introduction to search - seo 101

© The JAR Group 2006 Proprietary & Confidential

SEO 101 – Introduction to SearchThe History of the Search Engine

Presented by The JAR Group, 04.15.08

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A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system.

…it helps you find stuff!

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OverviewPutting search into historical context.

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The Birth of the World Wide Web

Tim Berners-Lee: Developer in Geneva, Switzerland (CERN)• European Organization for Nuclear Research

NeXTCube (1990): 1st Web Server, 1st Web Browser, 1st Web Editor

First Webpage (August 6th, 1991): Posted Details about the WWW

Why the WWW was Unique: The Great Equalizer• Unidirectional linking• Non-proprietary & free to use

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The Web BrowserBringing the World Wide Web to the masses.

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Mosaic Web Browser

Al Gore Invented the Internet (1991): Passed the High Performance Computing & Communication Act

Mosaic (1993): First graphical web browser

Marc Andreessen: Led the Mosaic development team

AOL (1999): Acquired Netscape

Time Magazine: Time Inc realized the significance!

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The Rise of the Search Engine

With over 550 Billion documents on the web, how do you find what you want?

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What is a Search Engine?A search engine retrieves information from any set of data.

Spider: Automated web browser that follows every www link on a website.

•Pages are analyzed•Collected•Parsed (Words extracted)•Stored

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Search Engine Timeline

1994: WebCrawler

1998: Google

2000: Baidu

2004: Yahoo! Search

2005: MSN Search & ASK.com

2006: Live Search

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Google PageRank

The Algorithm (formula) used to rank web pages based on the number of incoming links and the PageRank of those websites that link there.

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Search Engine Optimization

• Ensuring your site is search friendly allowing the search engine spiders to index the content on the site

• Ensuring your pages include the keyword phrases actually used by searchers

• Ensuring the pages of your website are as compliant as possible with the search engine scoring algorithm

• Ensuring compelling and action-oriented descriptions that encourage visits

• Creating rich and compelling content that positions your website as an authority

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Share of Search

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The Future of SearchGoogle is King, but watch out for these trends.

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Curated Consumption

Online curators have unprecedented influence on millions of people on every imaginable topic.

Aggregators: Web applications that aggregate syndicated news or contentExamples:

Human-Powered Search: Human edited and hand crafted search resultsExamples:

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New Advances in Search

Natural Language Search: Searching using regular spoken language

Examples:

Personalized Search: Search based on previous browsing history

Examples:

Semantic Web: Creating another layer of meta data describing the data on the web in a form that computers can deduce meaning.Example: A search for “4 Yankees tickets on $400 budget”

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Thank You!

Andrew ZarickBrand EvangelistAndrew.Zarick@thejargroup.com

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Cool Search Engines

• Music: Dizzler.com, Hypem.com

• Airline Tickets & Hotels: Kayak.com

• Coupons: RetailMeNot.com

• TV Shows: FanCast.com

• Videos: Blinkx.com

• Unofficial Google File Search: GooglePirate.com

• Interactive Marketing Company: theJARGroup.com