Anthony Muller, President of Web Mercs, said in his article, * How to Avoid Most Common Myths and Blunders of Search Engine Optimization *:

* There are hundreds of search engines, but only 20-30 main ones, and just four-five of them account for 60-75% of total search engine traffic. For example, Altavista gets about 17% of total engine market and it equals roughly 40 million searches a day; as opposed to Lycos or HotBot which each get 2-3% of market. It would shock you to know Yahoo only gets about 24%! *

My two favorite search engines to locate what I'm looking for is dogpile.com and alltheweb.com

dogpile.com allows you to search through 14 search engines at same time! Type in your word(s), click on FETCH, and WaLA! You've just worked a little smarter, not harder. At dogpile.com you can choose to search through images, audio, auctions, news, FTP, Discussion, and Small Biz.

At dogpile you can use advanced searching techniques, by using additional syntax, that will help * you gain added control over your search and weed out any unwanted results. *

Additional Syntax for Searching Techniques:

>> Type AND between words or symbol + before a word thus allowing a specific combination of words to be present in all search results. Example: Home AND Clutter or Home + Clutter will result in different search results.

>> Type NOT between words or symbol - before a word Example: Dogs NOT Cats or Dogs - Cats will result in sites when only dogs appear but not cats.

>> Type OR to include both words. Example: Office OR Clutter

Not all search engines support these syntaxes in dogpile; therefore, dogpile will only search engines that support syntax you use, allowing a more tailored result.

alltheweb.com searches for documents on Internet that contain your search word(s). They offer a pull down menu to left of search window where you can choose from different syntaxes. They also offer an advanced search where you can perform word filters, word(s) that should be included or excluded from your search.

Here's to finding what you are looking for!

Smiles, not Piles,

Copyright (c) 2001 by OverHall Consulting P.O. Box 263, Port Republic, MD 20676 All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy, or distribute this article so long as article is kept intact, this copyright notice, and full information about author is attached.

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other way.

Both of these circumstances must be avoided. Sometimes type must be rewritten, or at least a word or two added or deleted. Sometimes spacing must be taken out of letters, words or lines. Perhaps widening or narrowing margin just a tad will do it. But it must be done. Widows and orphans are tacky.

A few other ideas.

Don’t be afraid of “white space”! (It’s called white space irrespective of colour of background; it just means space where there is no element displayed on page). The area of page that does not have text or graphics on it is just as important as area that does. You may not be conscious of it, but your eyes are aware of it and how it’s affecting everything else on page.

Don’t be afraid to have wide margins, empty space before or after a major heading, a short bit of copy tucked up in upper left instead of spread out in middle of page. That’s one of main differences between a clean, professional look and an amateur look. The professional is not afraid to leave plenty of white space!

Strengthen contrasts when combining fonts. Contrast with strength. If one font is light and airy, choose a dense black one to go with it. If one font is going to be used small, use other one large.

Make a conscious effort to be consistent. If a heading is aligned left, then align all headings left. If a heading is 18 point bold, then make all headings 18 point bold. If you have page numbers then they should all be on same place on page. Look for consistency in tabs, indents, punctuation, fonts, alignment, and margins.

Hope you find this useful. Part two coming soon.