Search Engine Submissions

You have probably seen them many times. Sites that claim to submit your pages to thousands of search engines. These search engine submission services always claim that this is what you must do to drive serious traffic to your site.

There are even sites that claim to submit your site to over 100,000 search engines and directories!!

These are usually lots of Free For All links pages. Don't submit to them - you will not get any traffic, you will get lots of spam and the truth is that the real search engines, the ones that you need to be listed in, will probably penalise you for using them.

It’s time for you to know the real truth about search engine submissions.

So here it is – there are five search engines that you need to be listed in. That’s right, five! Add to that three directories that are useful but not “required” and you possibly have eight places that will actually send you traffic.

So, is it worth paying anything to have your site submitted to these eight places? You may think that you need to submit your site every month so maybe it’s worth paying.

You do not need to submit your site each month. It’s actually a ridiculous claim made by some submission companies. Why would you need to re-submit your site if it’s already listed? It doesn't make any sense!

You actually don’t need to submit your site to search engines at all. You can, but it won’t get you listed any quicker.

OK, the five search engines that you need to be listed in are Google, AltaVista, Inktomi, AllTheWeb and Teoma. You may be thinking “what about AOL, Lycos, HotBot, Excite and so on?”. These sites all use the results of others.

For example: AOL uses Google, Lycos uses AllTheWeb, Excite uses results from a number of others, AskJeeves uses Teoma, HotBot uses Google, Inktomi, AllTheWeb and Teoma.

So, how do you get listed?

Inktomi and Teoma only accept paid submissions – or that’s what they’d have you believe. AltaVista and AllTheWeb offer free submissions but you get listed quicker if you pay. Google is free.

Should you pay to be listed? It is generally recommend no because you can get listed for free. Also, Google is by far the most popular search engine so why pay search engines who will send less traffic?

However, if you need to be listed very quickly, it may be worth the investment.

If you don’t want to pay, you can get still listed in all the search engines. They all crawl the web with a robot to find pages. They do this by following links.

Something that Inktomi and Teoma don’t tell you is that they do add sites that haven’t paid. In fact, they do it all the time.

Therefore, to get listed in the search engines that ask you to pay, exchange links with sites that they have already indexed. If you find sites that rank highly for keywords that relate to your site and exchange links with them, all the search engines will crawl your site and include it in their index. It may take a few months but they will do it.

Just make sure that the sites that these search engines think are important have got links to you – this makes you important!

Google is much simpler. If you have a couple of links pointing to your site, Google will probably find you. They crawl the web at the beginning of each month and update at the end so you could get listed within 3 weeks or so. Sometimes, it can take about 7.

Just make sure you have links pointing to your site.

If you submit your site to Google, they do actually list it within a few days but they then remove it from their database – unless it updates very frequently. Even if you do submit your site and it gets crawled, Google won’t really index it unless it can find links pointing to you.

So, you can get listed in all five search engines without submitting your site at all. Also submitting doesn't get you in quicker (unless you pay).

Earlier we mentioned three directories. These are Yahoo, LookSmart and DMOZ. Yahoo and LookSmart require payment. It is generally not recommended submitting to them unless you can afford it. If your marketing budget is tight, don’t bother paying.

You actually get listed on Yahoo and LookSmart by being indexed by Google and Inktomi respectively. If someone uses the search function at Yahoo, the results are from Google.

LookSmart can be useful because their results are used by MSN. So, if you can afford it, go for it. If not, don’t worry too much.

The other directory is DMOZ. It’s free to get listed but it can take months before they include you. The beauty of being listed here is that their directory is used by many other very popular sites such as Google, Netscape and so on.

You must submit to DMOZ manually. Find the right category and submit your site. Do not under any circumstances re-submit. Guess what re-submitting to DMOZ really does? It pushes your site to the bottom of the list! Each time you re-submit, you are actually adding to the time it will take you to be listed.

So, submit your site, wait six weeks and if your site isn't listed then go to http://www.resource-zone.com/. They have a special forum there that allows you to ask about your submission. Keep in mind one thing – these people are volunteers. Be very polite, don’t make demands and they will help you out.

Be sure to check DMOZ thoroughly to make sure you aren't listed. They may have put you in a different category so look around. Also, their search function is not always synchronized with their database so don’t rely on that to find your site.

The places that are listed above will bring you the vast majority of your traffic. There are other search engines and directories around which you can submit to but they generally won’t send you any traffic. The only other thing you should look at are regional or topical directories that relate to your site.

Remember that just getting listed in the search engines will not bring you traffic. You must have good listings.