A search engine is what is used to search for information on different subjects or topics on the World Wide Web (WWW). Search engines operate algorithmically or a mixture of algorithmic and human input. Some examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, MSN search and many more.
To get listed you will need optimisation and have some form of search engine marketing in place for your website
Web search engines store information on web pages and then retrieve it from the WWW. A web crawler also known as "spider" is the one retrieving information by following every link it sees.
The contents of each page are analyzed first before indexing them. Web page data are stored in a data index for search queries. Some search engines like Google, store all in a source page while Altavista store every word they can find.
Google has become more popular because of the way its engine gives out results. The user normally expects that his/her searched terms are to be returned in the results page rather than simply a web site that contains the searched word in passing. Google's cached pages are very useful.
The process involves the user entering a query into the search engine, then the search engines checks its index and provides the best results. What's better is that it contains a small summary of what the page is about.
The usefulness of a search engine is seen in the results that it gives. Because some web sites might just contain the word or phrase in the query and some web sites are more popular and authoritative with the topic. Most search engines have methods on how to pick the "best results" but this varies from one engine to another. Surely, methods like this will continue to change because of evolving techniques.
Most search engines are commercial. They are supported by revenues from advertising. Some argue that advertisers can pay more so that their listing can be higher.
However, search engines do not make money from this. They earn money through running search related ads or depending on how many time a user clicks on the advertisement. Majority of search engines are owned by private companies while some are open source.
All the above is fine if your site is optimised for the search engines in the first place and you have employed some search engine marketing.
