Website Optimisation and search engine data

The following links have been obtained by privatepsychiatry.co.uk. Various search phrases such as “mental health clinics in london” are checked against the larger search engines/directories (marked x) to maintain a premium position for this site.

META SEARCH ENGINES:

(search within 10+ search engines)

1. Ixquick UK

2. Infospace UK

3. Searchthingy (Choose number of engines used)

4. Profusion

5. Multimeta.com (recommended)

6. FindUK Search all major UK engines

INDIVIDUAL SEARCH ENGINES:

These engines generally have a UK bias (even though they may have an original American parent)

BRITISH SEARCH ENGINES:

1. Google UK x

2. Lycos.co.uk x

3. Ask Jeeves

4. Freeserve x

5. CyberBritain

6. Aol UK x

7. Msn UK x

8. Ukplus

9. Mirago.co.uk

10. Looksmart UK x

11. Altavista UK x

larger search engines (marked x)

INTERNATIONAL (AMERICAN) ENGINES:

1. Directhit.com

2. Altavista x

3. Alltheweb.com (FAST) x

4. Iwon.com x

5. Searchalot

6. Hotbot (Lycos owned)

7. Overture (goto) x

8. Entireweb.com

9. J ayde.com

10. Northern light.com x

11. Excite.com x

larger search engines (marked x)

Directories:

BRITISH DIRECTORIES:

These directories generally have a UK bias (even though they may have an original American parent)

1. Yahoo UK x

2. SpecialistInfo.com

3. Dmoz.org x

4. NationalDirectory

5. LondonHealth.co.uk

6. GB pages.

7. Kingdomsearch

8. Small Business Finder - UK B2B Directory

larger directories (marked x)

INTERNATIONAL (AMERICAN) DIRECTORIES:

1. Healingwell.com

2. BigTome.com (soul private number)

3. Splut.com

4. Datasegment.com

5. Riot.com

Further useful data:

privatehealth statistics

Main search engine submission:

In order of importance for a UK based site:

i) Google

ii) MSN (“paid for” AOL, HotBot, Anzwers, iWon)

iii) Lycos (overture “paid for”)

iv) Altavista (overture “paid for”)

v) Fast (all the web)

vi) Excite

vii) Northern Light

viii) Direct Hit

Various search engines are now moving towards a paid for submission service. Where the amount you pay determines the speed of submission or website site placement.

(and also the Yahoo and DMOZ directories once)

Main Search Engine Information:

The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) is a classified directory of WWW sources operated entirely by volunteers. Inevitably coverage is uneven but the interface is clean and straightforward.

Yahoo, although very well known is not really a search engine. It's main database consists of human reviewed and categorised links. It offers a search facility via the Google engine.

Google developed from a research project at Stanford. It has a notably clean and simple interface and, thanks to a well-thought out ranking scheme, seems to have a happy knack of getting the right answers.

Inktomi is not a search engine in the usual sense. It provides the software and databases for a number of well known Internet operations. The database is substantial although about a quarter of the size of the largest databases. It is currently used by Anzwers, MSN, AOL, iWon and HotBot as well as several paid entry search engines.

Overture (formerly GoTo) provides search information and services to the following engines (aol, altavista, lycos, netscape, infospace and yahoo). Pay for performance site submission.

Lycos was one of the earliest search engines. It is now moving towards a Yahoo-like set of human categorised pages. Now contains Hotbot search

Altavista is one of the best known search engines. There are some useful advanced features but it suffers from inconsistent behaviour and a rather high level of dead links.

All the Web is the name of the search engine operated by the Norwegian company FAST.

Excite software is widely used distributed and used to provide site specific search facilities. It provides numeric relevance estimates and a "more like this" feature.

Northern Light provides all the usual features behind a slightly cluttered interface. It also supports searches of a number of non-WWW resources.

Ask Jeeves claims to offer a question answering service, it also acts as a meta engine for Altavista, Excite and WebCrawler.