Search engines are by far the starting point for Internet users each and every day from home and the office. With nearly 90% of Internet traffic originating from the major search engines and directories daily, getting your website listed with the major portals is essential. The larger search engines index over 120 million documents, so competing for the top spots is extremely difficult and competitive. This guide documents what search engines look for when indexing, what to avoid, and other tips to help boost your rankings.

We researched the top search engines, indices and other websites that have shown to influence a significant part of the web as starting points. From our findings, we report to you how the search engines work, how they search and what they look for in a website when indexing. From below, select a search engine to view our findings.

Search Engine Comparisons
View a comparison of all the search engines we index in this guide and their advantages/disadvantages of each one ...
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Search Engine Stability Report
Keep abreast of which search engines have recently changed their algorithms and anticipated delays in getting your website listed ...
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Alexa Review Alexa is a browsing aid that relates similar web sites together based on certain criteria ... Read More Inside >> Altavista Review Altavista is one of the largest scale search engines that indexes your entire website ... Read More Inside >> AOL Netfind Review America Online's Netfind is a very important resource to ensure that AOL users can find your site ... Read More Inside >> Ask Jeeves Review Ask Jeeves is a natural language search engine which attempts to resolve your questions into appropriate answers ... Read More Inside >> Canada.com Review Canada.com is a medium/large scale search engine which is targeted to Canadian users ... Read More Inside >> Direct Hit Review Direct Hit is the largest popularity based search engines which powers most of the industry players ... Read More Inside >> Dogpile Review Dogpile is a meta search engine which queries multiple sites at once including major industry players ... Read More Inside >> Enhance Interactive Review Enhance is a pay-per-click search engine that was formerly Ah-Ha with minimum bids of only 3c per click ... Read More Inside >> Excite Review Excite is a medium/large scale search engine and portal that is increasing its popularity ... Read More Inside >> FAST Search Review FAST Search is a new contender in the search engine market but has already become a major player in under a year ... Read More Inside >> Google Review Google is a new and growing search engine that has become a major contender in the search engine market ... Read More Inside >> Hotbot Review Hotbot is a medium/large scale search engine which has now become part of the Lycos Network ... Read More Inside >> Infoseek Review Infoseek is a medium/large scale engine which has lost much of its popularity but is still an important resource ... Read More Inside >> Infospace Review Infospace's database is powered by the Netscape Open Directory Project and the Inktomi database ... Read More Inside >> Iwon Review Iwon is a new search engine that rewards users with contest entries the more they use the search engine service ... Read More Inside >> Looksmart Review Looksmart has become one of the most commercialized search engines and directory services since its inception ... Read More Inside >> Lycos Review Lycos is a large scale search engine and web portal that has increased its services beyond searching the web ... Read More Inside >> Magellan Review Magellan is an old search engine which was very popular around the same time Yahoo was introduced ... Read More Inside >> Metacrawler Review Metacrawler is a meta search engine which queries multiple sites at once including major industry players ... Read More Inside >> Northern Light Review Northern Light is a large scale search engine which index the web and traditional media ... Read More Inside >> Open Directory Project Review The Open Directory Project (ODP) is one of the largest databases that powers multiple search engines ... Read More Inside >> Overture Review Overture is a pay-per-performance search engine that tailors to mostly business users ... Read More Inside >> Search123 Review Search123 is one of the recent search engines to implement a real-time submission and bidding system ... Read More Inside >> Snap Review Snap is a directory service which is powered by people and is categorized by topics ... Read More Inside >> Webcrawler Review Webcrawler is an old search engine but still a popular engine which should not be forgotten ... Read More Inside >> WhatUSeek Review WhatUSeek is a meta search engine which queries multiple sites at once including major industry players ... Read More Inside >> Yahoo Review Yahoo is the oldest and still the most popular directory service for searching the web ... Read More Inside >>