Search Engine Limits: How Much of Your Page Do They Index?

Is it possible to create a web page too large for the search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN to index?

The answer is a definitive "yes." However, most small business web pages will most likely never reach those limits.

I came across a really interesting experiment that analyzed each of the major search engines, Yahoo, Google and MSN and the maximum amount they'll index on any given page. The results are actually very surprising. Maximum amount indexed per page:

Yahoo: 210kb
Google: 520kb
MSN: 1020kb

It never ceases to amaze me how these intelligent folks are willing to spend a lot of time and resources conducting experiments and then share the results with the entire world. My hats off to Mr. Serge Bondar and others like him.

Perhaps a more critical and interesting point Mr. Bondar made in an associated forum had to do with the question: "How long does a web page need to be in order to be considered 'informative' by the search engines." Mr. Bondar's response:

The page "informativeness" is better expressed through the number of words, rather than the number of kilobytes. From the analysis of thousands top-10 SERPs, I suppose that the "informative" - from the SE's POV - text is anywhere above 300-400 words. Most commonly, we see 600-1100-word pages among the leaders.