About Internet and Free Search Engine Sumbission

THE INTERNET
The Internet is a large global network of computers. Originally designed to provide stable communications during a nuclear war, the 'net was a network of military bases and universities which grew beyond its original intention. Today the 'net is used by people of all countries for business, leisure and entertainment.

ISP
An ISP Internet Service Provider connects you to the internet by allowing you to hook onto its newtwork. This can be a set price a month, hour or year.Typical rates are £14.99 for unlimited access a month. Then on top of that you will have a telephone, ISDN or cable charge say from BT. A list of ISPs is given below with links to their webs sites.
Free ISPs will bombard you with advertising

HOST

When you have a website you need to ensure that it is available to the world 24hrs a day, to do this you need to have your website located on a computer a  server which never switches off, this is called hosting your site. 

A secure server encrypts the information in your Internet browser prior to sending it across the Internet. Only the host site that requested it can decode the information. In the unlikely event that anyone intercepts the information as it crosses the Internet, it would be practically impossible for them to break the encryption. 

DOMAINS
What is a domain name?
A domain name is an address which lets people find your site on the Internet. Domain names usually look like this: www.inspirationzone.cjb.net
   
What can a domain name include?
A domain name can include the following characters
Characters allowed abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 or a hyphen (-) 
Cannot start or end with a hyphen (-) 
 Length between 3-63 characters .Plc or Ltd must match the database in Companies house. 
2 characters allowed if 1 letter and 1 number
US RULES: length between 2-67 characters including .com 
   
After purchasing a domain the domain is yours only. 

Rules for .com .org and .net domains

Characters permitted: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789
Names are not allowed to start or end with a hyphen.
Maximum 67 characters long including .com .net .org

New names are avilable ending in .org.uk, .org and .ltd.uk

eClaire can Register your Domain name but you own it you will pay every two years to keep the name, you may purchase as many names as you wish. You will be sent an email a month before the renewal date asking you to pay for the name again.

If you have a Domain name you can transfer it to a different host if required most hosts charge a fee to transfer the name at approx £20.00 , this is a simple operation for the host but can take between 24hours and 2 weeks to do.

SEARCH ENGINES/DIRECTORIES
If you want to increase the amount of people looking at your site you can submit your web address to a search engine such as www.excite.co.uk under certain keywords describing what your site is about, then when people search the Internet for these words your site will appear in the results page. eClaire provide this service.
 
A search engine is the primary way that an internet user will find a web site, approximately 80 to 90% of all web traffic comes from search engines. 

Search Engine or Directory?
There are very substantial differences between true search engines and directories.

1. A search engine 'crawls' or 'spiders' the internet constantly tracking down and indexing new and updated pages. You can call out a search engines spider by visiting their home page and putting in a request or eventually the spider will visit your page and register it for possible indexing (this is not guaranteed). Spiders will return to a site on a regular basis e.g. every month or so. What the spider finds is then added into the index, which is basically a huge catalogue containing a copy of each page found by the spider. It can take some time for the page that has been 'spidered' to become 'indexed', thus you can wait months for you site to be listed. Page titles, meta tags and content are amongst some of the elements taken into account when a search engine lists a page. 
2. A directory is a human-compiled list of web pages. Every site indexed within a directory will have been reviewed by a human editor. Changing your page content will not affect your ranking. Spending hours finding the perfect meta tags is pointless - directories ignore them. Your listing will depend upon 'good' site content and you will have to submit a title and a clear, concise description about the page to entice a human editor to visit and carry out a review. As you can imagine, with the colossal amount of new pages appearing daily, you may have to wait sometime for your site to appear in a directories search results, if at all.

Most of the major search services use a combination of the crawler-based method and a directory index. Those that don't carry their own directory will 'partner' with another service who does. 

Below is a list of the most prominent search engines with regard to both size and popularity.

AOL Search
http://search.aol.com/
AOL is both a search engine and directory. According to AOL, they have over 1.2 million web sites categorised within their own directory. In addition, AOL is powered by the Open Directory Project (see below) giving access to a further 2 million websites worldwide. Inktomi provide the crawler-based results. AOL say that these sources of information make AOL a more 'complete and comprehensive experience'. AOL is one of the most well known and popular search services. They have just announced a new partnership with GoTo, which means we will start to see 'paid inclusion' links appearing in their search results.

