How do search engines find results.  The way search engines provide results may not be the way you think.     By John Bolduan RealWebMarketing.com

Search engines are not what some people think they are. Most people think that search engines like Google or Yahoo derive their results directly form the internet and then return the results to the searcher. This is partially true, but there is an intermediate step, search engines index or "spider" websites for retrieval in the search engines database. So when you get a result, what you're really seeing is the database of the websites that have been indexed by the search bot. That's why you would never see results of a web page you just updated. Knowing this can help you better prepare for getting your website better listings.

Google has a index robot called Googlebot and you can see if it visits in your website statistics log. All these bots really are is a program that indexes sites for inclusion in the search engine's database. Some people get real analytical about this and actually spend time looking for it again and again in their stat logs. They look for how often they spider the site, when and stuff that is not necessary to know. It's not a good use of anyone's time to do this. Instead of checking to see if your site is getting indexed, work on making your website better so a search engine would want to visit it for changes and updated content. 

So when your site is listed in a results page, what you're actually seeing is the latest update in the search engine's database. That is why results can be well listed for a while before more changes are made to a web page. Of course, search engines like Google or Yahoo apply an algorithm to display results according to what they feel are the most relevant results by what people are typing in. It can get very interesting when the database changes or a website changes because the results from a few months ago can be quite different than today. That's why people that search for something might find it one time using certain words and later don't find it using the same words. 

You need to be aware that search results can change overnight and there is nothing you can do about it when a relevancy algorithm changes. Well, you can change pages, words or any number of things but it's best to wait out any changes for a while because many time the old results do come back. You don't want to destroy rankings until you know that the new search results are finished and a new search engine algorithm is in play. Remember that you're not designing a website to be found by a search engine, you want visitors to find you and enjoy your offering. Search engines play into this kind of behavior not the tricky kind of stuff that can get you into trouble. 

Your goal should not be trying to trick search engines into getting higher rankings in a quickie manner. That's not a good idea. That's why companies that guarantee high listings in a week probably don't have your best interest in mind. Most likely they're doing some trick that could get your website banned from the very search engine you would like to get visitors from. The way to get better listings is to take a long term approach. Every search engine has guidelines for what they consider to be spam, so be aware of that. Search engines like Google are simply trying to get the most relevant results for people searching. They're frankly not interested in your website being listed number 1 or number 6,552, they are trying to return relevant results and that's what drives their business model not your website.