Search Engine Map

Directories

Blog Search Engines

What is a Search Engine?

A search engine is a tool for finding information on the Internet. Most search engines consist of the following components:

Spiders / bots
Indexer
Database
Search software
Web interface

The search engine works as follows. When a website is submitted to the search engine, the web site is put into a queue. When that websites turn comes, the search engine sends a 'spider', or 'bot' to read, and document the website.

The spider documents everything it can about the site. It looks to see how many other websites are linking to and from the website. All the data that is found and extracted by the spider is processed by the indexer and stored in a database. From the database the search software extracts documents based on parameters entered by the user.

What are Search Engine Algorithms?

Search engine algorithms are each search engines' own proprietary system for scoring a website. An algorithm is simply a mathematical formula designed to analyze and score a web page for relevance. The higher the score for a particular query, the higher in the search results the website or page should show up. Some factors that a search engine algorithm looks at are keyword relevance, meta tags, alt tags, and most importantly - content. For a more complete understanding of the things that the search engines look for, we invite you to review the detailed list we have compiled. Each search engine uses a myriad of factors when reviewing individual web sites and pages, and even uses the same data in different ways, valuing it more or less than another search engine does. Therefore, part of optimizing your web site is to ensure that all these factors are taken care of properly.

How Many Search Engines Are There?

We get emails every day from companies telling us they can't find our web site in the search engines. (But if we can't be found in the search engines, how did they find us?) Some of these also offer to get us listed in over 300,000 search engines and directories. It's hard to believe that anyone actually signs up for these types of services. There aren't 300,000 search engines and directories in the world. There isn't even 30,000 of them. There are a lot of search engines and directories dealing with specific industries, and geographical regions, and ones that deal with specific industries within specific geographical regions, etc... How many do you need to worry about? Very few. First and foremost is DMOZ. It supplies data to hundreds of directories. In the linked page we've supplied you with the search query so you can see the complete and current list of engines and directories they support. Then once you've done that, focus on the search engines. But make sure your web site is optimized before you bother submitting it.

How Many Search Engines Does Metamend Monitor?

Metamend monitors approximately 100 search engines and directories on a regular basis. The most prominent, and important ones are included in the textual search engine map above.