It’s pretty safe to say that anyone who has a computer has at some point or another used a search engine. Search engines are extremely useful creatures. They have had a major impact on our society, I mean its pretty amazing that you can just go type in anything you want into a search box and get back information about it in about two seconds. Before search engines came along you pretty much had to rely on going to the library to get more information. With that being said the popularity of search has created quite a huge market. The advent of paid advertising has sprung search engines into a multi-billion dollar a year industry, thus creating some pretty stiff competition. Right now we are in the midst of a major war on the internet, with the major players being Yahoo, MSN, Google, and an upcoming strong contender in Ask. So you may ask who is winning this war right now? And why? And who will take the lead in the future? One thing is for sure the reward of being the king of the search mountain will reap billions and billions of dollars annually.

So what are these top gun search engines competing over? The answer is clicks, on the paid advertisements they present every time someone uses their search engine. If you notice when you use Google for example that at the very top of the page and on the right hand side it says sponsored sites. This is where people trying to make money online pay to advertise for their company. These prices range from nickels and dimes per click, all the way up to hundreds of dollars per click, depending on the keyword. So the main objective for a search engine is to get as many people as possible using them to search the internet. Just think about it for a second, the more searches they get, the more chance of people clicking on their paid ads, which is where they make their money. Now of course not everyone is going to click on the paid ads, only a small percentage of the searches they receive ever actually make the search engine money. However, with millions of searches a day it only takes a small percentage to really make a big monetary difference.

So who are the warlords going to battle here? And who is in the lead? The three major competitors are MSN, Google, and Yahoo, and Ask is fighting its way back into the mix of things with some pretty sweet search features.

As of right now Google is in the lead, they receive somewhere in the ballpark of 80% of all search queries on the internet. Google is estimated to gross around 3 billion dollars in 2006, all from just paid advertisement. Now you may ask why is it that Google is so far ahead? Well there are a few reasons. First, Google has the most advanced algorithm, which is the mind boggling mathematical equation that ranks and lists sites depending on the keyword. Trying to understand their algorithm is extremely complicated, Google only hires absolute geniuses to work for them. Second, is the brilliance of Google.com itself, which is their homepage.

When you're surfing the Web, you probably only think about one thing when you look at a Web site: whether or not it's fun. Some of the website authors are wondering why there is a few visitors visit their site.

Here are some tips to avoid you from creating a bad website:

Before developing the website you have to planned first. Make a story board that will be your guide in developing the site. You must arrange the hierarchy of the most important links in the main page.

Most importantly, you must create a home page that presents a professional image to the world. Your home page would be the gateway to your site. It must look like a road map, the index and the table of contents that tells the visitors where to find the information they need to make them stay at your site. It would be the mirror of your company or organization. So, if the design is not good, that will be the the first impression to your company.

You have to figured out what are the important elements should be included on the page. It must have a unique and interesting content. You have to know who are your target audience and what are the things that will get the attention of your visitors. You have to think of something new and unique on your content to convince your visitors to stay.

Put significant informations in your site to give them a useful information that is appropriate in your site. You should be able to tell why a website exists, and what information it's trying to provide. If the purpose of the website is confusing or unclear, that's a good sign that you should look for a different site. The word must be spell correctly.

The design must be clean and stunning look that will impress your visitors. The design must depend on the kind of services that your site are offering. Avoid using of blinking text that will irritate the eyes of your visitors. Avoid also many graphics or images that will take long to load your page because some visitors maybe bored in waiting for your page to load. Use the text color that will be visible to your readers.

Your site must be easy to navigate. The buttons must be consistent on its size and design. Using buttons with different colors and sizes looks unprofessional. Make sure that when you put the buttons on top of the home page, they're on the top of every other page.

The site must be indexed by the search engines so you have to consider the successful page optimization so that your site will be given the chance to rank on the search engine. In order for your site to be sited by many client or visitors your site must get a rank from search engine. Read some information about Search Engine Optimization(SEO) to have an idea on what will you going to do on your site.

You must have a quick response to your client or customer and give them the service that they needed. Apply good relation with your customer. Give them a word of Thanks for giving you the opportunity to work together with their company.

Always update your home page so that the visitors will always see new stuff or different from your site when they visiting your site. This will cause them to visit your site frequently.