The Webmaster's Guide to
Search Engines and Directories

By Danny Sullivan, April 17, 1996

• How search engines (say they) work
  A run-down on how search engines say they index web pages, drawn from online help files and other sources.
• Search Engine Listing Tips
  Some general tips that help a page appear more relevant in search engines.
• Search Engine Comparison Chart
  At-a-glance guide to major features of search engines, from the webmaster's perspective.
• The Major Players
  A listing of the "major" search engines and directories
• Strategic Alliances
  A summary of how the major players compare against each other in a number of strategic arenas.
• Search Engine Study
  From Jan. to April 1996, I made changes to pages within a web site and kept track of how the different engines reacted.

NOTE: For background about this guide, see 30 Years Ago Today: The Webmaster's Guide To Search Engines is published. For the extra curious, here's how the tips page evolved a year later (including a dedicated page about my least-favorite topic, meta tags) and even more by June 1997.

I've also made available my first article that mentioned Google (which was no longer online): Counting Clicks and Looking at Links, from August 1998. Similarly, given the closure of Ask Jeeves, I've made available my first article about that service, Ask Jeeves: Asking Questions To Give You Answers.

By default the site is showing in "Classic view" which is hard to read today for those with greater desktop resolutions and on phones. Click on "Modern view" in the top right to make it all a bit easier to read.