faq − search engines
What are search engines?
What are META tags?
What are ALT tags?
What is submission?
Why is my site not listed?
What are search engines?
Search engines are databases of web pages and content. When you're looking for information about a certain topic, you enter your search parameters into the search engine submission box which then searches its database and returns a list of results relating to your input.
The information you get when your search results are returned may not necessarily be the most relevant pages as many of the search engines are filled with 'gateway' pages to other search engines. This can be rather irritating but there is little to be done about that, so ensure you scroll through the results as you will often find what your looking for a little further down.
What are META tags?
META tags are a special Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags that provides information about your page that is not visible on the page itself. They provide information on the content, title, key search words, author etc. Many search engines use these tags to help index the website and display the description in the search results.
What are ALT tags?
ALT tags are used to describe any images that you have on your pages. These are important in several ways; as the image placeholder loads there is a description of your image, once the image has loaded they then show as a ToolTip on mouse over. For text only browsers they display the image description and, importantly, are an accessibility aid for the visually impaired when using a text reader.
What is submission?
Submission is submitting your web site to be included in the database of that search engine. Once your site has been submitted it may be reviewed by an Editor, but more commonly by a 'spider' or 'robot'. These are pieces of automated programs that crawl over each site and catalogue the META tags for the title and page description and the key phrases that have been entered along with the physical text on the page. How they record this and the priority they put on each depends on the particular engine.
Most of the main search engines now offer a 'sponsored' link submission where you can pay to have your results shown on the page when certain keywords are searched for. This is usually called Pay Per Click (PPC) and is a very good way of getting your website promoted, though can be costly.
Why is my site not listed?
Unless you have paid for either an accelerated submission (and few search engines offer this any more) or paid for a 'sponsored' link you will have to wait... and wait... and wait. Some search engines take over six months to index and crawl your site with their automated 'spiders' and 'robots' and once listed in the engine it can take many more weeks for your site to work it's way up the results to near the top. Unless you have very specific and unique search words it is often very difficult to get your site listed at the top of a 'generic' search, worth bearing in mind when selecting your targeted search keywords.