How do search engines work?
A search engine sends out a spider to "crawl" through every page on as many Websites that want to be searchable and reads them. A program, referred to as an idexer, reads these documents and creates a huge index or catalog. The program that receives a search request, compares it to the entries in the index and then returns the results. Each search engine uses a unique protocol to create its catalog such that, only meaningful results are returned for each query. It's important to understand how search engines work and what the spiders look for when scanning Webpages. Your understanding of how the various search engines work will help you optimize and market your Website effectively.

Below are some helpful links on search engines: what they are, what they do, hints on Website submission, information on spiders, and tips and tricks on site optimization and promotion. We recommend spending some time here if you are concerned with bringing in more traffic to your Website.

NetMechanic
Offers search engine submission, optimization, and tracking tools. Helpful hints on how to optimize your site before you start submitting to various search engines.

Submit Corner
Offers useful information about many search engines, how to submit your Website and reviews on other related info.

Northern Webs
Search engine tutorial for Web developers. Includes information on how search engines work, how to submit your site to the various search engines, meta tags, html, and offers software that checks your links and other helpful tools to keep your site optimized.

Site Cook
Check the status of a site in selected search engines. See how many pages of a site are indexed and find the best ranked page on chosen search phrases.

Search Engine World
Tons of information on spiders, tips and tricks on promotion and optimization, META tags, design and development, and other related topics.

NetPromote
Links to some of the top search engines and directories. Includes a general overview of each one.

Search Engine Watch
Provides submission tips, Web searching tips, reviews, ratings, tests and other search engine resources.

Robots FAQs
Tons of useful information on Web Robots: what they are, what they do, how to register with them and other important info.

NetMechanic
Submit Corner
Northern Webs
Site Cook
Search Engine World
NetPromote
Search Engine Watch
Robots FAQs