Monday, November 5, 2007

History of the Search Engine - What Came Before Google

Although we credit Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex. But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine:

Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Teds project Xandadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Teds work.

George Salton

George Salton was the father of modern search technology. He died in August of 1995. His teams at Harvard and Cornell developed the Saltons Magic Automatic Retriever of Text otherwise known as the SMART informational retrieval system. It included important concepts like the vector space model, Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), Term Frequency (TF), term discrimination values, and relevancy feedback mechanisms. His book A theory of indexing explains many of his tests. Search today is still based on much of his theories. History of the search engine uses some of the same techniques even today.

Alan Emtage

In 1990 a student at McGill University in Montreal, by the name of Alan Emtage created Archie; the first search engine. It was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. Archie users could utilize Archies services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, teleneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files. With Archie, Alan Emtage helped to solve the data scatter problem. Originally, it was to be named archives but was changed to Archie for short.

Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill

Archie gained such popularity that in 1991 Paul Linder and Mark P. McCahill created a text based information browsing system that uses a menu-driven interface to pull information from across the globe to the users computer. Named for the Golden Gophers mascot at the University of Minnesota, The name is fitting, because Gopher tunnels through other Gophers located in computers around the world, arranging data in a hierarchical series of menus, which users can search for specific topics.

Tim Burners-Lee

Up until 1991 until there was no World Wide Web. The main method of sharing information was via FTP. Tim Berners-Lee wanted to join hypertext with the internet. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire (a prototype created with help from Robert Cailliau) to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor, called WorldWideWeb, and developed on NeXTSTEP. He then created the first Web server called httpd, short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon. The first Web site built was at:




http://www.articleco.com/Article/History-of-the-Search-Engine---What-Came-Before-Google/49778

Internet Marketing is hot and happening

Do you know television took 30 years to reach a mass audience while broadband has taken just three years According to estimates, by 2010 most people will be watching TV via high-speed internet.

Understandably, internet advertising is becoming a preferred marketing tool for companies which have an online presence. Today almost every company worth its salt needs to have a web presence, and if your website doesnt stand out in a crowded market, you wont sell!

As more and more companies jump on to the online marketing bandwagon, this rapidly growing trend has spun two online revolutions:

Online marketing, especially search engine optimisation and pay-per-click campaigns, is giving traditional offline advertising a run for its money.

What you need to keep in mind is: If you dont play your online marketing cards right, you stand to lose out on a huge global market that is within your reach.

A growing number of internet marketing companies are beginning to compete for a share of the huge and rapidly growing online marketing industry.

What you need to keep in mind is: How you succeed in your internet marketing campaign is going to depend to a large extent on how you choose your online marketing company.

Advertisers are increasingly preferring online media over offline media for their advertising and marketing campaigns. The phenomenal success of the search engine Google is evidence of a clear shift from traditional advertising towards online media.

For instance, Google and Yahoos pay per click (PPC) campaigns are becoming the preferred marketing mediums for advertisers, who are now setting aside a significant part of their marketing budgets for online marketing.

Google has rewritten the rules of online marketing and promotions. Other leading search engines such as Yahoo and MSN are also coming up with innovative strategies and technologies to make it easier for users to find what they are searching for.

With competition hotting up between the search engines, companies that have an online presence are competing against each other to gain maximum visibility in these search engines.

The result is that internet marketing has moved on from having merely static websites to highly specialised and competitive strategies and Web 2.0 technologies such as search engine optimisation, PPC campaigns, viral marketing, social networking, internet advertising, tagging, blogging, wikis, and more.

Online media has definite advantages

Online media has some definite advantages over offline media in terms of cost, reach, interactivity, targeting the right markets and measuring responses. For instance, pay per click campaigns provide the most qualified leads and are proven to have highest sales conversion rate.

There are several techniques of search engine promotion such as SEO, PPC, Banner Exchange, Link Building, and so on. Lets have a look at the advantages of online promotions over offline promotions:

1. Online advertising is relatively cheaper. It includes booking ad space in other websites, launching SEO or Pay-Per-Click campaigns, email marketing, viral marketing.

Offline marketing is expensive. It includes printing marketing material, placing print ads in newspapers and magazines, booking ad space in public places, producing and broadcasting television or radio advertisements, dispatching direct mailers.

2. Online advertisements are more interactive and therefore more likely to really connect with consumers.

Offline advertisements are generally not interactive.

3. Online advertisements do not violate the privacy of customers.

Offline advertisements such as cold calling violates your customers privacy.

4. Email marketing enables instant business communication whether the customer or business affiliate is across the street or across the globe.

Offline advertisements have a limited reach in terms of distance.

5. Advertising on the internet is not bound by time limits. Marketing campaigns can continue for as long as you want (often at minimal extra cost).

Offline promotions, be it print ads or radio/TV ads are usually bound by time limits.

6. Customer queries can be solved instantly and very cheaply in online media as visitors can themselves look up the website for further information.

This facility is often lacking in offline media, or would require expensive resources like call centre staff to service customer enquiries.

7. Customers can look up online advertisements at their own convenient time.

In offline determines when a particular advertisement should be broadcast or printed. If you miss it, its gone!

8. Search engine optimisation and pay per click is demand driven, as your companys products and services appear at the exact time when the customer is seeking those services. This means you have a much higher chance of converting a lead into a sale.

Offline promotion is usually interruptive and blanket-targets an audience whether they are seeking your services or not.

9. Online marketing can access millions of potential customers across the globe with just a few clicks.

In offline promotiont it is impossible to reach millions of customers at one go unless you have an exceptionally large budget (e.g. a Superbowl TV spot).

