All search engines are not created equally. You probably
have a favorite, because it gives you good results or is easy to use
-- or both.
Some search engines aren't even search engines; they're
directories or catalogs of websites. But the difference is subtle
and not important to the average person.
What makes the results different between all of them
is how they read, classify, and rank various elements of the websites
they include in their directories.
Some search engines (and directories) count the readable words
on a page to determine what that page is about. If the word "cooking"
shows up more than any other word on that page, the search engine will
assume the page is about cooking.
Other search engines may read the "meta"
tags which are hidden code. There is --or should be -- a meta Title tag and a meta Description tag on every page. The meta Keywords tag is rarely used by directories or search engines anymore so don't worry much about it.
Others will give the most weight to the words in
the title of a page, not the title that you see in your window, but
the title that shows at the top of your browser.
The list goes on. Our job, when we design a
website or when we maintain an existing website, is to know what's
in that list.
We spend a lot of time and money keeping ourselves educated
to the ins and outs of search engines.
For example, you may not realize that when you look
at the text on some websites, it isn't really machine-readable text,
it's an image. 
No search engine can "read" images although
some can read the "alt" text of an image. That's the text
that shows up when you hold your mouse over an image for a second.
Having text in image format is essential for certain
effects, such as rollovers (when you roll your mouse over something,
then something changes). But an entire page of image text will
render it nearly invisible to most search engines. So a search
engine-savvy web designer will take that into consideration when
designing
a website.
Google is now the most popular search engine and it's
still free to submit. We recommend you create a sitemap of your website and submit it to Google, Yahoo & MSN.
If your site is a good one and popular, Google will add it at some point because all search engines have "spiders" or "robots" that "crawl"
the web, going from site to site, seeing what's there. If they come across
a site that is repeatedly listed on other websites, they'll decide that
it's a popular site and they may add it to their database.
Of course, once you do get listed, your work (or ours)
isn't over. New websites are added to the Internet every day and many
of those will be in competition with yours. So, just because you're
#3 in most searches today doesn't mean you'll stay #3 forever.
Keeping or improving a website's ranking in search
results is often as much work as getting there in the first place.
If you'd rather we worry about this stuff because
you have been lost since paragraph two, please check out our Services
page. We offer a monthly maintenance plan that can be used to work on
search engine ranking, as well as a tailored submission program for
new and existing websites.
