The History of Internet Search Engines

Just a little over ten years ago, if a person needed information they were forced to go to the local library and spend hours entombed amongst shelves of books. Now that the internet is available in almost every home finding information is easier then ever before. Now when someone needs information all they have to do is boot up their computer and type their needs into a search engine

A search engine is an information retrieval system that is designed to help find information stored on a computer system.

In 1990 the very first search engine was created by students at McGill University in Montreal. The search engine was called Archie and it was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. FTPs (short for File Transfer Protocol) are used to transfer data from one computer to another over the internet, or through a network that supports TCP/IP protocol. In its early days Archie contacted a list of FTP archives approximately once a month with a request for a listing. Once Archie received a listing it was stored in local files and could be searched using a UNIX grep command. In its early days Archie was a local tool but as the links got worked out and were more efficient it became a network wide resource. Archie users could utilize Archie’s services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, teleneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files.

A student at the University of Minnesota created a search engine that indexed plain text files in 1991. They named the program Gopher after the University of Minnesota’s mascot.

In 1993 a student at MIT created Wandx, the first Web search engine.

Today, search engines match a user’s keyword query with a list of potential websites that might have the information the user is looking for. The search engine does this by using a software code called a crawler to probe web pages that match the user’s keyword. Once the crawler has identified web pages that may be what the user is looking for, the search engine uses a variety of statistical techniques to establish each pages importance. Most search engines establish the importance of hits based on the frequency of word distribution.  Once the search engine has finished searching web pages it provides a list of web sites to the user.

Today, when an internet user types a word into a search engine they are given a list of websites that might be able to provide them with the information they seek. The typical search engine provides ten potential hits per page. The average internet user never looks further than the second page the search engine provides. Webmasters are constantly finding themselves forced to use new methods of search engine optimization to be highly ranked by the search engines.

In 2000, a study was done by Lawrence and Giles that suggested internet search engines were only able to index sixteen percent of all available webpages.

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Finding The Truth What Does SEO Stand For

Many people are aware of the term of SEO floating around the Internet, but just what does SEO stand for? The simple answer: it stands for search engine optimization. That’s not very helpful though, so let’s look at it more in depth. What we can find just from the name is that SEO is a process to optimize for search engines. Well, we all know what search engines are, but what does it mean to optimize for them?

Well, SEO is mainly a marketing technique to make a website more visible to search engines. We’re all familiar with what takes place when we search for something on Google or Yahoo! search: the site gives us several pages of results. Did you know that most people only bother clicking on results found on the first page of a search? Sometimes a search can result in 10 or 20 or 100 pages of results… and the average user often ignores all those extra pages.

Search engine optimization is just a bunch of fancy words… really, what does SEO stand for? SEO means more visitors, more traffic, and if you’ve got a product, more sales. SEO is integral to a good marketing campaign – there’s no two ways around it.

So, for people looking to sell something on their web page or even just to attract a bigger audience for their blog or podcast, SEO is very important. The goal is to get a web site to appear on the very first page of any search engine’s results when searching for specific words or phrases. These words or phrases are known as keywords – they’re your best friends when it comes to search engine optimization.

There are a number of resources you can find on the web that will teach you how to use keywords. For instance, some tools will tell you how often a certain keyword phrase is searched for, and show you other, similar keywords. These other keywords might allow you to expand the focus of your web page to attract more visitors. You can also use this information to target keywords that are less common on the Internet – which allows you to corner the market.

Keywords aren’t the only search engine optimization tool you can use. Another important aspect of SEO is linking. Search engines basically use links to a website as references, like when an employer calls up past employers to find out how good an applicant is. The more legitimate references or links to a website, the higher that the site will be ranked in the search engines. Creating links between your pages is a great way to enhance SEO.

Keywords and linking is just the tip of the search engine optimization iceberg. There are many more advanced techniques that can be used to bring a site to the top of the search page ranks and keep it there. This is just an introduction, but now you know the answer to the question what does SEO stand for?

The Definition of Search Engine Optimization

Too many webpage owners feel that once they submit their page a search engine they are guaranteed success. That’s generally not the case. Simply submitting your web page to a search engine is not always enough to get any hits. Most web pages require search engine optimization to become truly successful.

Search engine optimization is the art and science of making web pages attractive to the search engines. The goal of search engine optimization is to have your website ranked in the top ten internet search hits that appear on the first page. Why is it important to be on the first page? It’s important because the average internet user doesn’t click on any of the sites listed on the second or third page. Out of sight, out of mind. One website owner reported a two hundred and ten percent increase on her e-commerce sight when she had her webpage redesigned for optimal search engine optimization.

You would think that the prospect of a two hundred and ten percent increase in sales would be all the incentive a webmaster would need to redesign their site. That isn’t always the case. There are a variety of reasons people avoid recreating their websites.

Some people believe that search engine optimization is too difficult to understand. The reality is that search engine optimization is fairly simple. All it takes is a little research and most people are ready to rock.

Other people feel that there are simply too many things to learn before they will be ready to optimize their website. Search engine optimization is just like anything else. When you first start out you know nothing. With some homework and a bit of trial and error and you will know exactly what it takes to make your webpage popular with the web crawlers.

Some people believe that search engine optimization will take up lots of their precious time. People with this particular fear should remember that old adage about time and money. If time spent optimizing your website leads to an increase in sales isn’t it time well spent? Besides search engine optimization is easy, once you have the hang of it won’t add much to the time you would already have to devote to updating your website.

You do not have to submit to gobs of search engines to reap the rewards of search engine optimization.

If you have a large site you shouldn’t worry about spending lots of time optimizing it and running the risk of never finishing the process. If you have a large website just take things one step at a time. Focus on optimizing on page per day. Start with your most important pages and then concentrate on the irrelevant pages. By using this one page a day method you won’t run the risk of sitting at your computer until your eyeballs fall out of your head.

It might take some time and some trial and error to optimize your website but you will consider it time well spent when you see an increase in the amount of traffic, the increase in traffic should lead to more sales.