The Evolution and Revolution of Search Engines

Search engines, where would we be without them? Within the past 10-15 years the internet has become a huge part of every day American life. Many people nowadays cannot remember the time prior to having this wonderful information highway we call the internet. The internet has really revolutionized the way people live their lives; for example, you can bank online, buy just about anything you want online, meet new people online, and even find local movie times. However, one of the biggest benefits of the internet is the use of search engines. At any moment in time you may have a question, or an urge to get more information about a certain topic and that information can be easily attained through a search engine. In this article I am going to give you a brief history on the evolution of the search engine, and show you how they truly have revolutionized our lifestyles.

The history of search engines is the story of university students' projects evolving into commercial enterprises and revolutionizing the field as they went. The first attempt at creating a search engine was called Archie, and it was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University. This very primitive search engine did not use any robot technology. All Archie really did was just become a database of archived file names, which it would try to match with users' queries.

The next evolutionary step of the search engine was the introduction of "robots." The first use of robot technology was in the search engine World Wide Web Wanderer. Simply what robots would do is scan the internet for URL's, starting at one site and using the links in the previous site to find more sites. The problems with these first robots were that if they were not written properly they would cause too many hits on a server decaying the systems performance.

To combat these initial problems Martjin Koster came out with the first web directory called "Aliweb" in October 1993. Web directories are different than search engines because the sites listed in them are not from automated robots, but rather from human editors reviewing sites and placing them in the directory.

However, shortly after, in December 1993, a new robot was born. This was called the "spider." Spiders added a much further degree of accuracy by indexing the entire text of a webpage. The older robots only indexed the URL and titles of a page, which meant that some pertinent keywords might not be indexed. This greatly improved the relevancy rankings of their results, and thus was the first major step in forming the major search engines that we have all become so used to using today.

Not long after the spider, we saw the emergence of some of the big guns. In 1994, out of Stanford University came the extremely famous Yahoo. The two guys who started Yahoo were students, David Filo and JerryYang. Basically, at first Yahoo was just a list of these guys' favorite websites. But soon, due to its easy, user-friendly interface, became the most popular web directory. Due to the fact that its websites were all human reviewed, Yahoo was only able to index about 1% of the web. At this time, Altavista became the fastest growing search engines using the spider technology and was indexing up to 10 million pages a day.

By this time there are two different types of search engines, "author controlled" such as Altavista and Excite, in which results were ranked by keyword relevancy, and "editor controlled" such as Yahoo, in which humans manually placed websites into their index.
Then in late 1997 out of Stanford University bore the most popular and well-known search engine to date: GOOGLE Google has a different way of ranking its websites. It used a Pagerank system. Simply what they did was list websites higher in their results based on how many links were pointing to a particular site. Of course, the content on the page had to be relevant to the keyword typed into the search box. But basically, Google invented what you could call a system of voting. So a site with numerous backlinks or votes would rank higher. A backlink is just when someone else puts a link on their site that points to another outside site. Jump forward to today and Google has more than 80% of the websites on the internet in their index, which is pretty impressive.

Search engines have had a huge impact on the American lifestyle. They basically will grant you just about any information you want, all you have to do is type into the search box the topic you want to find more information about. Human beings are natural born information junkies, we always want to know more and find out more and search engines have made this urge of ours extremely easy to cure. Just think about it, maybe you need to fix a simple problem you have with your car. By using a search engine to do some research you may very easily figure the problem out, saving you a very costly trip to the car repair shop. They are just great educational tools, before search engines emerged if you really wanted to learn something you would go to your library and check out a book. Now before making that trip you may find out what you wanted by just sitting at your desktop and surfing through Google. The list goes on about the many benefits of this great new technology we call the search engine. I'm sure you can recall a time when you found some very good information by using one. If you're anything like me and find yourself addicted to this easily accessible information highway, then your making uses of them daily.

Search engines by nature were made very easy to use. However, with a little extra knowledge about how they work you can really take advantage of them and find great information very quickly. With the right knowledge of search engines and the use of specialized tools, you can literally find anything you want. And when I mean anything, I mean ANYTHING. For me personally I am excited to see what search engines will evolve into in the future. The sky is the limit. Who knows what type of search spiders the future will spawn, but one thing is for sure there will be newer and newer search technology, it's just our human nature to keep trying to top ourselves.

6:52 PM   by Unknown ·   0

Free SEO keyword analyzer tool!

