TIP

Here's how to see the difference between Yahoo!'s search results and the Yahoo! directory. Go to yahoo.com, type a word into the Search box, and click the Search button. The list of Web sites that appears is what Yahoo! calls the Yahoo! Search results, which are currently provided by Google. But notice the Directory tab at the top of the page; or, underneath some of the search results, you see a line that says something like More Sites about: Arthritis. Click either the tab or link, and you end up in the Yahoo! Directory. (You can go directly to the directory by using dir. yahoo.com.)

Keeping the terms straight

Here are a few additional terms that you see scattered throughout the book:

Google and the Open Directory Project provide search results to hundreds of search sites. In fact, most of the world's search sites get their search results from elsewhere (see Figure 1-3).

Why bother with search engines?

Why bother using search engines? Because search engines represent the single most important source of new Web site visitors.

You may have heard that most Web site visits begin at a search engine. Well, this is not true. It was true several years ago, and many people continue to use these outdated statistics because they sound good - "80 percent of all Web site visitors reach the site through a search engine," for instance. However, in 2003, that claim was finally put to rest. The number of search-originated site visits dropped below the 50-percent mark. Most Web site visitors reach their destinations by either typing a URL - a Web address - into their browsers and going there directly or by clicking a link on another site that takes them there. Most visitors do not reach their destinations by starting at the search engines.

However, search engines are still extremely important for a number of reasons:

Where Do People Search?

You can search for Web sites at many places. Literally thousands of sites, in fact, provide the ability to search the Web. (What you may not realize, however, is that all these sites search only a small subset of the World Wide Web.)

However, most searches are carried out at just a small number of search sites. How do the world's most popular search sites rank? That depends on how you measure popularity: the percentage of Internet users who visit a site (audience reach); the total number of visitors; the total number of searches carried out at a site; or the total number of hours that visitors spend searching at the site. Each measurement provides a slightly different ranking, though all provide a similar picture, with the same sites appearing on the list, though some in slightly different positions.

The following list runs down the world's most popular search sites, based on the total search hours at each site during a one-month period, as compiled in a 2003 Nielsen/NetRatings study:

Google.com 18,700,000 hours

AOL.com 15,500,500 hours

Yahoo.com 7,100,000 hours

MSN.com 5,400,000 hours

AskJeeves.com 2,300,000 hours

InfoSpace.com 1,100,000 hours

AltaVista.com 800,000 hours

Overture.com 800,000 hours

Netscape.com 700,000 hours

EarthLink.com 400,000 hours

LookSmart.com 200,000 hours

Lycos.com 200,000 hours

Remember, this is a list of search sites, not search systems. In some cases, the sites have own their own systems. Google provides its own search results, but AOL and MSN do not. (AOL gets its results from Google, and MSN's results come from Inktomi, a company owned by Yahoo! - at least at the time of this writing.)

The fact that some sites get results from other search systems means two things. First, the numbers in the preceding list are somewhat misleading. They suggest that Google has around a third of all the search hours. But Google also feeds AOL its results - add AOL's hours to Google's, and you've got almost two thirds of all search hours. Clearly the Google search system is far more important than the Google search site. In fact, the Google search system also feeds four more systems on this list - Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Netscape, and EarthLink - and many smaller sites that don't appear on this list. Some estimates put Google's share of the Web's search results as high as 75 or 80 percent. (That statistic will change soon, perhaps even by the time you read this, as you find out a little later in this chapter - Yahoo will stop using Google results soon.)

The second thing to understand is that you can ignore some of these systems. At present, for example, and for the foreseeable future, you don't need to worry about AOL.com. Even though it's probably the world's second most important search site, you can forget about it. Sure, keep it in the back of your mind, but as long as you remember that Google feeds AOL, you need to worry about Google only.

When you get to the search sites that appear below Lycos in the preceding list, the sites become dramatically less important. Google, according to this chart, has almost 100 times the search hours spent at Lycos. And the first 11 sites on this list combined have 265 times the search hours of Lycos. (However, as I explain in a moment, this list doesn't include some important search systems.)

Now reexamine the list of the world's most important search sites and see what you remove so you can get closer to a list of sites you care about. Check out Table 1-1 for the details.

Based on the information in Table 1-1, you can whittle down your list of sites to four: Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista. These four search sites are all important, and Google is also an important search system, feeding three quarters of the world's search results to AOL, Yahoo!, Netscape, EarthLink, and many other search sites. Teoma/Ask Jeeves is an important search-system feeder, too, providing results to many smaller search sites.

TIP

Okay, so you visited one or two of the sites that you just crossed off and found that you can submit your Web site to the index at that site. What's going on here is that the search site is selling paid inclusion into the search system that feeds it. (I talk about paid inclusion in Chapter 9.) When you pay Lycos to submit your site, for example, Lycos takes your money and then places your site into FAST/AlltheWeb - which isn't a Lycos search system. Lycos is simply acting as a reseller.

REMEMBER

Some important systems are not important sites. For example, MSN, one of the world's most important search sites, gets its search results from Inktomi and LookSmart. To take this into account, make the following changes to your list:

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Excerpted from Search Engine Optimization For Dummies by Peter Kent Excerpted by permission.
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