Establishing a brand name on the Internet is complex. It requires skill, knowledge and diligence in addition to having top rated content. The big companies like Preview Travel spend millions of dollars to create and maintain their Internet Brand. However the primary listing on the Internet is free. These include listing on directories, portals, special Interest sites and the Search Engine. You cannot buy free listings, they are in theory based on merit.

The Search Engine (SE) is one of the most frequently used ways to find information on the Internet and being listed on the top of their lists is critical. Listing has become an industry with many consultants now specialising in getting sites to the top. Some listers use unscrupulous tricks to get there and this practice, called spamming, has led Search Engines (SEs) to create an array of rules and checks that make it difficult for all of us.

This article is the first in a series about Search Engines (SEs). It provides a brief overview of the technology and prepares the way for more detailed discussion of the process of getting to the top of the SEs lists.

A SE is an index of the Internet. To use a SE, a user (also called a browser, a surfer, a visitor, a customer or client) types a word or words (called keywords) onto their screen (e.g., "barbados"). The SE then displays a list of sites relating to that word. The most popular SEs are Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, Lycos, AltaVista, Webcrawler, Snap, Hotbot, and Looksmart.

Many SE's, such as Yahoo! and Looksmart are also directories, classifying the Internet into categories such as automotive or travel. Some are also Portals, offering other services such as free emails, news services, entertainment and guides. They are all powerhouses on the Internet and are used extensively as launching pads to Internet resources.

Other major sites, such as Microsoft Network, Netscape, AOL, and WebTV also provide search services by aligning with other Search. For example, AOL used Excite in North America and Lycos in Europe. WebTV uses Infoseek.

The 20 most accessed sites in order are:

Rank. Site . Unique Visitors Database acces

1. Yahoo! 14,822,302** 2. Microsoft 12,012,20

3. Netscape 10,824,802 4. America Online 8,251,103 Excite

5. Infoseek 7,946,467** 6. Excite 7,597,98

7. Geocities 7,127,869 Lycos (web only) 8. MSN 6,170,26

9. Lycos 4,883,459** 10. AltaVista 4,657,826**

11. CNET 3,976,232 12. ZDNet 3,521,900

13. Webcrawler 3,233,339** 14. RealAudio 2,260,200*

15. Four11 2,202,307 16. Pathfinder 2,129,900

17. Hotmail 1,936,296 18. ESPN 1,931,460

19. Tripod 1,754,563 20. Compuserve 1,720,862

** The double asterisks were used to identify the search engines in the top 20 list. Atlanta-based RelevantKnowledge announced the results of a Study September 24 which monitored and estimated the usage patterns of Web users at home, at work and at college.

To get a page listed, a user may call up the SE on their screen and fill in an "Add URL" form. The URL (Universal Resource Locator) is the Internet address of the site to be submitted (e.g., http://Barbados.org). For large sites the URLs are usually added by emailling a request to the SE. There are also software programs and Internet services that will submit a site to all directories and search engines.

Once a url is added a SE robot, another name for a software program, will visit the site, evaluate the page, rate it and put it in its index . The process may take a few days or months. AltaVista, Infoseek, and MSN have instant indexing capability and will usually add a page within a few days: the others do it when they can. Sometime SEs do not visit or add the site (this happens quite frequently, when a SE decides it has too many sites indexed or when they are changing the software).

If the page gets into the SE index it will have to contend with thousands of others all vying for the top spot on searches for similar topics. The SE will rate pages based on content, key words and the relevance of those words to the page, and other pages in its index. It is an awesome task requiring massive computing resources.

Just submitting a URL to the SE is unlikely to work very well. It does not matter who you are or who you know. It does not matter if you are Chryster Corp. or Joe's Machine shop, your page on Chrysler can only get to the top if you do it right!.