Hello,

I would appreciate any feedback/horror stories you might have in regards to get your site(s) listed on major search engines.

I've been looking at offers like: "Submit your site to 15,000 search engines over night for $49.99!!"

Those can't be any good. Can anyone refer me to any legitamate programs that DO get you listed?

Thank you.

Neil

I just followed each search's rules and submited my site. I did noticed that most seemed to go more by site content then meta tags for urers searches.

Originally posted by pokerstore
I've been looking at offers like: "Submit your site to 15,000 search engines over night for $49.99!!"

Those can't be any good. Can anyone refer me to any legitamate programs that DO get you listed?You are, of course, exactly right. In large part they aren't any good because there aren't 15,000 search engines... or even 100 worth thinking about.

"Getting listed" in the important search engines and directories is pretty easy, because there are only a few that matter and fewer to which you have to (or even can) submit.

But the first decision is whether you're only interested in resources that are free for submission/listing, or whether you've budgeted to pay for listings. Assuming you'll start only with free submission:

First, submit to the Open Directory at dmoz.org.
You probably don't have to submit to Google, because they'll spider your site as long as you have a couple of links (and won't list you even if you do submit if they don't find those links), but you can if you want to be sure.
Submit to the FAST directory at alltheweb.com (like Google, they might spider you even if you don't submit).
Teoma and WiseNut don't currently accept free submission, but do some amount of spidering... so they might find you too.
AltaVista is still accepting submissions, but updates their database only rarely.

If you're not wanted to use paid submission/spidering programs, those are really the only places that matter. Google results feed Yahoo "web pages" results and AOL results. The Open Directory results feed the Google Directory, and are used by AOL and alltheweb to some extent -- and since their database is available for free, they also appear at any number of small directories.

If you are going to use paid inclusion, the situation becomes more complicated, bringing in players like Lycos and Inktomi, as well as more options for some of the above that supplment their free inclusion with paid programs.

So... submitting and "getting listed," again, is pretty simple. The real challenges lie in identifying keywords to target, and then doing so successfully!

thanks for the replies. I do actually have a budget allocated for getting listed on search engines. With that in mind, do you suggest going right to sources (google etc) or do you know of a company that (for a fee) will get you on with the big boys.

www.bcentral.com is good

Originally posted by RackFive
www.bcentral.com is good BCentral is one way (and not the cheapest way) to get your site into Inktomi's database; it's not going to get you into any of the other directories or search engines mentioned above.

By the way, pokerstore, there've been plenty of discussions here on the topic of search engine submission. If you use the search button at the top of this page and look for SE-related terms like "dmoz," maybe "altavista," or even "bcentral" (which has come up before a few times) you'll find them. You could also search for "search engine submission," of course, but you'll find a lot of unrelated stuff that way -- using the more unique terms is probably better.

JayC is definitely on the spot here