Search Engine Submission Guide
by Andy Beal (page 1,
page 2)
It's not the most complicated process in the search engine
world, but let's break it down. Search engine submissions are an important
part of any search engine optimization campaign, yet many webmasters and
search engine optimization professionals (SEOPs) are not aware of the
correct way to submit your website to the search engines. Below we will
take a look at the correct submission process to the free and paid major
search engines and directories, how long they will take to list your website,
and more.
GOOGLE
Submitting Your Website to Google
We might as well start with the search engine that will surely send your
website the highest amount of referrals. We have covered the way to have
your website listed at Google numerous times. There are a few ways that
you can make Googlebot, Google's robot, find your website, but the best
way is to increase your link popularity, or obtain links from other websites
already in the Google database. One important point to make is that the
higher the PageRank of the incoming link, the better. This is better for
two reasons: 1) this link will increase your PageRank and rankings, 2)
the website with a high PageRank is usually crawled and updated more frequently,
which means the link to your website will be found faster.
While Google does have an Add URL page, it is not a definite way into
the database and you should not rely on this entrance gate. You should
not over submit your website to this page, or submit more than your homepage
through this form. As a result of competitors spamming the search engines
with their competitors URL, the search engines cannot outright ban a website
that has been submitted through these forms, but you should be very careful.
Google Indexing Time
The time that it takes Google to crawl and index your website is not set
in stone by any means. In one of my recent articles, I explain how Google's
crawling and indexing process works and how there is a window of opportunity
within a month to catch Googlebot. Lately, we are seeing websites and
individual web pages added to the database during the course of the month,
which is not referring to the large database update that occurs once a
month. The time that you wait for your website to be included into Google's
database can range from a few days to 1 ½ months, dependant on
a number of factors.
AOL
Submitting Your Website To AOL
AOL currently uses Google for its search results, which means that by
following the above guidelines for Google, your website will be listed
within AOL's search engine results pages (SERPs).
AOL Indexing Time
The indexing time for AOL is in direct correlation with the indexing time
for Google, as AOL now uses Google's search results to power the search
portion of their portal.
YAHOO! DIRECTORY
Submitting Your Website to Yahoo!
The Yahoo submission process is pretty simple and straightforward: find
the category within the directory that best suits your website, and then
pay the $299 annual registration fee to Yahoo!. Remember to take your
time and think carefully about the category that you are submitting your
website to, as the $299 is non-refundable.
Thinking along the same lines of not wasting your $299 only to be denied
entry into the Yahoo! Directory, there are many things to consider before
submitting your website. The first thing to do before submitting your
website to Yahoo is to read their Express Registration Terms of Service.
There is also a good thread at WebmasterWorld.com that rounds up some
of the known issues to check for before submitting your website to Yahoo!.
In general, your site must adhere to usability standards and must be viewable
in all browsers, but there are many other things to watch for before taking
the plunge. You can find some of these in the Search Engine Submission
Checklist below.
Yahoo! Indexing Time
Don't say you didn't get anything for your $299 registration fee! For
only $299, you get a human review of your website within 7 business days,
at which point they will notify you if your website has been added to
the directory or declined. If your website has been added to the directory,
your website will appear within a few days, and will show up within the
search results in the next update.
INKTOMI
Submitting Your Website to Inktomi
Although Inktomi has lost some clout when AOL switched to Google results,
they remain to be worth the submission fee to some as they provide search
results to MSN and HotBot, and also provide backfill results to Overture
and LookSmart. Inktomi's pay-for-inclusion (PFI) program will cost you
$39 for the first URL, and $25 for URLs 2-1000. To submit to the Inktomi
database, you will have to sign up with one of their reselling partners:
VeriSign, Inc., PositionTech, ineedhits.com, or Trellian. To make sure
you aren't upsetting Inktomi or triggering any filters, you can read over
their Content Guidelines.
It is important to note that you don't have to pay to be included in
the Inktomi database. Many people who have chosen not to pay the registration
fee for Inktomi have found that their websites were visited by Inktomi's
spider, Slurp, and their websites were added to the database. It is also
important to note that this is not 100% reliable.
Inktomi Indexing Time
If you opt to go PFI with Inktomi, your website will be spidered and added
to the database within the first 48 hours following registration. Following
your website being added to the database, Inktomi's spider will visit
your website every 48 hours and refresh each page that you have paid for.
(Side note: this makes it easy to test their algorithm and tweak pages
to rank well.)
