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Upping the stakes in the search engine battles, an alternative search service is claiming that its index is bigger than Google’s. AlltheWeb, run by Fast Search & Transfer, now searches 2.1 billion pages versus Google’s 2.07 billion. AlltheWeb has attracted a cult following among researchers seeking hard-to-find results.

The exact formula for attaining the best results is a well-guarded secret, but the reasons why Google has not only stayed afloat amid the dotcom dive and current recession, but avoided layoffs to boot are quite obvious.

When placing a text ad, advertisers choose the keywords that will trigger the appearance of their ads. Typically, the more specific the keywords, the more successful the ad in terms of click-through rate. This encourages advertisers to create ads that are highly targeted to search results, and thus, more likely to provide value to people who use them. In turn, the relevance of the ads encourages users to look at them. Click-through rates reflect this; AdWords are running at four to five times the industry standard for banner ads.

Google searches favor Weblogs because they’re sites that contain freshly updated content with lots of links. Conceivably, Weblogs could unleash powerful Google Bombs and threaten the legendary accuracy of the world’s favorite search engine.

The word “spam”, as it applies to search engines (SEs), refers to any illegal technique used to improve a page’ ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Who decides what’s illegal? The SEs, who else? Search Engine Optimization — placement, positioning, ranking, or whatever you want to call it — is the process of designing a Web page that can be easily indexed by the SEs improving its chances of ranking highly in the SERPs.

Weblogs are perfect for Google: frequently updated websites crammed chockfull of tasty links. It’s no wonder that Google loves Weblogs so much.

Google and Weblogs seem inextricably tied together, as link-rich blogs are increasingly influencing the algorithms of Google’s search engine. But with great power comes great responsibility… and the weblog community is only now beginning to come to terms with a new application that subverts the very technology that powers Google, the world’s favorite search engine.

Outsourcing is cost-effective compared to in-house efforts because SEO firms have the advantage of economies of scale after initial investment in technology, time, knowledge, and methodology development. In-house investment by individual Web sites is not only substantial, it can lack cost maximization.

CEOs and marketing managers use many marketing strategies to achieve their sales and profit goals but many are unaware of the power of search engine marketing. As a result, search engine optimization (SEO) sometimes gets short shrift. That’s unfortunate because it’s a very effective marketing strategy and gives you an excellent ROI.

Web-site designers should understand their users’ way of thinking, introduce them to content they didn’t know they were looking for, and — most of all — keep them from using the search function, according to a report released on Monday by Web research firm User Interface Engineering.