I am somewhat confused about the whole process of search engine submissions. I found a site that promised to submit a site the the top 20 search engines, work on meta tags and resubmit the site for three months for $300.
It just doesn't add up to me...individual submissions to Yahoo, MSN, Lycoos, Excite already add up to almost $1000.
Are there ways a commercial site can be submitted without paying those high submission prices like Google?

Marcus

try www.bcentral.com its low priced and works.

yahoo charges $299 fees for listing.

Google runs off meta tags specified on your site. If you submit your site to Yahoo and the other big names, Google and the other meta-search engines will pick up sooner or later. It's only a matter of time.

Google runs off meta tags specified on your site. If you submit your site to Yahoo and the other big names, Google and the other meta-search engines will pick up sooner or later. It's only a matter of time. Whoa... too much misinformation!

First, Google isn't a "meta-search engine." That term is generally applied to services like Dogpile, that aggregate the results of a number of different search engines.

As for "Google runs off meta tags specified on your site," I'm not sure what's meant by "runs off" but I can't think of any way to see that as an accurate statement. The content of meta tags, or even their presence or absence, will have no affect on whether your site is indexed by Google. Further, Google puts little emphasis on such things as the meta keywords tags in its ranking algorithms.

Google's spider is among the most active and its index is updated very promptly. So it's true that almost any site will eventually be indexed by Google -- as long as at least one other indexed site has linked to your site you probably don't have to submit to Google. That statement, though, is less true to varying degrees for any other search engine.


Getting to the original question, in general services that make the kinds of offers cited take one of two approaches: either they aren't including the pay-for-submission sites like Yahoo among the sites they'll submit to, or they'll tack on the submission fees in addition to the stated price for the service. Without knowing which service you were looking at I can't, obviously, be more specific.

But I'd just add this, as someone in "the business:" don't expect great ranking results for your $300 if all they'll do is "work on your meta tags." Meta tags, while still useful, are of limited significance today in comparison to such factors as page content, site theme, and link relevance. If a high ranking isn't that important to you, that won't matter -- but then you're getting little more than submission... and $300 is a lot of money for that.

Bottom line, I guess, is that you should be very sure in comparing services exactly what level of service you're going to be getting.

Personally, I just visit and submit my sites manually...

dmoz.org
yahoo.com
altavista.com
lycos.com
infoseek.com

google (You have to submit through dmoz) and yahoo are the 2 biggest in my opinion. :cool:

Originally posted by aragon
Personally, I just visit and submit my sites manually...

I tend to follow this myself with most sites I have.. Every week or two I put some time aside to do some manual submissions. Obviously the bigger sites first, but then go on a bit of a net search for other places that I might be able to slap in a link here and there. Oddly our logs show some traffic from some very odd places that you'd never think would get anything, while others you think would be goldmines prove to be white elephants. I don't pretend to have a clue about traffic habits, and the longer I'm online the more of a mystery it seems. :)

Greg Moore

also i go to tripod geocites 50megs and make a couple pages that all link back to my site in numerous ways and submit those also =)

maybe cheap but hey every little bit helps

Personally, I just visit and submit my sites manually...

That is how I usually do it to, but what about the search engines that charge alot of money to accept a submission? Like Lycos and Yahoo, do you pay the price everytime you go back to submit?

Marcus

Aloha
well OK some int ideas here ;)
Aragon has a good proper list of main engines
DMOZ and Yahoo
you can get in Yahoo free if you try ??
maybe even paying does not guarantee
as they say have your site finished before you submit to yahoo otherwise it will not get in

MarcD a good idea but poor implimenting
if you have a site keep it your site and put relevant (smart doorway) pages on your site.
if you do not have a site of your own well then use other geocities sites but would say stay away from them.
a lot of times you will scare off people with a geocities address
better to do subdomains
and keep the info unique to each sub do not replicate the info across exactly one it will not help your position that much and it can get you banned for spamming

go here:
http://spider-food.net/submission-guide-b.html

and also read searchenginewatch.com

never use those submit it all at once things a lot of engines are gettgin smarter and are not accepting auto submit.

also try to find reciprocal links that are relevant to your site this will help in engines that weigh in popularity.