If you don't opt for PFI with Inktomi, you will have to be patient for
your website to show up in the Inktomi index, if it appears at all. It
is not a sure thing, but it has become more common lately. Keep an eye
out for Slurp, Inktomi's spider, showing up in your log files, as you
will more than likely be added to the database once Slurp spiders your
site. A good way to insure that Slurp finds your website is through link
popularity.
ALTAVISTA
Submitting Your Website to AltaVista
Submitting your website to AltaVista is a part of the submission process
that you should remember, but not one that you should stress, as their
level of search engine referrals is not anything to boast about. Regardless,
AltaVista could make a turnaround, and you will want to be there if they
do. AltaVista offers many different forms of submission to their database:
Basic Submit (free submission), Express Inclusion (PFI) through InfoSpider,
and their Trusted Feed program, which is reserved for high-volume submissions
(over 500 pages). You can find links to all AltaVista submission options
and programs here. AltaVista has been spidering websites very heavily
in the past months, and we have seen faster indexing times, which we will
discuss below. When submitting through AltaVista's Basic Submit, you are
allowed to submit 5 URLs from a given website in the course of a day (Side
note: 5 URLs is a good guide for most free search engines that require
more than the root page submitted). Submitting through Basic Submit was
a shot in the dark roughly a year ago, but Scooter, AltaVista's spider,
has been spidering websites very heavily and many websites have been added
rather quickly for free. Is this the sign of a turnaround? Don't jump
the gun! ;) AltaVista's PFI program, Express Inclusion, is run very similar
to Inktomi's PFI program through its Reseller Partners. AltaVista has
outlined a few of their Submission Policies which you should read before
submitting to their website. AltaVista does not have anything in particular
that it requires before submission, but the points outlined in the Search
Engine Submission Checklist should be adhered to.
AltaVista Indexing Time
The indexing time for AltaVista was, and still is for many, a shot in
the dark, with regards to the Basic Submit. AltaVista's submission page
states that web pages will be reviewed within 4 to 6 weeks of submission,
but there have been reports of many before and many after. It is not reliable,
and if your campaign is on a certain timetable, you may not to opt for
the Express Inclusion. If you opt for the Express Inclusion, you will
have your web pages reviewed within 2 business days and then added to
the database. Following this inclusion, your registered web pages will
be refreshed every day (Side note: Just as with Inktomi, this makes for
nice SEO testing).
FAST/ALLTHEWEB
Submitting Your Website to Fast/AllTheWeb
Fast/AllTheWeb is yet another search engine to go down the PFI highway.
All is not lost though, as websites are certainly still added via their
free submission option. SEOPs and webmasters have four options for submitting
their website to Fast/AllTheWeb: 1) Free submission, 2) Lycos InSite Select,
3) Lycos InSite Pro, and Lycos InSite Enterprise. Lycos is the North American
Fast PartnerSite reseller for Fast, and InSite and InSite Select are PFI
programs that are offered. You can view all submission options and programs
here. These PFI programs follow the same suit as Inktomi and Info Spider,
but registering your URLs is less expensive. Registering your URLs through
Lycos InSite Select requires an annual membership of $18.00 and $12.00
per URL annually. Lycos InSite Pro allows URL registration coupled with
a Hosted Site Search. Lycos InSite Enterprise is for large websites that
would like to submit hundreds or thousands of URLs to the database via
a direct feed. The pricing model of InSite Enterprise is cost-per-click
(CPC). If your search engine optimization campaign has some flexibility
in terms of time, it is probably best to opt for the free submission option
at Fast/AllTheWeb. When submitting via their Add URL page, you only need
to submit the root or index page of your website. Fast's spider will follow
the links from this page and crawl the rest of the pages on your site
(This is one place where the importance of internal linking and its structure
comes into play). Having your website listed in Fast will result in your
pages being listed on AllTheWeb.com, Lycos.com, and numerous European
search engines.
Fast/AllTheWeb Indexing Time
While their PFI program has the traditional indexing time; their free
submission time is in one of few that has steady, decently quick indexing
time. If you submit your website to the search engine via the Add URL
page that is listed above, you can expect to see your website in the database
within a month. Many have seen websites listed in the database in much
shorter time spans, with the majority hovering close to a month. When
you register a URL through the PFI programs, your web pages will be reviewed
and indexed within 48 hours. Fast will refresh your registered URLs every
24 hours, which is directly in line with Info Spider and similar to Inktomi.
(Side note: as with Inktomi these web page refreshs are helpful in SEO
testing)
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