This article is about a free website which has a great text analysis tool, that is very useful for anyone in the internet marketing game or who optimizes their website for search engine rankings. The site address is www.textalyser.net this tool really does the job when it comes to analyzing either all the text on a website or just a certain portion of your choice. Giving you all sorts of great information about the keywords used in the site. 

When you first enter the site, you can either paste in a certain portion of text into the designated area, or you just type in the URL of the whole website you would like to have analyzed. Then you can choose as to what analysis options you would like to perform. Such as the minimum characters per word, whether you would like it to ignore numbers, and a few more. After you chose your options, then you simply click analyze the text, thus returning you a complete very detailed analysis. 

At the very top of your analysis, it shows some basic text information like the total word count, number of different words used, sentence count, a readability index ranging from easy to hard. That little function comes in handy, because you definitely want the text of your page to be easy for the viewer to read. 

The next and perhaps most important feature, shows you the occurrences and frequency at which the top keywords for your page show up. It ranks them from the number one word to whichever number you would like it to stop at. That is set at the options you chose before you analyzed the text. This particular feature is very nice to SEO's, seeing as that it lists the top words on a site and the density/frequency of which they appear. So an example of how this might help would be if you were targeting to have a certain keyword density for a particular keyword on your site. Thus enabling you to figure out whether to add more or less of that word to meet the density at, which is required for the search engines to list you for that keyword. 

Not only does this tell you your top ranking keywords it tells you the top word phrases, ranging from 2 word to 5 word phrases. It gives the count of how many times that phrase was used and also shows the frequency compared to the rest of the text on the page. 

Anyone who is in the internet marketing field, especially marketers who optimize their websites for search engine traffic can make great use of this free tool. I personally find great use in this tool in the process of my keyword research, which is essential for any search engine optimization campaign.

6:49 PM   by Unknown ·   0

SEO Services, What To Look For

Search engine optimization has evolved into a competitive, growing industry. There are plenty of hoaxes and scams on the web. It seems that as the Internet grows more complex, so do the scams. Choosing an effective company can be quite a challenge. There are many factors to consider when hiring an SEO service. This article gives advice on how to select a credible website optimization service.

Assess the services and credibility of the SEO company. Customer service is always the key factor that one should look at. There are many ways of assessing an SEO service. One can try to inquire by placing a call or by sending an email to the company. Depending on the courtesy and time of response, you can initially assess its customer service. Does the company provide an "about us" page on their website? A reputable online business will provide an informative look at the personal side of their company and who they are. Look for other company details such as, the company address and location.

Avoid a guarantee of instant results or the #1 position. There are many factors to consider when optimizing a web page. Search engines use different algorithms and their spiders can vary. Any SEO company that guarantees the #1 position in the search results should be avoided. A legitimate company will be straight forward and honest and will tell its clients that no single company can give a guarantee of the top positions in the search results. A desirable SEO service should also provide reports and details regarding the standing of a client's website. They will be able to track the developments of their clients website in terms of keywords, links and their rankings in the major search engines.

A customer testimonial can provide a valuable insight when assessing a company's credibility. A satisfied customer is always a good indication of the effectiveness of a company's operations and will always be the most valuable piece of information about its integrity. If possible, try to locate and contact people who have received benefits from hiring an optimization service or at least try to validate the testimonials.

It's important to consider the cost of website optimization. Keep in mind a higher price does not necessarily mean the expensive services are more effective than the less expensive ones. The optimization rates companies charge may vary greatly. Search engine optimization is a trial and error process which requires research, hard work and dedication. Make sure the SEO service is primarily involved in search engine optimization and does not treat it as a sideline.

6:46 PM   by Unknown ·   0

Search Wars! Battle of the Major Search Engines

It's pretty safe to say that anyone who has a computer has at some point or another used a search engine. Search engines are extremely useful creatures. They have had a major impact on our society, I mean it's pretty amazing that you can just go type in anything you want into a search box and get back information about it in about two seconds. Before search engines came along you pretty much had to rely on going to the library to get more information. With that being said the popularity of search has created quite a huge market. The advent of paid advertising has sprung search engines into a multi-billion dollar a year industry, thus creating some pretty stiff competition. Right now we are in the midst of a major war on the internet, with the major players being Yahoo, MSN, Google, and an upcoming strong contender in Ask. So you may ask who is winning this war right now? And why? And who will take the lead in the future? One thing is for sure the reward of being the king of the search mountain will reap billions and billions of dollars annually.

