Search Engine

How To Carry Out Anonymous Surfing With Anonymous Search Engines

2008-04-11T12:13:00.001-07:00

A Search Engine is defined as a program which helps locate the specific information from the web. The program allows the user to specify certain keywords. It then searches the Internet /web for the required keywords. After the search is complete, it returns the final documents enlisting the specified keywords. Search engines are also referred to as 'Crawlers' or 'Spiders'.

There are certain search engines that allow you to carry out Anonymous surfing all the day. Some of them are mentioned below:

Clusty.com: this search engine has high security features. With this search engine, a user can search for the specific information without disclosing his personal identity. This is also referred to as Meta search engine. The cookies used in this search engine don't keep a track of user's data but instead it help in personalizing the settings. This search engine queries other engines as well and gives output in the form of clusters.

Lxquick.com: it is also a powerful Meta search engine. This engine maintains a log data for the purpose of recording site performance and statistics. This log data maintains the personal information of the user like IP address, which is then deleted from the log files within forty-eight hrs.

However, you don't get carried away by these claims as the web-searching is not in any way 100% private and confidential. Still there are certain steps that if followed, make the anonymous surfing possible on the Internet. Some of them are listed below:

Search properly: if you are searching for the specific information on the web, make sure whether the search engine used by you maintains any data or record about the search content. If the response is positive, then you should avoid disclosing your personal information on the web. For instance, some people usually follow a practice called 'Ego-Surfing', while searching for some specific information. Ego-surfing is a technique in which a surfer searches his name on the web. In some cases, people may even specify their full name and the S.O.C (social security number). The consequences of such searching may prove to be serious at times. As, it can lead to identity theft.

Use different search engines: for carrying anonymous surfing on the Internet always use varying search engines. Your e-mail account and search engine should be of different companies. To keep a record of your searches, some companies may even match up your e-mail id and the search content. This can be dangerous at times.

Avoid accepting Cookies during surfing: cookies are basically query-parameter string that is used for verifying the authenticity of the surfers. Besides this, it can even keep a track of the searched data and the user's personal information.

Keep on altering your physical location: keep on altering the search engines and the physical location of the computers on which you are surfing (like office, school or home). This will definitely ensure privacy of your personal identity to some extent.

Use Anonymizing tools: in order to keep your search anonymous, you can use a variety of anonymizing tools. One such tool is a Tor search engine that assists in anonymous surfing.

What is A Search Engine ?

2008-02-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing information overload.

The most public, visible form of a search engine is a Web search engine which searches for information on the World Wide Web.

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

By 1997 search engines recognized that some webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.

Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal profiled a company, Traffic Power, that allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients. Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban. Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.

Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.

How to get indexed in Search engines...

The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.

Major Search Engines

2008-01-15T20:09:00.000-08:00

Major Search Engines

Google

http://www.google.com
Voted four times Most Outstanding Search Engine by Search Engine Watch readers, Google has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching the web. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It's highly recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are looking for.

Yahoo

http://www.yahoo.com
Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the web's oldest "directory," a place where human editors organize web sites into categories. However, in October 2002, Yahoo made a giant shift to crawler-based listings for its main results. These came from Google until February 2004. Now, Yahoo uses its own search technology. Learn more in this recent review from our SearchDay newsletter, which also provides some updated submission details.

Ask

http://www.ask.com
Ask Jeeves initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as being the "natural language" search engine that let you search by asking questions and responded with what seemed to be the right answer to everything.

AOL Search

http://aolsearch.aol.com (internal)

http://search.aol.com/(external)
AOL Search provides users with editorial listings that come Google's crawler-based index. Indeed, the same search on Google and AOL Search will come up with very similar matches. So, why would you use AOL Search? Primarily because you are an AOL user. The "internal" version of AOL Search provides links to content only available within the AOL online service. In this way, you can search AOL and the entire web at the same time. The "external" version lacks these links. Why wouldn't you use AOL Search? If you like Google, many of Google's features such as "cached" pages are not offered by AOL Search.

Live Search

http://www.live.com/
Live Search (formerly Windows Live Search) is the name of Microsoft's web search engine, successor to MSN Search, designed to compete with the industry leaders Google and Yahoo. The search engine offers some innovative features, such as the ability to view additional search results on the same web page (instead of needing to click through to subsequent search result pages) and the ability to adjust the amount of information displayed for each search-result (i.e. just the title, a short summary, or a longer summary). It also allows the user to save searches and see them updated automatically on Live.com.

