Exercise 23a

Google,Yahoo and MSN not only allows you to search for sites you are interested in but also allows you to include your own site to their index and webcrawlers.They also provide an array of services to help businesses establish sites that would fit their financial goals and capabilities. These services are done for a fee.They have several tools available to help users troubleshoot "crawling" and indexing their sites as well as how to establish and maintain them.

Google allows you to submit your URL and to add and update your site to their index for free. They have a crawler, Googlebot, which will help promote your site to other users.Google updates its index on a regular basis, so updated or outdated link submissions are not necessary. There is a form you fill in. As for advertising a site, they have programs called Google AdWords( for advertisers) and Google Adsence (for site owners) wherein you only pay when people click on your ad. They also have other business programs for a fee.

Yahoo has an advanced search option that permits users to expand their search even by country, language and file format. Google and MSN have similar features. In other words, these 3 search engines allow users to apply SEO or "search engine optimization" to their websites. SEO examines how search engines work and considers what people search for. If you manage or own a website, you have to make sure that not only does your site's content encourage people to visit it but that the source code utilized improves the traffic entering your site. These 3 search engines helps you achieve these goals by providing the right tools to do so.

One suggestion Google made that interested me is a technical one. They suggest you use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site because according to them, most search engine crawlers see your site much as Lynx would. The premise is that if fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, etc. keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then regular search engines may have trouble crawling your site. This is the first time I heard about Lynx!

In terms of design quality, Google Webmaster suggests that you provide a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. Make navigation easy! This is an important feauture you want to maintain because if your visitor finds it hard to go through your site, chances are they would immediately leave and find a different one that is easier to navigate.