Search Engine Indices or indexes and how to get your website included in them.

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Search Engine Indexes (or Indices)

Some people think that when you search for something on the Internet the search engine searches the whole web there and then in an attempt to find what you are looking for. This searche en gine indices is not what happens. To do so would be highly impractical because of the amount of time it would take.

What actually happens is that the search engines work continually in the background, collecting information from the web pages they have indexed and storing it in databases on computers within their own data centres.

For example Google has many data centres that store information from websites worldwide. When you query a search engine it searches its own databases for the information and it can do this extremely quickly because the information is all organised to make it search friendly. This is why the results of a search normally appear (quite impressively) within a second or two.

How does your site get Included in the Search Engine's Index?

As previously discussed, the web is just a system of links (or hyperlinks as they are properly known). Links are the bits of text or images that you click on to go somewhere else on the Internet. Most search engines use “robots” or "crawlers" to crawl the web following these links from site to site and storing the information from the pages that they find.

Search Engine Robots and Crawlers

Search Engine Robots and Crawlers are computer programs that are designed to do this automatically. If a web page on another website that is already indexed by the search engines links to your site (known as an inbound link), then your site will almost certainly be found automatically. This is particularly true with Google, which also uses the number of inbound or incoming links to a web page as one of the factors that determines where it appears in the results.

Assuming that you have at least one external link into your website from an already indexed website then it will probably be unnecessary for you to submit your site to the search engines. You should bear this in mind when someone offers to submit your website for a fee.

When the robots find a new web page they store the text content they find there in their databases. Depending on how highly the page is rated the robot will then return at frequent intervals to update the information that is held there. Typically this takes place every two or three days but larger, dynamic sites can be visited by the crawlers and updated every few minutes. News websites for example are indexed much more regularly than some other sites.

This is an important factor since the search results are determined by what the search engines have stored in the database (or “cache”), not by what is currently on the actual web page. When a web page is updated the updated content will not be found by anyone using a search engine until the search engine’s robot has returned to the page, recognised the new content and saved it.

Other Ways of Getting Into the Search Engine Indexes

Getting into Search Engines There are other ways of getting found in the search engines. For example you can manually submit your site and wait for it to happen.

Sometimes this can take weeks to happen, but the best method by far is to get inbound links and let the search engines find your site naturally. That is what the World Wide Web is all about.

Note: You may see adverts on websites from companies offering to "Submit your site to 2,000 search engines", etc. Ignore these! They're just a waste of time. Even if there are that number of search engines only those mentioned above and perhaps one or two other regional search engines will deliver any significant traffic to your site.

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