So what are these top gun search engines competing over? The answer is clicks, on the paid advertisements they present every time someone uses their search engine. If you notice when you use Google for example that at the very top of the page and on the right hand side it says sponsored sites. This is where people trying to make money online pay to advertise for their company. These prices range from nickels and dimes per click, all the way up to hundreds of dollars per click, depending on the keyword. So the main objective for a search engine is to get as many people as possible using them to search the internet. Just think about it for a second, the more searches they get, the more chance of people clicking on their paid ads, which is where they make their money. Now of course not everyone is going to click on the paid ads, only a small percentage of the searches they receive ever actually make the search engine money. However, with millions of searches a day it only takes a small percentage to really make a big monetary difference.

So who are the warlords going to battle here? And who is in the lead? The three major competitors are MSN, Google, and Yahoo, and Ask is fighting its way back into the mix of things with some pretty sweet search features.

As of right now Google is in the lead, they receive somewhere in the ballpark of 80% of all search queries on the internet. Google is estimated to gross around 3 billion dollars in 2006, all from just paid advertisement. Now you may ask why is it that Google is so far ahead? Well, there are a few reasons. First, Google has the most advanced algorithm, which is the mind boggling mathematical equation that ranks and lists sites depending on the keyword. Trying to understand their algorithm is extremely complicated, Google only hires absolute geniuses to work for them. Second, is the brilliance of Google.com itself, which is their homepage.

Take a look at Google's homepage, all you can do is type your keyword in the search box and hit search. There's really nothing else going on it's pretty clean cut and user friendly, with absolutely no distractions from getting people to do what they want. Which is search

Now take a look at MSN, or Yahoo's homepage. It is just jam packed with all sorts of stuff to do from playing games to reading articles about the news. This stuff is great and all, however it does distract people from typing into the search box and inevitably clicking on a paid ad putting money in their pocket. I believe this is a major part in why Google has such a gigantic lead in the volume of searches they receive compared to the other top guns. .

So I firmly believe that in this case the giant will not be taken down. Even though you see commercials for Yahoo and Ask, you know the ones with the cheesy guy screaming Yahoooo and the monkey that Ask is featuring. The bottom line is Google has the best algorithm right now and their site doesn't distract people from searching, which will yield many more search queries. Who knows though just as Google basically came from no where and took over the market, there may be a new kid on the block that will topple them. However as of now though they are the reigning champions.

6:43 PM   by Unknown ·   0

SEO- 9 Ridiculously Easy Steps to the Top 10

Search Engine Optimization companies are making a fortune by doing the menial work that is overlooked by many designers. It is ridiculously easy to do most of the work done by most SEO companies, all you have to do is create good habits.

There are 9 main points you should focus on:

• Keywords
• URL Text
• Description, Meta tags
• Title tags
• Image Names
• ALT tags
• Heading tags
• Content
• Hyperlinks

The focus of these 8 steps is to load your pages with as many "keywords" as possible.

Keywords
Keywords are the most important aspect of good SEO, this is where you tell the Search Engines what your site is about. Search Engines use an algorithm to determine the "Keyword Density" of your site, this formula is:

Total Words ÷ Keywords= Keyword Density

Use this formula on your competitors web site and see how they score, then aim to beat that score.

Choose keywords that best relate to the information, products or services that you are offering. For instance, if I am designing a site about "Web Design", I want my site to include the words "Web Design" as many times as possible.

However, most people don't just search for just one word, they type phrases, so you should consider the phrases that best suit your sites target market. For example, if I am creating a site about "Web Design" in New Orleans, I would include "New Orleans web design" in my keywords. Another way around this is to not separate my keywords with commas, just use spaces, and the Search Engines will make the phrases for you. The most important thing to remember is that the content of each page is different, so only use keywords pertaining to that page.

URL Text
When you name a new page you have the option to call it anything you could possibly think of, why not use a keyword? After all, the URL address is the first things a search engine comes across when indexing your pages. You have to remember content doesn't come easy to everyone, so you gotta slip in your keywords when the process gives you an easy one.

Description Meta tags
These tags are dwindling in importance since Search Engines are now looking at content, but every little bit counts.

Optimize your meta tags to match your content, products, and services, and the Search Engines that still look at meta data will reward your efforts.

