Search engines are server side software designed to make it easier for a user to find things throughout the internet. Without search engines, many websites would remain secluded from one another and in many cases information would not be readily available for users to find and read. Search engines have the main purpose to index thousands of millions of web pages. Once you look for a word or a phrase, the search engine scans automatically the entire database where it has the stored pages indexed and it returns to you as a result a list containing the most relevant results for that search.

The only criteria the number of pages found and their relevance depend on are the capabilities of the used search engine. Search engines appeared somewhere in the early 90′s when Alan Emtage, a student at the McGill University in Montreal created the first search engine like too. It was called Archie. Its purpose was to search through the information available on the FTP servers. The files on these servers were available for anyone, but one could not use them unless knowing the exact address of the server and of the file. Archie looked through this database and gathered lists of files for each server. It was used by people to match phrases and characters in order to take them to the server address the file they were looking for was on.

Archie is now an old method, but its creation was the first step in the search engine rally that is going on now. As the public grew more and more aware of the existence of the internet, the need for a search tool became visible. So, first there were some software robots, using the concept of spidering to index the web, following links from one site to the other and saving the text from all visited websites in a database. Between 1994 and 1995 three important search engines appeared: Lycos, WebCrawler and AltaVista. At about the same time Yahoo! appeared but Yahoo! is not a search engine. Yes, it has a search engine function, but Yahoo is firstly a director or data and articles, providing different services as email and hosting. Recently Yahoo has signed contracts with other search engines as Google for both of them to provide more search results.

Today search engines are in a continuous competition. There are thousands of search engines, but just a few big ones. This small group of top search engines is responsible for more than 90% of online searches. The future of search engines is hard to determine. What we have seen in the recent years is the abundance of video media online. As web space and connection speeds are becoming more affordable and wide spread this trend is expected to continue but the next innovation in web search will surely be an exciting part in the evolution of search engines.

In the early years of the Internet, only large companies with broad name recognition could take advantage of the new medium’s vast marketing potential. While search engines such as Google were still in their infancy, small businesses were mostly left out, and were forced to stick with traditional advertising methods, many of which were rapidly becoming obsolete. These last few years have been nothing short of a revolution for online marketing of small businesses. This, of course, is an aspect of larger social and cultural shifts facilitated by the Internet. More than ever, the individual voice can achieve exposure equal to that of powerful corporations.

As a small business owner, you may already have a sense of the changing times, and maybe you’ve added a blog to your website, on which you write about issues related to your business. If used well, this blog has pleased your regular, established customer base. This is great yet it does little toward building site traffic and expanding your market. There are tons of Internet advertising techniques you already know about, and these are somewhat useful, but most of these techniques do little to earn the long-term trust and respect of new customers. If you’re interested in reversing this trend in a creative way, you might want to try article marketing.

Article marketing is an innovative strategy that can generate new, long-term customers. For detailed information, do a Google search for “article marketing,” and you’ll find some helpful websites that can lay out the details for you. In short, you’ll be generating solid web content always a hot commodity in today’s constantly-updating cyberspace and, through “About the Author” boxes attached to your content, you’ll draw a growing number of potential customers to your website. It’s similar to the blogging you may already do, except the article marketing service will help to spread your content through many different corners of the web.

The key to drawing customers is to show that you have an expert and insightful perspective on your field. You can do this by writing short, informational articles. Start with things you know about, and do a little research, if necessary. Make your articles around 600-700 words, and use them reveal insights about your field that your customers should know. This is the leveling power of the Internet. Though your business may be small, you can use your knowledge and expertise to compete with big corporations, whose marketing budgets may be a thousand times larger than yours.