Choosing a good online marketing company



http://www.articleco.com/Article/Internet-Marketing-is-hot-and-happening/50392


A number of highly specialised creative and technical processes are involved in online marketing. You will not achieve the desired result unless you select an internet marketing company that has a thorough knowledge of search engine optimisation, pay per click campaigns, website analysis, web copywriting, keyword analysis, code optimisation, link building, and web analytics.

Before you decide on which internet marketing company to use, make sure the company has a thorough professional and updated knowledge of these specialised skills. Check out their processes, find out how they plan to take on your internet marketing campaign step-by-step, and make sure they give you some form of guarantee for their services.

If you are interested in learning more about the detailed steps in a SEO or PPC campaign, visit www.CleverClicks.com.au, a leading SEO and PPC services provider in Sydney, Australia which has outlined the processes involved in internet marketing in clear and easy-to-understand detail.

How to find an ethical Search Engine Marketing CompanyIts a dog-eat-dog marketplace out there. The web is teeming with millions of websites and yours

Its a dog-eat-dog marketplace out there. The web is teeming with millions of websites and yours is just another one of them. To rise above and ahead of this cut-throat competition, you need to work with an effective search engine marketing company that can put your website up among the top results in relevant keyword searches and help you reach out to your target audience.

Search engine marketing is vital for improving your sites conversion rate, attracting relevant traffic and maximising your Return on Investment (ROI).

Search engine optimisation is not an overnight job. It is a highly specialised and time consuming task. It may take months to get the desired results.
Although search engines issue broad guidelines, no one can say with certainty exactly how search engines rank websites. A professional SEO company has a good understanding of search engine behavior and experience in successfully achieving top ranking websites to advise you about the competition, ingredients, mechanisms and strategies that can be employed to make your website visible, frequently visited and a revenue generator.

The top 3 search engines, Google, Yahoo! and MSN, receive over 1.2 billion searches daily! Unless you use the correct search engine optimisation techniques with your website, you will not rank high with the search engines. Here is where the services of a professional search engine marketing company to handle your SEO campaign may help to deliver the desired results.

Search engines are strict about ethics

Search engines are clear in their guidelines about what they like and what they dont like. A good search engine optimisation company uses the specific sets of criteria laid down by search engines and their expertise gained over the years about what has worked in the past to increase the rankings of your site.

The SEO steps that abide by the search engine guidelines are called ethical and practices that are not approved by search engine guidelines are unethical.

Because search engines operate in an automated way, it is possible for webmasters to use methods not approved by search engines for better ranking. But these unethical attempts are fraught with risks.

Once your site is caught using unethical practices and banned by search engines, it will take a long time and a significant amount of effort to rank high in search engines again. Some SEO companies may use unethical practices to get high rankings of your website, but the results are only temporary. In fact they are devaluing your site.

Unethical search engine marketing companies do not consider the long term and want to show quick results to impress you. Hence, it is important to find an ethical SEO company that will ensure sustainable high search engine rankings.

Unethical SEO Practices

It's disheartening that many companies claim to be in top rankings of search engine but the truth is many of them are hype.
If youre serious about your business, dont try to bluff the search engines. The unethical practices will be caught eventually, leaving your website far behind the competition.

Unethical practices used by search engine optimisation companies include:
Keywords stuffing: Unnecessary repetition of keywords in the content
Page swapping: A highly unethical practice where a webmaster copies a page from a high-ranking website, changes the title and description META tags, then submits this page to the search engines. Once a ranking is obtained, they replace the stolen page with one of their own web pages.
Copyright violation: Copying content of other websites without permission.
Irrelevant link exchange: Establishing reciprocal links with irrelevant websites for the sole purpose of increasing the number of links to your website.

How to select an ethical SEO company

Here are some tips for selecting an ethical SEO services company:

Learn the basics of SEO: Study some basics of website promotion and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques so that it will not be a new concept to you. These can be accessed easily on internet. Just spend little time to your research.

Does it sound too good Be wary if an SEO company offers ultra quick results. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is unethical. Both time and efforts are involved in the SEO process. There are no short cuts.

Evaluate your needs: Evaluate which SEO program best fits your needs. You can evaluate this by checking sales conversions, log reports, and so on. You must discuss your objectives with the SEO services provider then analyze yourself, how good it would be for serving your purpose.

Guarantee: Make sure that the search engine marketing company gives you some level of guarantee for their services. But, be wary of companies that offer a #1 ranking guarantee. No one has that much control over Google, and it is a sure sign that they may use unethical practices.

Experience: Check the industry experience of the people behind the company and also get feedback from the references given.

Strategies: When you choose to optimise your website, you need to look at the methodology a search engine optimisation company would be using. Ask the SEO company about the strategies they are going to use to optimise your website...

Cost: You usually get what you pay for. An offer for 500 links for $29 is a possible sign of unethical practices.

You need to keep in mind these few points while you research SEO services for your website. Return on investment (ROI) can depend on several factors, such as the size of your market place, geographical target area, the sales value of your products/services and the number of people searching online for your products/services.

Searching for an authentic ethical SEO company is a time consuming task. But remember that its not simply enough to only achieve better search engine rankings. Your website needs to be designed in a way to ensure you convert your visitors into buyers to boost your sales and revenues and increase your brand recognition.

If you are wondering how to find an ethical SEO company, visit, a leading SEO and PPC services provider in Sydney, Australia. It has clearly outlined processes involved in search engine marketing in specific and easy-to-understand detail.




http://www.articleco.com/Article/How-to-find-an-ethical-Search-Engine-Marketing-Company/53247