Title Tags
Title tags are the tags that tell the Search Engine the title, or formal description of the document or page. This is the word or phrase that is seen at the top of the browser window. The most important rule about title tags is, don't put anything in the title tags but keywords. Once again this is an easy time to slip in your keywords, so don't miss out.

Image Names
As I said before, content doesn't come easy to everyone, so slip in your keywords whenever possible, this applies to image names. If you are saving a picture of a guy working on a computer for your web design web site, don't call it "some_dude.jpg", call it "web_site_design.jpg". The Search engine will look at the code for the site and see the image pertains to the content of the site and this will be another relevant element on that particular page. You have to take the easy ones when you are given a chance.

ALT tags
ALT tags are keywords that you can attach to images, giving more weight to the image since Search Engines can't analyze the content of the image itself. Here is a chance to slip in more keywords without writing great content, use it.

Heading tags
Heading tags are associated with the bold font that leads into a section of text. Like this:

Web Design
Web Design Inc. offers custom web site designs...

Your heading tags should only be keywords, and should be presented in the order that your Meta tags follow.

H1= first meta tag, H2= second meta tag...

Try to utilize all 6 heading tags on each page to ensure maximum page optimization.

Content
As every expert will tell you, "Content is King." Each web page should have at least 350 words on it, and the more the better, but keep in mind the formula for keyword density. You don't want to fill a page with 1500 words of jibba-Jabba and only 5 keywords in it. Some people get hung-up on how browsers display text, and use images with text in them because they want a cool font, but browsers can't read the text embedded in images, so this content ads no weight to the page in a Search Engines eyes.

Linkbaiting is the new trend among high ranking sites. Linkbaiting means writing quality content, or articles that other web sites can display on their pages as long as they give credit, and a link to your site.

You don't have to be a vi or emac expert to write good web content, just be thoughtful of how you word things and incorporate your keywords.

Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are text links to other pages on your site. The rules of SEO and hyperlinks are easy:

• Use hyperlinks so the Search Engine will have a text link to follow to the next page
• Don't use one word links, use long link phrases, preferably keyword phrases
• Use bullets, or some sort of small image that you can attach an ALT tag to, this will ad more importance to the link, and throw in a couple of free keywords for you.

Keep these 9 aspects in mid when designing a site, and you are sure to have a leg up on the competition.

6:38 PM   by Unknown ·   1

Life Insurance - Money Saving Top Tips

More and more people are buying life insurance online and the numbers seem to be doubling every two years. The reasons are clear. Prices are lower on the Internet and life insurance is fundamentally a simple insurance product.

Despite the underlying simplicity of life insurance, most web sites channel their online clients through a telephone based help and advice service manned by experienced personnel. They represent your safety net so if a little technical knowledge is called for, help is at hand.

But it's always a good idea to have a few Top Tips in your back pocket when you're shopping online for life insurance. They'll help you ask the right questions and find the best policy.

1. Always have your Life Insurance policy "Written in Trust".

This means that in the event of a claim, the money goes directly and immediately to the person(s) you nominate when you first take the policy out. It also avoids all possibility of your estate having to pay Inheritance Tax on the proceeds of your policy and that could represent a 40% tax saving!

All you have to do is tell the online brokerage organizing your policy that you want your policy "Written in Trust" and the names of the people who the life insurance company pay in the event of a claim. They will then sort it all out for you. The extra good news is that this service is invariably free of charge. So it's a win win situation and there aren't many of those around these days!

2. In the early years a Reviewable Life Insurance Policy will be cheaper, but a Guaranteed Policy will work out a better buy in the longer term.

With a "Guaranteed Policy" the insurance company guarantees never to increase your policy's premium.

With a "Reviewable Policy" you agree that your insurance company can review the cost of your policy at regular intervals. But don't be kidded - in our experience a "review" is just another word for a price increase. After all, who's ever heard of an insurance company passing up a chance to charge you more! The review intervals are usually between 2 to 5 years, but this does vary between insurance companies. You will find the details of the review intervals on the documents sent to you before you accept the insurance - these are called The Key Features Documents.

So, comparing otherwise like for like policies, in the early years the premiums for a "Reviewable Policy" will undoubtedly be lower than the premiums for a "Guaranteed Policy". Thereafter, the premiums for a Reviewable Policy increase eventually catching up with and overtaking, the premium for a "Guaranteed Policy".

