Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Navigating the Ins and Outs of Major Search Engines

When you open a search engine Web page and type some words in the search box, do you ever wonder how the search engine produces your search results? Do you imagine a blindfolded person tossing darts at newspapers spread over a wall? Maybe a chicken is let loose to peck its way to a few sites that are then transmitted to you. Although the true answer isn't as comical, search engines use different procedures and methods to compare information against similar sites to come up with the all-important rankings.

Companies that figure out these procedures are the ones that continually find themselves near the top of the rankings; other businesses, which might have well-designed Web sites that are chock-full of information, get buried on page 10 or page 20 of the results. A few years ago, human intervention could elevate worthy sites to the top and give them featured placement. Now, however, the placement process is almost all computerized — and because computers follow rules, logic dictates that if you follow the rules, the computers will follow you.

The full set of rules that search engines use to order all their results are tightly guarded secrets because those rules, known as algorithms, set companies apart in this area. Google, in particular, uses complex rules.

The words you enter into a search engine typically aren't ordinary words. ...