What is a Search Engine

What is a Search Engine

A search engine is a database system designed to index internet site addresses. When you submit your site to a search engine it will send a bot or crawler via an automated process to retrieve the page that you submitted, this is what's commonly know as spidering a site. This will then be processed by the search engine to display the search results in the correct way.

Some of the major search engines are:-
Google
Google is one of the largest search engines and has indexed more than 8 billion web pages. You must submit your site to Google for a FREE listing
Altavista
Altavista was one of the leading search engines untill Google took the top spot. Altavista charge for listing your site
Fast - All The Web
One of the up and coming search engines and is still FREE to submit your site
Hotbot
Hotbot is still called a search engine but uses search results from other search engines and directories data bases. You can submit your site to be added into Inktomi search engine data base. (Inktomi is a search engine database which is used by 100's of search sites world wide)
Lycos
Lycos uses data from Fast - All The Web and has its own directory for any search results
Northern Light
Northern Light is one of the oldest and largest search engines on the Internet having indexed more than 350 million web sites. Still FREE to submit your site

The term Search Engine is often used to describe both directories and search engines which can be misleading.

See Also
What is a Meta Search Engine

What are Directories

What are Announcement sites

What are FFA sites

What is Link Popularity

What are Reciprocal Links

Promoting your Web Site Offline

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