Seeing or ‘finding’ your website in the results pages of Search Engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc… is specifically related to the algorithms or ‘rules’ each search engine has setup to review your website content.  Each Search Engine (SE) then makes a determination as to how to prioritize your website pages for the various search terms entered by users.  Because SE ‘rules’ are always at work, search results are very dynamic; meaning what you see today may not be there tomorrow. 

The ideal of being seen in the results for a specific search term is all about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  To be both indexed AND ranked high enough to be seen by searchers is a process whereby you thoughtfully add content that makes the SE (Search Engines) ‘recognize’ and index your content and topic of the pages within your website. Next, once your pages are in a SE’s index you will move up and down the index (dynamically) based on SE’s algorithms which are based on web users identification (which is essentially treated like a vote for your page) that your content is on-topic and useful.  So, even though your website may be indexed by both Google and Bing (and the others), web user’s ‘votes’ cause your pages to move around in the Search Results index as the SE algorithms are constantly recalculating and resorting their indexes.

With newer sites, been seen near the top is even more challenging because the SEs (Search Engines – Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc) will find your site and index the CONTENT within your pages (and the text associated with images) AND THEN the pages will be indexed very low for general terms (‘photography’) and higher for more niche terms (‘YOUR NAME photography’ or even better ‘YOUR NAME photography chicago’). Then, as web users ‘vote’ for your page(s), you will move up in the rankings.  Votes (combined with matching content on your site) are primarily how the SEs determine whether your pages are relevant for a particular search term.

What are ‘votes’?

A ‘vote’ is essentially someone else linking back to your site.  For example, if I create a link on MY website to your ‘home’ page presented as your widgets, this is a ‘vote’ for your home page and will help that page’s ranking in the SE indexes.  However, to rank higher (PAGE ONE of a SE Results Page IS ALWAYS THE GOAL) you will need more ‘votes’ for the term ‘your widgets’ then what is already out there, meaning you need to win against all the other widget websites and Wikipedia, etc… that already have votes for that search term. So winning the ranking battle is no small task; ESPECIALLY for general terms.  Note, you will rank much higher for a search term like ‘your widgets photography chicago’, but this means someone already knows about you and is searching specifically for you, so this does not help the ‘new prospect’ find you when they are doing general searches.

So SEO becomes a marketing effort of its own.  SEO is about continually building links to your pages for specifically chosen search terms (keywords) as well as modifying your website content to optimize for the keyword.  Essentially it becomes an ongoing effort to build votes and optimize the site to rank higher and higher in the SEs.  This can be something you do for yourself, or consider outsourcing.

On being seen or found in Bing vs Google (and the rest)_____

If you test a search term see your website in the results of Bing but not Google, for example (or vice verse), first, remember the indexes are dynamic.  Also, each SE uses multiple servers with multiple indexes that are ‘close’ but not identical indexes.  This means you can search Google and be connected through one server and I can search Google and be connected through a different server and so we may see different results for the same search. Regardless, to move higher you will need to accumulate more votes than the other ‘search-term-related’ websites AND have content on the site to prove it is consistent for that search term.  This is how the SE are satisfied.

On SEs being satisfied____

SE’s look first at the content within the site that all users see when visiting a website.  Additionally, SEs look at the meta tags within a site to help determine how to index a page.  Meta Tags are lines of code the SE can read but users never see.  Ideally, when testing a page on your website (and ALL pages should be tested), you should see text, links and meta information reported that the SE will be able to read and index properly.  Then it becomes an ongoing task of ‘putting the word out’ to have other users think highly of your content enough to create a link back to your website.