In our experience, you can expect the monthly premiums for a Reviewable Policy to exceed those of a Guaranteed policy in about 7 to 10 years and then within the following 10 years, more than double again. If your budget is currently tight, then by all means chosen a Reviewable Policy - after all, your salary may increase in coming years and ease the strain. On the other hand, if the premiums for a Guaranteed Policy are affordable, we think they represent your best buyer.

A footnote. Many insurance companies have stopped offering "Guaranteed" rates for standalone critical illness insurance policies. This because they have experienced much higher claim rates than they initially expected. However, you may still find a Guaranteed life insurance policy that also provides critical illness cover. As we have explained, "Guaranteed" rates are especially good value and if you can get a quote for a Guaranteed life policy that includes critical illness cover, you may have a real bargain.

3. Thinking about a Joint Life Insurance Policy?

A Joint Life Insurance policy is usually written on a first death basis. This means that the policy will pay out on the death of the first policyholder, subject to the policy being in force at the time. This leaves the second person uninsured and older. Older people can struggle to get life insurance at an affordable premium, so rather than a Joint Policy consider taking out separate policies now. Overall, it will work out a little dearer - but you get twice the cover and double the peace of mind.

4. Taking out a Life Insurance Policy? Now would be an ideal time to include Critical Illness cover.

Are you likely to need Critical Illness Insurance in the future? Yes? Then consider adding it now to the life insurance policy, you're arranging. Why? There are three reasons.

Firstly, a Life Insurance policy combined with Critical Illness cover will work out significantly cheaper than buying two separate policies. Secondly, as we have already explained in the footnote to Tip 2, you may be able to buy a combined Life and Critical Illness policy with a guaranteed premium. That could be a real bargain. Finally, premiums for critical illness cover increase rapidly as you get older - so the sooner you take it out, the cheaper it will be.

5. Don't confuse Terminal Illness cover with Critical Illness cover.

There's world of difference between Terminal Illness and Critical Illness cover so it's important to understand the difference.

Terminal Illness cover pays out the insured lump sum if a Medical Doctor diagnoses you with an illness from which the Doctor expects you to die within 12 months. Most good life policies automatically include Terminal Illness cover at no extra cost. It's basically an early, and welcome policy payout.

A Critical Illness policy pays out the insured lump sum if you are diagnosed with one of a wide range chronic illness and there is no life expectancy criteria. Indeed, with many of the insured illnesses you could expect to survive for many years. For example: certain cancers, heart disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis, loss of speech, sight or hearing, onset of Parkinsons or Alzheimers disease, third degree burns etc. Say you were an engineer aged 40 and you lost your sight. A Critical Illness policy would pay out immediately and that money could well be vital in helping you and your family through many difficult financial years ahead. If you just had Terminal Illness cover there'd be no chance of a payout.

So as you can see, Critical Illness cover is far more comprehensive than simple Terminal Illness cover and for that reason critical illness cover always costs you extra.

6:34 PM   by Unknown ·   0

Buying Life Insurance Online - Is it a Really Good Idea?

The advent of the internet has opened up the possibility of cheaper life insurance for all.

In years gone by, if you were considering life insurance you would probably have invited an insurance salesman from your favorite insurance company to meet you or alternatively gone to your local insurance broker. But rarely would you have been courageous enough to get competitive quotations. It just wasn't done. You trusted the salesman to do the best for you and surely you thought, life insurance is somewhat technical and requires specialized knowledge. All very cozy. All very expensive. How life has changed!

People now realize that life insurance is not that complicated. If on a scale of 1 to 10, buying car insurance online rates 9, life insurance must be a 7 or 8. This has opened up the Internet as a prime arena for cut-price life insurance. That's not to imply that life policies bought on the Internet are in any way substandard. No, you're most likely to end up with a policy from one of the UK 's big insurers like Norwich Union or Legal & General and they'll be exactly the same policies as you could buy anywhere else. It's just that the intense competition on the internet and efficiency and simplicity of the system, means that most online brokers decide to cut the commission and roll back the savings into lower prices.

Ah yes, I hear you saying, 7 or 8 implies that life insurance is more complicated than car insurance. Yes, it is - but that doesn't mean that it represents a problem. The companies selling life insurance online recognize that many clients feel that some level of personal advice is useful and indeed, necessary. They accommodate this with a mix of useful information on the web site and more often than not, with a short telephone conversation with a life insurance adviser prior to you buying. This provides reassurance and helps to ensure you really do get the policy options you need all at rock bottom prices.

Buying online certainly is a good idea.

6:32 PM   by Unknown ·   0