I have two questions, quite irrelevant between them. My brother needs them for his Technology paper.

1) How can I take a photo of the screen, like El has done in... a thread about IRC I can't find?

2) Say you create a site. Do you need to "subscribe" to a search engine in order for it to appear there, or does the search engine update automatically?

Thanks a lot!!
AnnaBtG.

1) Hit the Prnt Screen button, and then go into your favorite graphics editor (or Paint if yo don't have one), and go to Edit->Paste. Voila, screenshot!

2) Not exactly sure. A lot of websites offer fees to get your website onto search engines, but Google seemed to find mine with no prodding. Perhaps the fees are to get the rankings up.

Don't most search engines have a way to submit new sites?

I haven't checked in a while, but last I heard, most major search engines required you to submit your site to them. There are (or were) free services to do this for you on a one-time basis. They're basically hoping that you'll appreciate the hits enough that you find yourself willing to pay them to resubmit periodically to bump yourself back up to the top of the search engine's lists. (This doesn't work for google because they have a different way of organizing things.)

I don't remember which one I used, but that was years ago anyway, so they may not still be around. A quick web search turned up this one and I'm sure you can find others if you look. Checking HotBot for "search engine website submit free" got me this page of listings, which is certainly a good start.

Paul

Mostly, websites automatically turn up in the GOOGLE rank. It just depends on your search criteria. This is because Google has a somewhat different IR (Information Retrieval) algorithm. According to what is rumored to be known to the general public, Google ranks web sites based on 2 criteria:

1. keywords typed in the search box. Example, ur search item is "Alpha B. Gamma"; and there are 2 websites with titles: (1)Alpha Gamma and (2) Alpha B. Gamma. The 2nd website will get a higher rank.

2. # of websites which link to your website and # of popular websites you link to.

Definitely, Google is employing additional complex algorithms apart from the above 2 strategies.... Still...

Hope this helps,
Ankit

Thanks a lot, FoLCs! (My brother has a hard time believing how much help one can find in here!)

See ya,
AnnaBtG.