Keeping up with the search engine world is important not just for marketers and researchers but also for site developers, because the way a search engine views a site is closely related to site design and content structure. Search engine specialists should be brought in during the design and development of the Web site templates, and not after site creation, says Johnson. Link popularity is a growing feature affecting site ranking at such search engines as Google, thus providing growing impetus for the convergence between publishing and linking of content on the Web. Hence it is important for sites to actively promote links to themselves from other sites via techniques like link exchanges, referrals, affiliates, Web rings, and inclusion in yellow pages sites as well as in vertical industry hubs. Challenges arise for search engine and directory companies in weeding out dead links, keeping up with sites that deal with rapidly breaking news, reporting traffic on cached pages, ensuring online privacy, dealing with pornographic or hate content, and thwarting spammers.
Challenges arise in devising search engines for double-byte languages, such as most Asian languages.