Other Search Engines

AOL
Anywhere
AltaVista
Ask Jeeves
BigBook
Cyber411
EiNet
Galaxy
Eureka
EuroPages
Excite
Global Online Directory
Go.com
Google
GoTo.com
HotBot
Looksmart
Lycos
Mamma
Mirago
Nerd World
Northern Light
Open Directory Project
OpenText
Planet Search
Profusion
Savvy
Search
Search.COM
Scoot
SearchFound
Snap
Starting Point
The European Directory
The Informant
The Nell Register
The Ultimate Homepage Index
Thunderstone
UK Directory
UK Index
USA Today
WebCrawler
Webtop
What-U-Seek
Yahoo
Yell
Yellow Web

Making Your Links More Valuable To Search Engines

2008-01-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

In the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) links are valuable. However, some links are less valuable than others. In fact some links are almost worthless from an SEO standpoint.

The specifics on how websites are ranked are closely guarded secrets. If this information were public knowledge, every site would be perfectly optimized and the search engines would be of no value. Although there is no certainty when it comes to search engine preferences, we can make certain assumptions based on history and experience.

The use of anchor text links is thought to carry some weight with the search engines. An anchor text link includes a few descriptive words which, if clicked, will take you a different website or page. The actual website address is hidden within the html code of the website.

But, some links carry more weight than others. The more common descriptive words used with anchor text links is the term "Click Here." Unless 'click here' is one of the keywords listed on your website, it is useless as far as the search engines go. I more valuable text link is "Your Site's Name" or Your Site Keyword." This type of link carries much more weight in the eyes of the search engines.

How do I know this? I have two sites that I almost always promote together. They were designed from the same template so neither one has an SEO advantage over the other. For one site I have always used the site name in the anchor text. In the other, I use different names in the anchor text.

The one that I use the site name in the anchor text has a page rank of 3. The other site, which is slightly older, has a page rank of 2. Although the difference is not earth shattering, in the world of SEO, I'll take every little advantage that I can get. By making small changes like this, you may end up with improved site rankings. And by using a number of these small SEO improvements, you might see significant improvement in your over all site rankings and in your Internet business.

How To Boost Your Search Engine Rankings

2008-01-02T23:12:00.000-08:00

Most people are astonished at the cost of using search engine optimization companies. These companies often charge thousands of dollars just to manage your search engine campaigns. The truth is, it doesn't require rocket science to catapult your website up the rankings.

There are two main things you should know about SEO - onsite optimization and offsite optimization. Onsite optimization refers to customizing your site so that it is more search engine friendly. Offsite optimization refers to the building of backlinks (incoming links) to your website.

Many experts regard offsite optimization as being a more important factor to getting super high rankings. A site which doesn't 'tick all the boxes' but has sufficient quality incoming links will rank very well on Google or Yahoo.

So really you should concentrate your energy on building backlinks to your website. Quantity and quality are the key here. You'd want as many links from as many relevant websites as possible. If the site that is linking to yours is not relevant, then the 'linking power' of the incoming link will not be as strong as from a website that covers a topic similar to yours. Search engines like Google or Yahoo want to provide relevant content to their users, and that is why this is the case.

Some ways to boost your number of backlinks include posting in forums, using social bookmarking sites to create incoming links, creating blogs (which are viewed as authority sites) and writing articles. Those are some highly effective ways to get a stream of juicy backlinks.

Organic Search Engine Optimization - Overview

2008-01-02T03:14:00.000-08:00

Organic search engine optimization is all about achieving the best possible rankings in search engines, as well ensure quality information for the online searchers. No forms of spam or black hat techniques are made use in order to rank and gain traffic to visit your web site. More then just plain visitors what your online business really needs is potential customers for your products or services, search engine optimization helps you to reach the targeted audience.

Organic SEO is popularly known as ethical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because ethical and fair means are made use of in order to boost your business online and facilitate in creating your product's online presence.

Organic SEO is comprised of two main steps

On page Optimization

Off Page Optimization

On page optimization involves optimizing your web site by taking care about the presentation of web site as search engine as well as user friendly site and providing quality content. The entire content should be revamped in such a way that it is still informative and useful but also able to divert the right kind of traffic to your web site. The keyword prominence, keyword density, h1and h2 tags and alt attributes are all part of content optimization

Off page optimization, is all about what needs to be done after your web site content has been optimized for all the existing search engines on web today. We need to plan strategies for enhancing link popularity of your web site , such that it will get higher rankings in search engines and will be able to successfully draw the right kind of audience you are aiming for. Getting Quality back links on regular basis will ensure long term positioning of your web site rankings.