When people think about being found on the Internet they almost always think of the Internet search engines first. Yet very few business people really understand what the search engines are or how they work. Gaining a basic understanding will help you decide if the search engines should be an important part of your online marketing strategy. Search Engines vs. Think of a directory as a national yellow pages.
Every listing belongs in a specific category.
If you want to find a restaurant in Colorado Springs you would go to their regional listings, pick US States, Colorado and then Colorado Springs, go to the Business section and then finally look for Restaurants. A search engine is a collection of millions of web pages and the text that appears on those pages. Excite, one of the top search engines, claims to have 55 million web pages in their database. These pages are not organized in categories like the listings in a directory. Instead, search engines work by cataloging every word that appears on a web page and then storing that information in a database.