Being listed in search engines and ranked high on searches is the overall goal a webmaster is trying to achieve when dealing with search engines. Search engine optimization is probably one of the most commonly used words among webmasters. In the Internet market becoming much more critical to business success this is almost natural.

While the professionals know how to verify search engine rankings and listings, the normal user or startup webmaster might not know how to verify these things. The often just type their domain name into the search engine of choice and are happy if they get a result back that includes their domain name. But there is a little more these startup webmasters should know about.

Every page indexed by a search engine is a possible landing page for visitors to enter the website. As more pages get indexed the higher number of possible entry points to the website. But how can a webmaster verify how many pages are currently in the index of a search engine?

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3DomainName.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3DomainName.com

Replace "DomainName.com" with the actual domain name that needs to be verified. A webmaster should also run the following variation to get an impression of what is really out there.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Awww.DomainName.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.DomainName.com

The next thing a webmaster should check is to see how many other websites are linking to his/her website at all. As almost everyone knows nowadays - the higher the number of links pointing to a website (incoming links) as higher the possible search engine ranking on search can be (and we all want that number 1 spot, right?!). The problem is that Google will never show you all incoming links to a website. But even a ball park number can be helpful in finding out if the SEO work of the past paid off. So, how does a webmaster can get this ball park number of incoming links?

http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Awww.DomainName.com

This command will show the 'ball park' number mentioned above. It will give the webmaster a hint how successful the website is and how many people/websites are linking to it.

By researching the information of how many pages and how many links to/for a website are registered/indexed in a search engine a webmaster can gain important knowledge. This knowledge makes it easier to see what works and what does not work when it comes to search engine success for a website.