Unlike Yahoo!, which uses humans to rank its listings, Google uses software. The ranking algorithm used by Google is its trademarked "PageRank." The key to a high ranking on Google is to have lots of links to your site from other high ranking sites. That is, you need lots of sites linking to yours, which in turn have lots of sites linking to them.
Google is one of the most useful sites for those searching the Internet and has sophisticated and effective ranking and searching software. At the time of this writing, Google does not sell placement within the ranking. Thus, sites are ranked with pure objectivity and results are usually quite relevant to your search. For the marketer, however, this makes it extremely difficult to manipulate your ranking. To get a high ranking in Google, you have to have a content-rich site that is already popular as expressed by links from other popular sites.
ADVERTISING ON GOOGLE
If you do not have a lot of links to your site yet, you can still buy textual ads to appear to the side of the Google search listings. These ads are keyword specific and you can pay by impressions or by clicks on your site's link with Google's "AdWords Select" program.
Google also has a "Premium Sponsorship" program where your textual ads appear at the top of the search results page for the chosen keywords. Google does not allow any images in the ads. (Textual ads, if properly placed, have proven to be more effective than graphical banners anyway, so this restriction is not so bad.)
Google touts that its ad results are five times greater than industry averages. One competitive edge that the Google AdWords Select program has at the time of this writing is that it only charges you the minimum necessary to hold your ad's position. That is, if you hold the second spot for a certain key phrase and the advertiser below you in the third spot reduces the amount of his or her bid for that phrase, your amount will be reduced to the amount just necessary to hold your second spot. This occurs automatically, saving you the time of constantly monitoring the bids for your search phrases as you have to do on other, similar sites.
SUBMITTING YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE
If it took any significant time to submit your URL to Google, we would say, "don't bother." Google only ranks sites that it finds from following links on the Internet with its spider, Googlebot. Even though Google may have your site in its database from your submission, your site will have no ranking until some other included site links to it...and Google's spider finds that link. The only advantage of submitting your site to Google before it is found by the spider is that your site will show up if someone types in the URL or the exact description of your site in a Google search. Since it takes very little time to submit your site to Google, you should do so for that purpose.
Although it may be rare that people will type in your URL or an exact match of your description, they are the very ones you do not want to miss while you are waiting for your site to be spidered.
To submit your site to Google, go to http://www.google.com/ and click the Advanced Search link. At the top right of the resulting page, click All About Google, then the Submitting Your Site link on the resulting page. At the time of this writing, you can also simply go straight to http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Enter your site's complete URL (that is, include the "http://" in your Website address) in the appropriate field and type a short description of your site for the comment. Check your typing and spelling and then click the Add URL button below.
SUBMITTING TO DMOZ CAN GET YOU INCLUDED IN GOOGLE
If other sites link to your Website, Google will find it pretty quickly. Google currently spiders the entire Web at least once a month. Rather than waiting for the spider to find you, however, the best way to ensure inclusion in Google (as well as Netscape, AOL, AllTheWeb, Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, and Northern Light) is to submit your site to the Open Directory Project.
Google, as well as the other search engines listed above, include data from Netscape's Open Directory Project, which uses human indexing like Yahoo! does. Thus, Google uses its own software-driven spidering technology and supplements it with the dmoz's human indexing. Since you cannot manipulate the results of the spider technology (other than to create a high-quality popular site), your submitting efforts are best placed with dmoz. A good ranking with dmoz can ensure your inclusion in several major search engines. Submitting to the Open Directory Project will be the subject of our next lesson.
CONCLUSION
If you have a Website with lots of links to it from popular Websites, Google will find it and give you a good ranking without any effort on your part. If you have a new site that does not yet have a lot of links to it, you should submit your URL to Google, but you should focus your submitting efforts on the Open Directory Project (dmoz). A good ranking by dmoz will earn you a good position in Google as well as other major search engines. You should also consider placing an ad with Google if your budget allows.
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