are listed here in order of the most highly recommended first.

Web Design Portfolio Google

Google.com is highly recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are looking for. Voted three times Most Outstanding Search Engine by Search Engine Watch readers, Google has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching the Web. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive coverage of the Web along with great relevancy.

Web Design Portfolio All The Web

If you tried Google and didn't find it, AllTheWeb.com should be next on your list. An excellent crawler-based search engine, AllTheWeb provides both comprehensive coverage of the Web and outstanding relevancy. Indeed, it's a first stop search engine, for some. In addition to Web page results, AllTheWeb.com provides the ability to search for news stories, pictures, video clips, MP3s and FTP files.

Web Design Portfolio Yahoo

Yahoo.com Express Site Submit requires a submission fee or the "Standard" which is free. Anyone can use Standard submission to submit for free to a non-commercial category. If you use the free submit choice, there's no guarantee that your submission will be reviewed quickly or at all. Consider Yahoo any time you think you might be well served by having a list of human-reviewed Web sites. It's also a good choice for popular queries, since the category listings it provides may help you narrow in and refine your query. In October 2002 Yahoo made a giant shift to using Google's crawler-based listings for its main results.

Web Design Portfolio MSN Search

search.MSN.com provides a blend of human-powered directory information and crawler coverage different from any of the other top choices listed above. It's a high quality resource that provides its own unique view of the Web and one worth checking. MSN Search also relies on search providers for answers to many of its queries. Usually, it will be human-powered results from the LookSmart directory that dominate the page. For more obscure queries, it is crawler-based results from Inktomi that are provided.

Web Design Portfolio DogPile

Dogpile.com offers paid listings only, and searches Yahoo!, Lycos' A2Z, Excite Guide, World Wide Web Worm, WWW Yellow Pages , PlanetSearch, What U Seek, Magellan, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, AltaVista, Excite & HotBot. Dogpile Meta-Search allows you to search multiple leading search engines at once, returning more comprehensive and relevant results fast, unleashing the power of meta-search.

Web Design Portfolio AOL Search

AOL Search provides users with editorial listings that come Google's crawler-based index. Indeed, the same search on Google and AOL Search will come up with very similar matches. So, why would you use AOL Search? Primarily because you are an AOL user. The "internal" version of AOL Search provides links to content only available within the AOL online service. In this way, you can search AOL and the entire Web at the same time. The "external" version lacks these links.

Web Design Portfolio Ask Jeeves

AskJeeves.com For the main editorial listings at Ask Jeeves, you need to be listed with Teoma. Paid Listings come from Google AdWord. Ask Jeeves initially gained fame in 1998 as being the "natural language" search engine that let you search by asking questions and responded with what seemed to be the right answer to everything. Ask Jeeves depends on crawler-based technology to provide results to its users. These results come from the Teoma search engine that it owns.

Web Design Portfolio HotBot

HotBot.com In order to submit your site, you will need to be validated as an member user. For the main editorial listings at HotBot, you need to be listed with the four major crawlers it queries. HotBot provides easy access to the Web's four major crawler-based search engines: Google, AllTheWeb, Inktomi, and Teoma. It's a fast, easy way to get different Web search "opinions" in one place. HotBot debuted in May 1996, it gained a strong following among serious searchers for the quality and comprehensiveness of its crawler-based results.

Web Design Portfolio Lycos

Lycos.com For the main editorial listings at Lycos, you need to be listed with AllTheWeb. Paid listings come from Overture. Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the Web, launched in 1994. It ceased crawling the Web for its own listings in April 1999 and now uses crawler-based results provided by AllTheWeb.

Web Design Portfolio Teoma

Teoma.com will guarantee to include your pages if you use its Ask Jeeves Site Submit paid inclusion program. It will get new pages listed in a week. It is recommended that new sites use the program to get their home pages quickly listed. The cost is $30 and means that the page will be revisited each week, for up to a year. Teoma is a crawler-based search engine owned by Ask Jeeves in September 2001. It has a smaller index of the Web than its rival crawler-competitors Google, AllTheWeb, Inktomi, and AltaVista.

Web Design Portfolio Inktomi

Inktomi.com Use the Search Submit program to get at least your home page listed, for a $39 fee. Paying the fee is really only speeding up the process of getting the home page listed, for a brand-new site. Among the major search engines, Inktomi is the second-oldest crawler. It briefly operated as an experimental search engine at UC Berkeley. However, the creators then formed their own company in 1996 with the same name and gained their first customer, HotBot, in the middle of that year. Inktomi was purchased by Yahoo in March 2003.

Web Design Portfolio LookSmart

LookSmart.com As with Yahoo, LookSmart has a free submit option for its non-commercial categories and a paid option for its commercial sites, who pay to be listed in commercial categories, making the service very much like an electronic "Yellow Pages". LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of Web sites that provides its results to other search engines that need listings.

Web Design Portfolio Overture

Overture.com is the oldest and most important paid placement search engine, because it distributes its listings to a wide-range of major search engines, including AltaVista, AOL Search, Lycos, HotBot and Netscape Search. Non-paid results at the Overture site itself come from Inktomi. Overture launched as "GoTo" in 1997 and incorporated the former University of Colorado-based World Wide Web Worm. In February 1998, it shifted to its pay-for-placement model. The company changed its name from GoTo to Overture in October 2001.

Web Design Portfolio AltaVista

AltaVista.com is the oldest crawler-based search engine on the Web. It opened in December 1995 and for several years was the "Google" of its day, in terms of providing relevant results and having a loyal group of users that loved the service.AltaVista was originally owned by Digital, then taken over by Compaq in 1998. AltaVista was later spun off into a private company, controlled by CMGI. Overture bought AltaVista in April 2003.

Web Design Portfolio Netscape Search

search.Netscape.com Netscape essentially duplicates the editorial and ad listings that are shown on Google, so you need to be listed with Google. Owned by AOL Time Warner, Netscape Search uses Google for its main listings.

Web Design Portfolio WiseNut

WiseNut.com There is no current submission system for WiseNut. WiseNut is a crawler-based search engine that attracted attention when it appeared on the scene in 2001. WiseNut has a large database, making it nearly as comprehensive as Google, AllTheWeb and Inktomi.

Source: SearchEngineWatch.com