There are millions of websites so how do you find what you're looking for? You use a search engine. A search engine is a document retrieval system used to find pages on the World Wide Web using search criteria input by the user.

Let's suppose I'm looking for a restaurant in New York City. I go to a search engine and type "Restaurants in New York City". The search engine attempts to find all web pages with a reference to restaurants in New York City. This will return a lot of pages. In this case around 80,000,000, but don't worry, you're not going to have to look at all of those pages. The search engines attempt to put the most relevant returns on top. You'll most likely find what you are looking for on the first three or four pages.

Where does your website fit into this scheme? How do you get listed?

Having your site indexed by the search engines is fairly easy as long as you follow their rules of submission.

Some common rules are:

No "under construction" sites. Finish your website before submitting it to the searches. Check your links to make sure they all work properly.

 

No "link farms". A link farm is a site that doesn't really have any content, only links to other websites.

 

Submit your site in the proper category.

 

Don't attempt to submit every page on your site. The search engines will index all pages within your site that have relevant content.

 

Don't use submission software. These will usually be rejected.

 

Don't attempt to submit more than one URL that points to the same site.

Following these rules will help ensure that your site is accepted. Remember, the search engines are private entities and you do not have a "right" to be listed.

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