Tips For Google:
Google is a tough search engine to get listed in because they use their own proprietary PageRank(TM) system which requires a link from another page to your submitted page before they will add it to their index.
General Information:
Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford Ph.D. candidates, who developed a technologically advanced method for finding information on the Internet. Google's concept is a solid one, but one with flaws (not much different than other full text search engines). In many ways Google is playing catch up to sites like Hotbot or Alta Vista in regards to full text search. Some of these problems we will discuss below. The best thing about Google is the vast number of URLs included in their index (about 1.6 billion).
On June 26, 2000 Yahoo! and Google announced they have entered into an agreement that makes Google Yahoo!'s default full text search results provider. Under the agreement, Google will provide its underlying Web search engine to serve as a complement to Yahoo!'s popular Web directory and navigational guide.
The database that Google licenses to Yahoo! is not the same size: it's smaller than the Google.com database. It does not contain links to cached versions of pages. To demonstrate this point we have included the two links below to Yahoo! and Google with results for the search term "apples":
YAHOO
And the exact same search on:
GOOGLE
These two pages contain the EXACT same search, but with two completely different totals reported. In fact after careful research you'll find the results on each site are different. Yahoo! uses Google's database to supply "fall-through" content (material not in Yahoo's own directories).
On February 12, 2001 Google Inc. announced that it has acquired Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service. This acquisition provides Google with Deja's entire Usenet archive (dating back to 1995).
On September 10, 2001 Jim Reese, chief operations engineer at Google told us they have around 10,000 Linux Red Hat clustered servers. Most of the maintenance tools used are simple Shell and Perl scripts and Python. Google has chosen to run its own customized version of Red Hat Linux instead of Windows(of course) or Unix. Google claims to index more than 1,000 pages per second. Most of Google's search and retrieval system is written in C and C++.
Google's search is used in more than 30 countries by clients including Yahoo!, Virgin.net, Netscape's Netcenter portal as well as others. Most recently they are providing AT&T Wireless Subscribers ability to use their search engine.
Google utilizes the Open Directory Project database as its Web Directory [
http://directory.google.com].
Google uses their own developed full text ranking system called PageRank(TM). PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" (or popular to describe what's really being done) weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Popular sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Google combines PageRank with text-matching techniques to find pages that are both popular and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
Rankings Priority Rundown:
1. Popular page(s) linking to your submitted page (the more popular the better)
2. Keyword or phrase appearing in TITLE
3. The keywords used from the linking page
4. Individual keywords appear close together
5. Individual keywords appear in large fonts
6. Individual keywords appear in BOLD fonts
7. Individual keywords appear in ALT Tags
8. Individual keywords appear in the URL
9. Keyword or phrase appearing near the top of page
Special Tips:
Google ignores both the META Keywords and META Description Tags. Google uses what they call a "snippet" to describe the contents of the page in the search results, instead of what most search engines use, the contents of the META Description Tag.
The number of pages and the popularity of those pages linking to your Web page affects your PageRank score with Google. Google considers the <A HREF="http://your_page.com/">anchor text</A> of a link in determining the page's score. When Google considers the text of the page they are not only considering what the author wrote, but they are also considering what the other people wrote when they linked to that Web page.
With this in mind, what about people who link to your site using inappropriate keywords? Could this hurt your rankings?
It might not hurt you, but... what if others on the Net link to your pages using inappropriate text? Let's say hundreds of pages decided to place a link on their Web page that looked like this:
<A HREF="http://your_page.com/">Child Pornography</A>
Your page could actually become number 1 for the search term "child pornography". Is that what you want? This is only one small flaw found in Google's PageRank technology.
Google is suppose to take this into account when investigating the anchor text and "should not" adversely impact your rankings under Google's algorithm. A link from an unrelated Web site does not harm the site's term ranking for the terms you expect to be listed for. That being said, it does matter what text was used to describe the link to your site. It won't hurt your ranking if a person uses inappropriate text when linking. All it's suppose to do is increase your ranking for those inappropriately used words like the example shown above.
The link popularity concept is not beneficial to Google's visitors. It's a great idea, but this can be easily exploited by those that fool the Google index into thinking a page is popular.
So how do you fool Google into thinking your site is popular?
It's actually quite easy. The first thing you have to do is create a search engine friendly Web page. Keep in mind Google's optimization when doing so. Use a very descriptive TITLE, bold and large font text on the page and HTML such as <H1>text</H1>. Then make sure you give the page a keyword name like "apple_pie.html" (ie, for the keyword "apple pie"). Don't use stylesheets to adjust your font sizes or bold attributes. Instead you should hard code these fonts and bold attributes to get a better ranking with Google.