Search Engines Facts

[megri]

Search Engines Facts (http://www.seotalk.biz) :: Do You Know

42% of web users say search engines are the most common way they search for products, services and vendors online

81% of people using search engines find the information they need every time or most of the time

The top 30 results get over 90% of search traffic

45% of web users search by using multiple keywords or keyword phrases

[Deevyesh Tyagi]

Search Strategies
Successful searching combines creative guessing of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) along with smart use of subject directories and search engines. Here are three general strategies. Before using any of them, be sure to consider what organization might be a likely source for providing the necessary information.

URL Guessing and Cutting
Using Subject Directories
Using Search Engines

For a quick overview list of strategies to consider see the list below. It repeats some of what is is in the three above as well as in the online tutorials below.

Determine likely organization with answer
Guess organization's URL before trying search engines
Search for organization URL otherwise
Use "phrase searching" and unique words as much as possible
Use directories (Yahoo!, ODP, LookSmart) for broad, general topics
Use multiple step approach – can be several clicks to an answer
Folders to narrow large search sets: Teoma, WiseNut, Vivisimo, or NLResearch
Try a title field search to focus results more by subject
Use specialized search engines for news, Usenet postings, phone numbers, etc.
In all of these, it is always important to know What's Not Included.

For some online tutorials using these strategies, try the examples I developed for my in person cl***es:

Basic Internet Searching cl***
Advanced Internet Searching cl***

[ha-neul]

The process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.
:mad:
There is much confusion about search engine optimization (SEO) and its relation to search engine spamming. Generally, legitimate search engine optimization adds to the user experience, while search engine spamming takes away from the user experience, although there is much gray area between the clear-cut examples on either side.

Optimization involves making pages readable to search engines and emphasizing key topics related to your content. Basic optimization may involve nothing more than ensuring that a site does not unnecessarily become part of the invisible Web (the portion of the Web not accessible through Web search engines). Advanced optimization may include significant research into every element of page design, site structure, and off-the-page criteria.
:mad:

[paige]

Flash movies are a great way to add multimedia elements to a web site. Unfortunately, Flash cannot be indexed by most search engines. For that reason, it is very difficult to get high search engine rankings for Flash sites.

Even Google officially tells webmasters that it is difficult to get ranked with Flash sites: "If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a [simple] text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site."

It doesn't help much to optimize your Flash pages
It is very difficult to optimize Flash pages for high search engine rankings. You can use tricks like the <object standby="your message to show while loading"> attribute or the <object title="your movie title"> attribute to add keywords and text to your Flash elements.

However, this doesn't allow you to create enough content so that search engines consider your web pages relevant to a special keyword.

You can also create special text pages that are only presented to search engines. In that case, search engines might ban your web site from their index because you're cloaking