Submitting Your Site to Search Engines
If you've been on the Internet for more than just a few days, you know what "spam" is-advertising that you didn't request that arrives via e-mail-and you've probably received spam from people saying that they can make your site show up high in search engine results. Another frequent claim by these spammers is that they will submit your site to over 200 search engines.
These claims have two major flaws: no one can guarantee to make a site show up high in the search results of a search engine, and very few search engines generate significant amounts of traffic. In reality, most traffic comes from the top six to eight popular search engines-not from the specialized search engines and lists that these promoters talk about.
Although the Web truly has a site for everybody, most people using the Web don't use specialty search engines to find sites-probably because they don't know about them. Also, the popular search engines do an adequate job of helping people find sites of interest. You benefit most when you focus your search engine submission resources on the following search engines and directories.
Google google.com
Yahoo www.yahoo.com
MSN www.msn.com
AOL Search search.aol.com
Ask Jeeves ask.com
LookSmart www.1ooksmart.com
InfoSpace infospace.com Overture (formerly CoTo.com)
Lycos www.lycos.com
Netscape www.netscape.com
Excite www.excite.com
www.overture.com
AltaVista www.aItavista.com
ABC's GO.com go.com
Each of these sites has a link that takes you to a form on which you can easily submit the URL of a web page for inclusion in the directory or search engine database. Because submitting a web page manually to each of these search engines takes less than ten minutes, submit your own pages manually instead of paying someone to submit them for you. In addition to the sites listed above, submit your site to any other search engines that you like to use, especially if you know of search engines that specialize in the type of information your site carries.
The sites listed above aren't necessarily the ones that we recommend when you are searching for information. They are the sites that the general public is most likely to use, so you want them to include information about your site.
Experienced webmasters review their search engine placement about once a month because search engines sometimes drop pages from their indexes. Some search engines take two to three months to list a site, so maintain a log showing the pages submitted, the search engines, and the date submitted. The log helps you to remember each month, as you review your placements, exactly how long it's been since you submitted your site.
Yahoo in particular is known for being strangely picky about what sites they accept and what sites they do not. If you have a business site, being listed generally isn't a problem, but personal pages and fan sites may have some trouble. Keep submitting!
See the Search Engine Watch web site at www.searchenginewatch.com for more information about search engines and how to submit your site. They include listings of the current most popular search engines.
Posted in: Internet