Many years ago my brother-in-law, (who was in the army at the time), called me to see if I could help him find information on the internet about landmines in Angola. After assuring him that the internet was perfect for finding information about anything I set to the task. An exhaustive search spread over a couple of days using the main search facilities at the time (I think Yahoo was the main one back then) led me to find around 3 articles. Years later and I just did a search at Google and found 131,000 articles in .32 seconds - not bad huh? 

So how does a search engine find information so quickly and more importantly how can search engine's help people find your business online?

Currently Google (www.google.com) is the most utilised search engine globally with some 200 million searches carried out each day. The search engine works over a hardware platform using a cluster of 10,000 networked personal computers that index's a whole website URL and then applies a pagerank based on probable search criteria. Currently there are some 3 billion web addresses indexed and Google will only find a match as a result of all words entered.
 
Once upon a time website submission into a search engine was free, or took time using web 'spiders' that trawled the internet looking up such information as the web address, header information (page title for example) or Meta-data (keywords contained in the header information of a webpage). However this all took a long time and didn't make search engine's much money so now you pay for the privilege!

The good new's though is that this speeds up the search process and places you above your competitors. So what should you do?

When considering a search engine there are really only two things to consider, your market and your budget. In Australia, NineMSN, (www.ninemsn.com) is the single most viewed webpage - simply because when you buy a new PC and then connect it to the web, Internet Explorer will configure itself to make NineMSN the default homepage. At the top of NineMSN is a 'Search the Web' box which utilises the LookSmart (www.looksmart.com.au) search engine - and this accounts for around 66% of all web searches in Australia each week.

OK, now how much I hear you ask? Google uses a tiered process that includes a standard pricing structure up to a bidding process (where keywords such as 'investment' can be used in 30 minute campaigns which cost ten's of thousands of dollars). Realistically though the standard package uses a promotion system whereby Google only get paid (USD$0.05) when a viewer clicks through to your website, (the account holder can set click limits so budgets don't get blown).

Until recently, Looksmart provided a flat fee of $440 per annum and this worked very well. Unfortunately though, a recent buyout by Sensis (the Yellowpages people), has seen that program stop. I rang them the other day only to discover that they will be replacing that plan with another soon.

I look forward to discovering their new solution!