The term ‘search engine’
is commonly used to encompass both search engines and directories.
Whilst both are used to find information on the Web there is a fundamental
difference.
Search engines, such as
Google, Yahoo! & MSN all use software robots to crawl the Web and
spider websites. These are then indexed in the search engines database
according to specific criteria. To search with a search engine, a
user inputs keywords or phrases. The sites returned in the results
are ranked by relevancy.
In contrast directories,
such as Yahoo and the Open Directory, use humans to review websites and then
categorize them. This gives users the opportunity to search by category
as well as keyword. The sites returned in the results are ranked by
category and relevancy.
For ease of reading the
term ‘search engines’ is used generically in this website to include
both search engines and directories.
So which search engines
should you be focusing on? Certainly not all of them.
Here are the top
search engines and directories to target.
