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How Do Search Engines Work?

Search Techniques

All search engines search the Internet for important words. Each search engine keeps an index of those words and where it found them, ranks how relevant each word is to each page, then allows users to search for the words in its index. A search engine uses two techniques to collect the information for its index. A search engine may manually build and maintain a search engine directory and it may use robots to endlessly crawl through the links on the Internet.

This Little Program Went to Market: Create, Deploy, Distribute, Sell, and Market Software and More on the Internet at Little or No Cost to You tells you how to register with some of the more popular search engines and how to invite their robots to your site. This Little Program Went to Market also tells you how to prevent robots from indexing certain pages, or to restrict undesirable robots' access to your site.

Page Rank

Search engines will give each page it indexes a popularity rank number. The higher rank a page has, the higher it will appear in the search results. Recent modifications to search engine formulas include ranking based on content of a page, how relevant the page is to the topic, and how popular the page is. These criteria are all evaluated by those robots that explore all the links on your site and index words.

This Little Program Went to Market also tells you how to do check the page rank of any of your pages.

Search Engine Optimization

You can improve your page rank through better use and placement of keywords on your Web page. This is called Search Engine Optimization. Many search engine optimization techniques are discussed in This Little Program Went to Market. But as you consider such changes to your pages, keep in mind that you must build your site for humans to read. Don't sacrifice readability just to increase your page rank. Content still matters the most for making your site popular. People will find your Web site and link to it if your Web site has something they are interested in, provides information in a unique way, and is easy to read.

This Little Program Went to Market also tells you how to do keyword analysis on your pages:

  • Determine what search words and phrases people are using.
  • Learn the search words and phrases people used when they found your page.
  • Discover what words might make better keywords for your pages.

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(book image not shown)More than 25 open source and freeware programs are used in the book This Little Program Went to Market to demonstrate how to create a Web site, put an Internet sales and marketing process in place, and make your own programs "market ready". The book gives step-by-step instructions for all the steps and tools required to Create, Deploy, Distribute, Sell, and Market Software and More on the Internet at Little or No Cost to You. All the tools demonstrated in the book are available for free!

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