About search engines

Search engines are particularly good at delivering customers in the SME (small to medium enterprise) sector. This sector is so huge, and scattered, that it is almost impossible to target in any cost-effective manner. The only alternative is often the "scatter-gun" approach of specialist press, which is both expensive and extremely unpredictable.

First of all, the story was that by submitting to any number of search engines, the world would beat a path to your door (or website) and your on-line business would take off.   This rarely happened, but many people were successful quite easily.
By the year 2000, it had got tougher and more specific, and a listing in Yahoo's directory (not a search engine, incidentally) was a good way to get wide exposure for your web site.

Nowadays it is Google -- by virtue of supplying results to its own search engine website, as well as others including AOL, Yahoo and Netscape, Google is said to deliver 75% of all Internet searches.
The future will change things again : the recent acquisitions of Inktomi by Yahoo, and Alta Vista and FAST by Overture, and the news that Microsoft is developing its own technology, mean that change will continue.

Despite these changes, confusion is subsiding.   There are good search engines and directories, fed by quality databases and high end querying techniques.
The Internet is becoming a more ordered place, and if you optimise and promote your website properly, and move sensibly with the times, you will be able to achieve maximum returns from your website.