Questions about WWW Searching

[Stryker]

Hi Folks,

I'm just finishing off a website for a small company and I would like to include a search capability for users if it's not too complicated. What would be the best way to allow visitors to perform a search within the site?

Also, what is the best way to get a site "indexed" by the big boys of the search engine world (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc...)? I've read some articles and tutorials about it, but can't seem to find a straight "this is how you do it" type answer.

Any feedback is welcome!
Thanks very much,
Stryker

[foolishone]

Can't answer the first one, but I will attempt the second one.

Search engines use spiders to crawl the web looking for webpages. The spiders eventually get to every website "memorizing" every word that is on that particular page and it also takes a "screenshot" so to speak, it copies the page and puts it into its cache.

The suggested way is to just let the spider crawl your website and out pops it on a search, that would be a very specific search at that. I think it takes Google like a month or two to do the entire internet. The only other way is to send in the domain to Google, via email,... They get tons of requests to get peoples domain in the search results so it might take a long time if you send it in, they say it is faster if you just wait for the spider, it will come anyway.

Google also has, among other things, a page ranking system where the page with the most links to it, gets higher up on the totem pole when searched for.

Eventhough they hate Google because [insert baby voice here] "they put a cookie on my computer" they have good articles. Explaination of PageRank 1

And of course Google Explaination of PageRank 2

Every search engine goes about it virtual the same way.

^fo

[faulkner132]

The easy way for doing a search is waiting until your site is indexed by Google, and using their search engine as your site search. Just put a form with a text box in it which restricts the search to your site.

See more at Google's site: http://www.google.com/help/features.html#sitesearch

[mattg2k4]

To submit your site to google, you don't need to email them. Simply fill out this form:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

[foolishone]

Yeah thats what I was talking about. I knew there was something like that somewhere.