Summary: This search engine is unique in the way it serves its search results. It does not use the more common ways of crawling meta tags or through human submitted titles and descriptions. Instead the way it serves results is through the actual text on a site. So for example if Google indexed this very page its listing would most definitely start like this "NET-ADS - Promotional Tutorials & Tips...". It takes the "Zettas" from the title of the page and then for the description it uses the first text on the page that it can find.

Many people claim that Google is becoming one of the most powerful search engines out there. I believe the main reason for this assumption is due to the fact that the Google database took over Altavista's past job as the backup database for Yahoo!

How to get listed: Google uses the Open Directory Project (ODP) as their main database so to get listed in Google your best bet is to go to Dmoz.org and get into the ODP. Along with getting listed into the ODP you should also use Google's Add URL form. Usually if you are listed in the ODP but don't use the form it will take much longer for you to get listed in Google.

How to get a good listing: Since Google's make description from the first lines of text on your page make sure the keywords you want people to find your site by are in the first few lines of text on your site!

Another important thing that will help you get a better listing is incoming links. If you want to get a high listing make sure you have a lot of other sites have links to your webpage preferably sites that are already listed in Google. For example if you want a listing in Google to be higher than a competitor's listing make sure you have a lot more links from other sites than your competitor does.

Having links on your site pointing out to other sites helps in your listing also.

Frequency of updates: Usually the last week of every month a new indexing begins. You can usually see Google results through the Yahoo! backup database before they begin to appear in the Google database. Often times new Google indexes take a week or longer to complete. While a new index is being made you will ocassionally see "flashes" of the new results where one minute the new index will be used and then the next minute the index will revert back to its old state. Just be patient and it will eventually stabalize.

Name of bot: Googlebot. So if you take a look at your website logs and see if googlebot has visited you.

Further information: Find out more about how Google works by perusing this interview with Google's CTO, Craig Silverstein.

Read more at: Zettas.com