Search has been consolidated to being in the hands of a couple important players.
In some regional markets, there might be important local players, but for most of
the world, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN control the bulk of search.
The Major Search Engines
The following search engines are reviewed in order of search distribution from the
best of my knowledge. Some of the first-listed search engines may appear to have
more content and more information than the later-listed search engines. There are
several reasons that the top couple search engines have much more data listed in
their sections:
• Much of the data from one section would carry over to the next
section.
• Companies that have been focused on search the longest are more
likely to have plugged algorithmic holes.
• Google is MUCH harder for new webmasters to manipulate than the
other engines.
The order of these listings has nothing to do with the relevancy or quality of the
search results. They all provide quality results using similar algorithms.

Google

Google Search Distribution
Currently Google is powering around 70% of U.S. search (Google, AOL,
Earthlink, Go, Netscape, and many others). More worldwide search statistics are
available at http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/index.php.

Google shows up to ten pay-per-click AdWords ads on their search results, but
they keep them separate from the regular (or organic) listings. There is no direct
way to pay Google money to list in their organic search results.

PageRank (PR), Briefly

Google is primarily driven by linkage data.
The Google Toolbar provides a 0-10 logarithmic scale to mimic the link popularity
of pages. PageRank helps provide a quick glance how important Google thinks a
page is.
Google would like you to believe that their PageRank algorithm is the core of their
search technology, but they also use many other technologies to improve their
search relevancy.
Many webmasters exchange links with as many people as they can, but there is an
opportunity cost to everything you do. There are algorithms for sorting good links
from bad links. Many link schemes increase your risk profile much quicker than
they increase your potential rewards. When you link into the wrong circles, you
run the risk of being associated with them.
It is important to note that this PageRank value is only one component of the
Google search engine algorithm. Many times, a PR 4 site will rank above a PR 6
site because it was optimized better and has a well-defined descriptive inbound link
profile, which means better, more natural links from more sites (and more related
sites).

Many Myths about Google

There are many myths about Google that are represented as fact by marketers
trying to make money. Misinformation spreads like wildfire because everyone
wants to sound like the smart person with all the answers. One example of the
many myths about Google is that you are limited to 100 links per page.

Google threw out that guidance based upon usability ideas. On pages with no link
popularity, they will not want to follow many links. On pages with a large amount
of link popularity, Google will scour thousands of links.
I have one page with over 950K of page copy. Most pages should be smaller than
that from a usability standpoint, but Google has fully indexed that page.
If you ever have questions on any rumors regarding Google and SEO,
SearchGuild.com is one of the most straightforward SEO forums on the web.

What Pages of My Site are Indexed by Google?
You can check to see what pages of your site are indexed by searching Google for
“site:www.mysite.com mysite.”
How do I Submit My Site to Google?
While Google also offers a free site submit option, the best way to submit your site
is by having Google’s spider follow links from other web pages.
Google offers a Google Sitemaps program that you can use to help Google set
crawl priorities. In addition to helping Google index your site, the Sitemaps
program also shows you if they have any crawling problems with your site.
Where do I Rank in Google for My Keywords?
I use the free Digital Point keyword ranking tool to determine where I rank in
Google. The Digital Point keyword ranking tool also supports Yahoo! and MSN.
Tracking various sites helps me determine some of the ways Google may be
changing their algorithm.
If you sign up for the Google API service and are doing lots of sketchy stuff, then
it makes it easy for Google to cross connect your websites. Google generally is the
slowest of the major search engines to trust and rank new websites.
Google Backlink Check
Backlinks is another way of saying “links into a page.”
When you check backlinks in Google (link:www.whateversite.com,) it only shows a
small sampling of your total backlinks. Many links that do not show up when
you use the “link:” function in Google still count for your relevancy scoring. In
addition, there is a time delay between when links are created and when they will
show up in search results.
To get a more accurate picture of links, you will also want to check backlinks using
Yahoo! or MSN. Yahoo! typically shows many more backlinks than Google. The
code to check Yahoo! backlinks to a site is “linkdomain:www.site.com.”

Google Webmaster Central

Google provides obtuse data to the general facing web public. They are more
willing to show site owners more granular data once you have verified that you
own your site.
Inside of Google Webmaster Central they show you
• A much larger list of your inbound links, and the associated anchor text
• Keywords you are ranking for, and keywords that drive the most traffic to
your site
• Any crawling errors, 404 errors, or pages that are blocked in your
robots.txt file
• If your site is penalized in Google, and allows you to submit reinclusion
requests.
• Control of your sitelinks if your site shows sitelinks for search queries
related to your brand.
You can use the information from Webmaster Central to help you fix broken links,
reclaim link popularity, and ensure the important parts of your site are being
indexed.
If you have a site you do not like being associated with it is recommended that you
do not register it with Google Webmaster Central.

How do I Know What Sites are Good?

First off, common sense usually goes pretty far. If a page or site links to a bunch of
off-topic or low-quality garbage, you can feel safe, assuming the page does not pass
link authority. If you have doubts, you probably do not want to link.
Secondly, Google has a toolbar that shows how it currently views a web page or
website. The Google toolbar is one of the top search engine optimization tools for
a person new to search engine marketing. It works on Windows and is
downloadable at http://toolbar.google.com/.
PageRank is a measure of link popularity, which can come and go. It’s not hard for
a successful business to rent a few high PageRank links into their site and then
leverage that link popularity for link exchanges. A site with decent PageRank can
get penalized just the same as a site with low PageRank. Usually, you will want to
error on the side of caution off the start.
Instead of making PageRank your primary criteria when evaluating a page or site,
just think of it as a baseline.

Does Google trust this page? There are several ways in which this question can be
answered:
• It ranks for relevant search queries, so that is a good sign.
• It is a useful page, so that is a good sign.
• It is relevant to my site, so that is a good sign.
• It only links to relevant resources, so that is a good sign.
If you are using techniques that fall far outside of Google’s recommended
guidelines, I would not recommend using their toolbar, since the feedback the
toolbar provides may make it easy for them to link you to all of your websites.
In October of 2007 Google edited the toolbar PageRank scores of many sites that
were selling links. Most of the sites that had their toolbar PageRank scores edited
did not see any change in traffic. The only thing that changed was their perceived
PageRank scores.

Google Update Florida

In November of 2008, Google performed a major algorithm change. The goal of
the change was to make it harder to manipulate their search results. It is believed
that Google may have significantly incorporated Hilltop, topic-specific PageRank,
and/or a latent semantic indexing like technology into their algorithms.
It is important to get links from the right community. Do not rely on cheesy offtopic
link exchanges. They can hurt you more than they help you. For example, to
a search engine marketer, a link from Search Engine Watch (a search engine
information resource hub) is worth much more than many random off-topic links.
I still have seen significant evidence that off-topic inbound links can improve your
Google rankings significantly, but it is likely that this will eventually change, and
there is an opportunity cost and risk level associated with every activity.
In early 2004, Google also began to block the ability of certain sites to pass
PageRank, even if those same pages showed PageRank when you visited them.
In addition, Google seems to have set up a portion of their algorithm to delay the
effects of some links or to only allow them to parse partial link credit until the links
age. These moves are aimed at curbing manipulation of the Google index through
link buying by making it a much more expensive and much less predictable
process.
It may take up to three or so months for the full effect of new links to kick in.