Google is the world's most popular website, and looking at recent statistics on Northern Ireland users, it is viewed by 73% of the population.

When surveyed by Comreg in 2008, 84% users put 'finding information about goods or services', as one of their most regular activities online.

Search Engines have long been a well-established port of call for users ever since Archie was developed as the first ever listings engine in 1990.

So, if your audience is there and highly influenced in the purchase cycle by what they find through search, how you can make sure your business can be found?

Keyword estimator tools are provided with most search engine administration areas to illustrate the amount of searches that appear for your term.

Brands and businesses are fighting over the search engine real estate which constitute search phrases and key terms.

Through the auction model used by Yahoo, Bing and Google, businesses are competing vigorously to appear in the top three sponsored listings.

For example, to appear first on a keyword like 'insurance' you may have to pay between £3 to £4 per click. The important thing to remember about paid search is that you only pay when someone clicks on your link.

This can prove costly as brands compete by continuously outbidding each other.

However, recently brands have been shifting away from the heavy reliance on paid search listings and are instead focusing on organic listings, which appear in the main body of search engine results.

Search engines use a complex system of algorithms to ensure relevance of their main pages to the user. Search engine robots or 'spiders', have indexed millions of pages and order them contextually per keyword, based on matches and relevance.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) (long the dark art of the digital advertising world) has now become mainstream as the recession has moved many away from paid search. Companies are demanding that their SEO specialists begin to demystify the practice of how to drive their website up the search engine food chain. Increasingly, web development companies are being asked by their customers to take the proactive approach and develop sites which will move with advances in search engine algorithms and allow more flexibility with content syndication.

The most recent incarnations of the search engine Google Caffeine and Bing have been adding more kudos to sites with real-time content streams.

Time has become the essence as users expect their information not only to be contextually relevant but frighteningly up-to-date as well. Sites like Twitter have become powerful crowd sourcing answer engines.

Twitter users can ask questions like "What's the best restaurant in Belfast?" to their peer group and in minutes have real-time answers from people they know and trust.

From a commercial point of view it's a little like a conversation in the pub after work, but with a room of 400 people to ask. Google and Bing have begun to address this with their newest releases placing priority on real-time feeds like those seen through Twitter, RSS, Blogs, newswires and other social networking platforms.

So, it has never been a better time to get involved in syndicating your content. It may be the moment that you begin to crack the search engine code.