Search Engines

Google - A first stop for most web savvy surfers looking for comprehensive, relevant results. Special searches for news, discussion groups, directories and images.

All the Web - Although not as well known as Google, this crawler-based search engine should be your second stop if you didn't have much luck with Google, some argue it's just as good, if not better. Targeted searches for audio, video, pictures, ftp files and news. It will even correct your spelling!

Yahoo! - Arguably the most well known search site, Yahoo is a actually a directory edited by human beings unlike the above two engines that find sites using electronic 'crawlers.' A good site for popular queries and if you think you'd benefit from human-edited search results.

Alexa - This search engine, based on Google's technology not only helps you find sites but gives you in-depth data on them, like how popular the site is compared to other sites on the web (a good way to guage a sites credibility), and what other sites people who visited that site go to.

Intro to search engine optimization - From searchenginewatch.com, a leading resource for webmasters and web advertisers and marketers, a great primer for understanding the many ins-and-outs of getting your site noticed on the web.

Search Engine Optimization Tips - Brought to you by Submit-it, a popular search engine submission service owned by Microsoft, this is an excellent and easy to understand guide to making sure your site is crawler-friendly.

Search engine optimization - FREE! - A practical walkthrough for optimizing your site to get noticed by the search engines. Written in 2001, some part are a bit outdated, but most of the information is still very relevant.

The animated internet - how search engines work - A very cool animated feature that illustrates the way search engines work using an interactive Flash animation.

How Internet search engines work - From howstuffworks.com, an easy-to-understand introduction to the complex technology that makes search engines work. Also explains different types of search engines.

Webopaedia - how web search engines work - A short one page rundown on the basic types of search engines and how they go about doing their jobs with lonks to more in-depth explanation. A good page for thos looking for a quick overview.

Search like the pros - A basic inderstanding of boolean logic is essential to getting relevant search results. This tutorial offers a detailed explanation of boolean operators, and a few other important search tips

Search engine math - Another great article by search engine expert Danny Sullivan of searchenginewatch.com. Discusses the use of addition and subtraction in search queries to find more relevant results.

Bare bones 101: basic search tips - As the title implies, this is a quick overview of the techniques outlined in more detail in the two links above this one. A good resource if you're looking for 'just the facts.'

Web ads that don't annoy and are effective - A good general article on this relatively new form of advertising from ebusinessforum.com This is a good place to start if you don't know much about it.

Google AdWords - An excellent service that has made Google one of the most profitable search engines around. Offers Cost Per Click (CPC) search based text ads. The Google presentation will give you a good idea of how CPC works.

Overture - Overture provides the technology - and sells the ads - for Lycos, AltaVista, MSN, Yahoo! and InfoSpace, If you're looking for 'reach' in your ads, Overture is a good place to look.