Many webmasters are lost when starting learning how to optimize websites. Before being able to optimize for search engines, webmasters first need to know the different types of search engines. I’ve mentioned some non-Internet search engines that may play a major part in Web 3.0

Web Search Engines

Web Search Engines include Alexa, Ask.com, Google, Live Search, Yahoo! Search, and the newly released Cuil. These search engines use algorithms to crawl, index, and rank web pages. Each of them have their own criteria. Alexa focuses on traffic, and the quality of the traffic. Yahoo! focuses on Social Networking. Google focuses on inbound links. That is the simple answer, in truth; Google has 100 elements that define how it ranks pages.

Meta Search Engines

Meta search engines ask users to enter search criteria. The Meta Search Engine then access several search engines simultaneously. These operate on the premise that the Web is too large for any engine to index it all. These search engines create a virtual database. They do not have a physical database anywhere.

Other types/names for these are the Search Aggregator, (A9.com, DogPile) and Federated Search.

Desktop Search Engine

My ‘personal’ computer contains huge amounts of data. I spend hours on the net, working with web designers, and working with ecommerce businesses. My hard drive corrupted last summer and I took it to a forensic data recovery company. I was stunned to learn that Google’s toolbar had partitioned 1g of my drive (to date) to store information about my web use. This was my first introduction to Desktop Search Engines.

This type of search started as an Intranet – in house. It is now bubbling over into the Internet – World Wide Web. This is expected to grow into the foundation of Web 3.0. The objective is to create applications the users can pick and choose, letting them control the flow of access to the web.

Why worry about this? You may offer a download. But if the download does not include meta information that can be used by desktop search engines to find the file (easily) then it can become lost on a PC, forever. The client took the first step by downloading the ‘Sales Tool’ but the opportunity is lost when the file names Sales-Tool-483, with no meta-information, becomes lost to a PC users looking for New-Widget-Handbook.

Web Portals

This is a web site that provides a single function. Portals present information from diverse sources in a unified way. Many portals started as directories, most notably Yahoo! Or search engines: Excite, AltaVista, Hotbot. There are two types of portals. Yahoo! Is an example of a Horizontal Portal and the vertical portal (vortal).

Many of these are Pay Per Click or Paid Inclusion and offer varying levels of success.

Vertical Market (Vortal)

A vertical market meets the needs of a particular industry for example, a piece of equipment used only the real estate industry. It is also known as a niche market. Some of today’s most common vertical markets are: healthcare, educational, real estate, travel, banking, technology.

Some examples of this type of search engine are Hotjobs.com, Quicklaw, Business.com, Rightmove.

Conclusion

There are ways to optimize for each different search engine. Some require individual attention, others can use current methods of optimization.