Crawlers and Indexers
Crawlers and Indexers have become the more successful form of Internet searching available today. Crawlers and Indexers deploy bots, or spiders, which scour the web looking for new websites and content which they then index and categorize through some form of ranking algorithm in order to deliver search results to end users. Advantages of Crawlers and Indexers include greater reach and the ability to deliver relevant content for uncommon or rare search terms, a benefit which is almost impossible to attain with a web directory. Find out more…

Web Directories
Web Directories are not search engines but rather collections of websites which have been indexed and categorized in some form to deliver a manageable set of search results to end user queries. Generally Web Directories are managed through a manual process and this significantly decreases their reach and the size of their Index. Web Directories claim that they are not attempting to categorize all the Internet but rather the best sites on the Internet based on quality and some other criteria. Find out more…

Vertical Search Engines
Vertical Search engines or specialized search engines are search engines which focus on one specific content category or topic segment. They can also be web directories where end users submit websites to be categorized in some type of hierarchical system within the particular category. Vertical search engines can also be dedicated to a specific function, as in the case of job search engines or a specific category, as in the case of a business search engine.

Examples of specialized search engines include BusinessRover.com in business, Kayak.com in travel and jobster.com for jobs. Find out more…

Meta Search Engines
Meta search engines are search engines which submit an end user's search query to a number of external search engines and then aggregate and process the search results in some manner before displaying the search results set to the end user. Meta search engines are not in fact search engines since they rely on third parties for their search functionality and do not maintain their own web directories or search technology, however because of the larger reach which can be attained by searching many search engines at once they deliver a valuable service to end users. Find out more…

Pay Per Click Search Engines
Pay per click search engines are actually advertising directories and not search engines in the traditional sense, which deliver paid for sponsored search results as a response to end user search queries. For example, when an end user searches for the search term 'keyword research' the search results set would include the advertisers which purchased the term 'keyword research' and if the end user clicked on one of these results the advertiser would pay some type of fee to the search engine.

The pay per click advertising model is the largest (by market share) and fastest growing method of internet marketing. Find out more…

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