Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : What's the best way to submit a site for free?

[iNsAnE]

What's the best way to submit a site for free?

[.::DefCon::.]

Visit www.addme.com

They'll list your site to 20-30 search engines.
I use them too.

[Mdot]

http://se.rm-s.net - I use them They submit your site in more than 500+ just for $20 per month, they don't PAM: yor mail box. They also give you unlimited usage.

[Chicken]

Hit the real, larger ones yourself. There aren't too many of them and you want to be sure you fill everything out correctly and completely. I personally wouldn't use a service to submit.

[avara]

If your web site is really important to you, nothing beats submitting manually. Remember that there are actually less than 20 big search engines, so once you've submitted to them, you will have covered 95% of your target audience.

Not only is submitting by hand absolutely FREE, but unlike using a submission service or program, you can be assured that everything was done properly.

[Sina]

if submitted by hand ?
how long does it usually take to show up ?

Due to your Experience ?

[avara]

Originally posted by Sina
if submitted by hand ?
how long does it usually take to show up ?

Due to your Experience ?

This depends entirely on the search engine -- it can be anywhere between a week to 6 months, sometimes even longer. And there is no guarantee that your site will show up at all.

By the way, www.searchenginewatch.com is always a good place to find tips and advice about search engine submission, and how the engines work.

[desertdust]

Of course it takes a shade longer, but I've got a site that I intentionally did not submit to any search engine. It turned up in most of them anyway.

[tellme1]

I have been using www.verysimple.com/submit to submit sites for free. It is very simple to use.

When you submit on the site, don't select all search engines from the list provided. Select a few every time you submit. Click "back" to select the next batch. The page loads fast and omit your submission if you select more than 10 at once.

[knockingknee]

I got some really good tips for submitting to Yahoo from
http://www.selfpromotion.com
There's this article there that made all the difference.
2 weeks after submission and my site was up.

No success with other search engines though. :-(

[.::DefCon::.]

I know that Google takes about 60 days to add your site to their database...

In fact that's even one of the fastest 'adders' (besides Yahoo according to knockingknee). That sucks actually. Especially for starting companies who want to become commonly known...

[ashtonious]

I would definetly advise submitting manually, at least to the major search engines. In my experience the results are far better when you apply manually. It will probably take you between 2 to 3 hours to properly submit to all the most important search engines but once you are submitted to them, you will have covered them all as nearly all traffic comes from those major search engines.

[SicChild]

The problem I have is finding the urls to actually submit them manually. They seem to be hidden. (to me anyway). I must be blind or something.

=)

[Sina]

is submitting to yahoo free or the $299 charge is a must ?

[Aralanthir]

To find the link to actually submit a site with most search engines, you'll first have to find a specific category that your site fits into. And even then, the link is usually at the bottom of the page, or some other obscure corner. They will rarely have a link on their top-level categories for site submissions.

Also, I notice that a lot of search engines now have just started using content directly from the Open Directory Project (like AOL, MSN). In those cases, they won't have their own site submission form, but they should have a link to ODP, where you can submit your site.