Alta Vista
http://www.altavista.com/
In terms of pages indexed, Alta Vista is one of the largest search services. This service features both crawler-based results and a human-edited directory. Directory listings come from Open Directory and LookSmart. 'Ask Alta Vista' results come from Ask Jeeves. Alta Vista's audience reach is about 15% of the worldwide audience. The current estimate for AltaVista's number of daily searches is 50,000,000!

Ask Jeeves
http://www.ask.com/
Jeeves say that they only include web sites that have been evaluated by a human editor in their 'knowledgebank'. They do not have spiders. Their policy is 'consider all, include only some'. The editors look for specific criteria relating to site performance such as loading speed, presentation and also editorial content i.e. good unbiased information etc. Jeeves provides the 'Ask Alta Vista' results.

Direct Hit
http://www.directhit.com/
Direct Hit claim to be 'The World's Only Popularity-Ranked Search Engine'. They incorporate user-relevancy data in the search results rankings i.e. judgements made by previous searchers will have an affect on how relevant a site is - if a site is selected frequently from a list of results then it is considered to be 'popular' and will receive a 'boost' in ranking status. Direct Hit is a search engine with a spider capable if indexing over 10 million sites a day. Direct Hit provides search results for its partners - HotBot, MSN Search, LookSmart and Lycos.

FAST Web Search
http://www.alltheweb.com/
Previously known as 'Alltheweb', FAST Web Search is attempting to index the entire web, so we can search' All the Web, All the Time'. It consistently has one of the largest indexes of the web - well over 575,000 million pages indexed (Nov 00) and aiming to be the first to break the 1 billion milestone. Google and FAST are continually battling for the number 1 spot in terms of number of pages indexed. FAST serves Lycos with secondary search results after Open Directory. FAST crawls the web using it's own spider, FAST Web Crawler. 

Google
http://www.google.com/
Google has achieved much praise for it's high relevancy results. This is because Google makes use of 'link popularity' (this is not the same as Direct Hit's 'popularity ranking status') as the primary method to rank pages. What this means is, if another web page has a link to yours, for whatever reason, it is considered as a vote of confidence and your page will achieve a boost, especially if the page linking to you, is itself considered to be 'important'. Google search's using the exact search term specified and uses the location / frequency method to refine the results. Google serves Netscape Search and uses RealNames and recently bumped Inktomi to provide first round results for world leader, Yahoo. At the time of writing, Google were in the number one slot, ahead of FAST, in terms of number of pages indexed with a colossal 602 million!

HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com/
HotBot is owned by the Lycos Network. Its first page crawler-based results come from Direct Hit, then Inktomi, and directory results are provided by Open Directory. HotBot provides a fast, powerful search service which is favoured by researchers - several features are available to considerably refine results.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/
Lycos offers both search engine and directory results. It is one of the most well known search engines and in terms of audience reach is fairly high up the ladder with about 42% of the worlds users. (42% according to Lycos - according to Nielsen Netratings and Media Metrix, this is considerably lower at around 25% during August 2000). Lycos is powered by Open Directory, Inktomi and Direct Hit. Lycos owns HotBot but both are run as independent services.

Inktomi
http://www.inktomi.com/
Inktomi is slightly different to the other services, as it provides results to the search engines and directories and not directly to the public. Although you can visit the Inktomi site, you cannot access their data unless you are in partnership with them. They are like a 'wholesaler'. Inktomi using cutting edge technology and powers some of the worlds best known services such as MSN, Yahoo, AOL, HotBot, Lycos, GoTo and LookSmart.

LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com/
LookSmart is ultimately a category-based directory i.e. a human compiled directory of web-sites. It has over 200,000 categories, providing quality results and concise descriptions for each site. However, if a match is not found, LookSmart uses Inktomi and Direct Hits results. LookSmart provides results to MSN and Excite and has partnered with BT to launch search services throughout Europe and Asia. LookSmart's audience reach is currently 52 million per month

Open Directory
http://dmoz.org/
Open Directory is well used by other search engines. It operates in a slightly different way to the conventional services. Open Directory is regulated by 'an army of volunteer editors'. The theory is, that the web is disorganised and until it's organised, we cannot rely on automated results from crawling, or expect the small number of human editors employed by the directories to keep up with the millions of new pages going online. Therefore, we all have to chip in. Open Directory calls itself 'a self-regulating republic'. What this means is, if you have a topic that you are knowledgeable about, you can sign up and become a volunteer editor in your chosen field and help 'clean up' the internet a little by examining site content and cataloguing as appropriate (or not, as the case may be). This obviously works as the likes of Lycos, AOL, Netscape, Alta Vista and HotBot make heavy use of Open Directory results.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com/
Yahoo is well out in front as regards international popularity with MSN in second place. It is highly regarded for quality results that are easy to find. This is probably because Yahoo is a directory not a search engine and relies on human editors to compile a comprehensive index. It is the largest human compiled directory on the internet. However, if a search fails to find a match from Yahoo's own index, a further search will be carried out by Inktomi or Google

