In the last 10 years the algorhythms of the search engines have changed. I remember in 1998 when I would build a web site for a client and their site would be the top 30, meaning they were the only site you could find in the TOP 30 for that keyword. The search engines decided they had to improve the quality of their listings by only allowing a site to have only one listing within a keyword. Now, some search engines will allow a site to have more than one listing per keyword. At that time most of my clients had a keyword that only had 50,000 sites that were applicable. Today, a search on the same keyword could possibly have over 2,000,000 matching listings.

In 1998 85% of all Internet traffic was produced by the search engines. The other 15% was through link exchanges and linking strategies.

Because the vast amount of Internet growth it takes a lot longer than it used to to get a site listed and ranked in the top of the search engines. In the late 90's Alta Vista was the fastest to get a site listed, it only took 2 days. Then to get your site listed in Excite, which before Yahoo was the largest search engine, it only took 2 weeks.

Today, it takes about three months to get your site listed and ranked in the top 10 of the most popular search engines. If you decide you want to get your site ranked in the top of the search engines you should start with the big three, which are Google, Yahoo and MSN. After you have achieved top listing in those search engines then you should target the rest of the top 10 or 20 search engines such as Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, etc.