The four major Search Engines

There's only a handful of search engines that can really bring visitors to your web site. As always, it's
quality that matters, not quantity. For this reason, you should concentrate on the important search
engines when you submit your web site to search engines.
Currently, there are only four major players: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask.com. They are
responsible for the bigger part of the search engine traffic you can get because they also power other
search engines, for example the search engine on AOL.com displays Google results.
In addition, there are country specific search engines. If you have a German web site, you should also
submit to the popular German search engines. In general, there aren't more than three or four relevant
search engines in a country. The majority of the web surfers uses the same search engines.

Internet directories can be a good addition
Internet directories are different from search engines because all web site submissions are reviewed
by humans. There are several directories where your web site should be listed. One of the more
important directories is The Open Directory Project at www.dmoz.org.
You should also submit to topic specific search engines. If your web site sells garden equipment, you
should submit your web site to specific garden directories. Even if they send you only a few visitors,
they could improve the link popularity of your web site which helps your ranking in other search engines.

Definition: Search engines and Internet directories
Search engines use indexing software programs, called robots or spiders. These software
programs are programmed to constantly crawl the web in search of new or updated pages.
They will go from URL to URL until they have visited every web site on the Internet. When visiting a web site, a search engine spider will record the full text of every page found (including sub-pages).
After that, it will continue to visit all external links. The URL of a web page is the address of a web page, for example "http://www.Axandra.com/ibp".
By following external links that point to your web site, search engines are able to find your site. The search engine spiders will then revisit your site periodically to refresh the recorded information.Search engines rank your web pages based on mathematical formulas.
Search engines and Internet directories are not the same. Internet directories don't use indexing
software programs. If you submit your web site to an Internet directory, your web site will be
indexed by real people who decide whether to include your web site or not.
Directories are usually subdivided into categories, and you have to submit your URL under the
most appropriate heading. If you don't, it is very likely that your web site won't be listed.