What's a search engine?

Search engines are essentially programs on the Internet that gather all the web pages that they can find and index them all together. They use specialized applications called spiders, which allow them to search throughout the Internet for websites to index.

But don't think that just because these search engines are out there looking for new web pages day in and day out that you can create a website and wait until it gets indexed. And who knows, with the millions of websites on the Internet today, it may take quite a while for a search engine spider to find yours. The best way is to submit your site yourself, either via the web submission form on a search engine's website, or through a web site submission tool.

Compared to other forms of promotion on the Internet today, search engines still provide the best way to get traffic to your web site. It is one of the cheapest ways to generate new visitors in whatever niche market you're currently in. The downside to this is that search engine promotion is getting to be more and more competitive as the Internet continues to evolve. But don't worry, there's still some great ways to get good web site traffic through these services.

Different Types of Search Engines

Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

Pay-Per-Click search engines are a bit different than regular search engines, such as Google and MSN. Instead of the search engines indexing and ranking your site based on content, they actually allow you to bid for certain keywords for your site. Here's how it works:

1. You set a price for how much you're willing to pay for each click for keywords that relate to your product or service.

2. When someone searches for that keyword, you're site comes up in the search.

3. If that visitor decides to click on over to your website, you have to pay for that click.

A good thing about Pay-Per-Click search engines is that you only have to pay for the traffic that the search engine sends you, not like a random banner ad that a visitor may not even look at. You also don't have to wait so long to rank high for your chosen keywords; all you have to do is bid higher than everyone else and you'll be on the top of the rankings.

If you want to find out more about Pay-Per-Click search engines, try visiting some of the following popular ones such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and 7search.

Directories

Directories, despite what other people may say are not the same as the other search engines. They usually do not use automation tools such as spiders. They are run and created by people, who review web sites that are submitted to them, and place them in their proper category or criteria. A good example of this is Yahoo Directory or DMOZ.

Meta-Search Engines

If you want to be able to search different search engines all at the same time, try using a meta-search engine. These search engines go out and get search results from a number of different search engines and show them all to you on one page. This makes it a whole lot easier on you, so that you don't have to visit each search engine separately just to look for whatever it is you need. One example of a search engine like this is Dogpile.