Over the last ten years, the Web has evolved from a promising innovation to an essential part of life and business. Today, hundreds of millions of users can instantaneously access billions of pages. Much has changed in that short time. Many businesses rose from nothing to become important forces on a global scale, and just as quickly vanished, to be replaced by new companies with new business models. In just one decade, we we experienced a tidal wave of change -- the equivalent of what previously might have transpired over the course of two to three generations. And just as that wave of change took us by surprise, we are now likely to be surprised by the absence of such a wave, or the contrast between the after waves and ebb tide and the momentous rate of change we just experienced. Many were mesmerized by rising stock prices of Internet stock prices and imagined that they would rise forever, and many came to expect that the overall rate of change in the world of business would continue to accelerate. But, no, unpredictability remains unpredictable. In the midst of change, stable patterns appear and persist. And in the midst of stability, change slowly swells, perhaps to fall again or perhaps to form another tidal wave.
In the days when the Internet wave was at its peak, AltaVista ruled as the premier search engine -- the best, the simplest, the most powerful way to find whatever you anted on the Web, whenever you wanted to -- helping many to find useful information and resources on the Web, when the Web was growing faster than it has ever grown and when it was at its most volatile and unpredictable.
Due to many mistakes, AltaVista, despite its technological excellence, failed as a business, as did its parent company, Digital Equipment. Digital was swallowed by Compaq, which was swallowed by Hewlett-Packard. AltaVista was spun off as an independent company, then swallowed by Overture, which was swallowed by Yahoo.
Today, Google reigns supreme as the simple, complete, powerful way to find anything on the Internet. And "to google" has become a common English verb.
But despite the vast changes in the business of Internet search, the basic principles of how search engines work and how to design Web pages so users will be likely to find them remain the same as they were in the days of AltaVista.
If you ;work for a large well-known, well-funded business, don't bother to read article. Such companies get lots of Web traffic from their existing customers, and due to their name recognition and advertising. They are big and important enough to negotiate their own terms with search engines. Small companies should not try to imitate the Web designs and Web business plans of their large competitors. To do so is to commit business suicide. RAther, they should seek low-cost and no-cost ways to build Web traffic, including using simple search-engine-friendly Web page design.
Web-Search Basics -- How to Be Found and What Gets in the Way
A search engine does not instantaneously check the entire Web whenever it gets a query. Rather it periodically sends out robot programs (crawlers) to gather content from the Web and stores that content in an "index". It then matches query words with words stored in the index. The freshness and the completeness of the information of the index differ from search engine to search engine and over time. In other words, the index is assembled mechanically and automatically, following programmed rules, not based on case-by-case human judgment. The credibility of search engines and the loyalty of their users depend on their reputation as fair information brokers -- that the same rules apply to all, regardless of the size of the company that provides information on the Web, and without taking money as payment for inclusion in the index. Search engine companies that appear to breech that trust, like magazines that appear to sell their editorial content, put their user base and hence their business survival at risk.
Some, including Google, successfully perform the high-wire balancing act of accepting paid text advertising that is displayed when queries include "keywords" that advertisers have paid for. They are careful to display these ads in such a way as to distinguish them from regular search results, and they are careful to keep the underlying index free, complete, and without taint of paid inclusion. In fact, the text ads at Google are often closely targeted to the query words and often prove useful to users. And small companies can and should use Google's Adwords (http://adwords.google.com) as an inexpensive way to attract potential customers, and should also consider becoming an "adsense" partner of Google (http://www.google.com/adsense) placing code on their pages, by which google-generated text ads targeted to the content of their pages appear unobtrusively on their Web and pages and they get paid when visitors click on those ads. That's a quick and simple way for a small business to generate a little ad revenue from its Web pages, without having to spend any time trying to sell ad space.
In any case, rules are at the heart of the search engine business -- rules for inclusion in search engine indexes and rules for matching queries with information in those indexes and rules for determining the order in which results will appear. If you understand the basic rules and play by them, search engine users may come to your content pages in large numbers. If you don't play by the rules, you may be poorly represented or not represented at all.
Web-Search Basics: What's Strange About Search Engines
Yes, search engines, like Google, have separate indices for graphics. But basic Web search deals with text only --= no graphics at all. THey could care less about your logo or photos of your products or how slick the graphic design of your pages is. Text is all that matters.
Yes, search engines will present information from your Web site in lists of matches to queries related to your text content. But they present that information in their format, not yours -- ignoring your branding rules. And if your page design includes tables or frames or java script, chances are good that the information may appear jumbled (in the wrong order) or truncated and incomplete.
Also, the search engines will match queries with specific individual pages at your site, rather than your home page. The user is their customer, not you the small business with information displayed on the WEb. Search engines will do their best to send their users straight to the information they want, rather than to the carefully constructed context that you built at your Web site by the way you organized your pages and links.
Also, search engines place value on and index best Web pages with lots of text information. Large text-heavy pages get more weight than small pages with pleasing graphic design. If search engine traffic matters to you (and it certainly should if you have a small business):
Low-Cost Ways to Get Search-Engine Traffic
If you value search engine traffic, you should make your Web pages as simple and informative as possible.
Practical Fixes -- Instead of Redesigning Your Whole Site
Perhaps the principles mentioned here make sense to you, but you are in no position to completely redesign your site. In that case, you might want to create mirror pages -- static html pages with the same text content as your present graphically designed search-engine-unfriendly pages. These mirror pages will also be "printer-friendly" and accessible by the blind, who use computer-based devices that convert text to voice and can "read" Web page text out loud.
Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. Click here for details. or send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
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