Excite
http://excite.com/
Excite is one of the most popular search services. It usually appears near the bottom of the 10 Ten for the UK. It is a search engine which crawls the web using it's own spiders. It serves Magellan and WebCrawler (both of which it owns but run as separate services). A lot more than just a search engine, Excite proves very irresistible to casual surfers and internet newcomers. 

GoTo
http://www.goto.com/
I've added GoTo because it sells it's main listings and therefore works in a slightly different way to the other major services. Companies pay for high ranking positions, allegedly making them more 'relevant'. Saving grace is crawler-based results come from Inktomi. 

MSN Search
http://search.msn.com/
We like MSN Search in the UK above Yahoo. But only just. It is safe to say that the UK's 2 favourites are Yahoo and MSN equally as they vie for the number 1 slot from month to month. MSN utilises both crawler (powered by Inktomi and Direct Hit) and index-based results (courtesy of LookSmart)

Netscape Search
http://search.netscape.com/
Netscape has it's own human edited database of 'official' websites and also uses the Open Directory project. Secondary results come from Google. Netscape has not managed to gain a top position in the UK but is highly regarded and very popular in USA.

Use this useful tool below to submit to some of the top search engines in one go.

METATAGS
Meta tags appear in the HTML code at the top of your page in the <head> tag. They are never seen by your visitors (unless they view the source using the browser option .They are not there to make a difference to your page. They are there purely to provide information to search engines which they use to evaluate your page. The original idea behind meta tags was as a design tool used to support pages poor in information i.e. very little text, mainly graphics etc and greatly enhance the chances of search engines understanding them.
Meta tags consist of 2 elements ­ the name and the content
E.g. <meta name="description" content=""office furniture ">
Most search engines like meta tags. They make life easier. Don’t ignore them. Meta tags are a great tool and should be utilised to the maximum. 
There are many different meta tags
 
The Description Meta Tag
Example <meta name="description" content="office furniture">
The description tag is how you tell the search engine and the world what your page is really about. It is displayed by some search engines in the search results under the page title. It is your advert. It should translate as "Click Me . It should also be geared to attract search engines during a search, so you should make sure that it contains your most important keywords and phrases at least once, twice if possible ­ but without losing readability or clarity.
But you’re going to have to be clear about this; descriptions can be anywhere from 150 to 250 characters in length including spaces (each search engine differs). That’s not a lot to play with. This paragraph is 232 characters long.
Have your important words and phrases at the beginning, your description will be relevant to both search engine and human searchers.
 
How Do I Write A Good Description?
Firstly, you have to remember not only are you writing to attract humans, but also search engines. So, there has to be a happy balance. The following elements need to be included:

* Your name, company name, group name etc
* Page title
* Precise information re page subject 
* Keywords and phrases (at least once)
* If you’re offering anything special, like a discount or a sale, mention it.
* If you do anything better / quicker / less expensive than anyone else, shout about it.
* Length should be between 150 - 250 characters including spaces (varies between search engines
* It must be clear, well written and grammatically correct

AltaVista and Google, two of the most prominent search engines will simply ignore the last part of a description if its over their limit of 150 and 170 respectively. 
If you use the same words a number of times in close proximity then overdoing it could result in tripping a search engine spam detector  and this could result in my page being rejected. Search engines don’t like spam and can be over sensitive. 

EMAIL
E-mail or electronic mail is just that, its an electronic way of sending text and sometimes files. An email address usually looks like this: yourname@yourhost.co.uk 
   
MATCHING EMAIL - look more professional by being you@your-domain.co.uk pa. is a process which involves forwarding mail from one address to another, for example say you have an email account with your ISP, your mail can be forwarded to a mail address associated with your domain name eg: yourname@yourcompany.co.uk, this enhances your corporate identity and streamlines multiple mail addresses to a single address.

A WEBSITE
A website is a page or a number of pages about your company, products and services made up of text and  images that are in .gif, .jpg or .png format.

WHY A WEB SITE
Your website is your virtual company brochure, advertising to the world on a permanent basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Increasing your ability to capture new business.