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There are search engines and then there are directories, although
the term 'search engine' is often misapplied to both types.
We would like to point out here that there are
not 1500 search engines in existence. Any company that
states and charges for submission to such a list should be
seriously considered before submitting your URL thur them.
A word of warning - avoid auto submitters if at all possible.
They do not choose the categories in directories, and they can
repeat submit which gets your domain into trouble. Pay a
respectable company to do your search engine submissions if you
don't have the time or resources to do this yourself.
Another warning - if a company doesn't show their
name, address and telephone number on the site, look
elsewhere.
Which
is which?
A true search engine, such as Hotbot or Excite, sends
robots or 'spiders' out to wander around the Web and then index
the pages they find. When you go and search there you get
your results from everything the spider has found on its
travels. You can direct the spider to your site by
submitting your URL but unless you have optimized your site
specifically for spiders, you will have little control over what
they list.
Then there are meta search engines which query more
than one search engine at a time, such as Mamma, Dogpile etc.
Directories, or indexes (indices if we are to be
correct!), such as Yahoo and a zillion others, often
rely on human beings to create their listings, and when
you submit to directories, it is necessary to provide
a short description of your site. An index is usually
divided into categories, such as Arts, Internet, Sport
etc and you often get to choose which category your
site fits into. Choose carefully. Many directories do
not offer you multiple listings.
There are now also hybrid search engines which
combine features from both of the above.
Once
you are listed...
To change your listing, or your ranking, within a
search engine requires time and a little elbow grease. Page
titles, body text, META tags, keyword relevancy, links etc all
play a role in this. It is frightening how
many sites out there do not have their META tags and
titles in the pages, but still expect the world to find their site
Once you have been listed in a
directory, there isn't
really anything you can do to change your listing,
except that if you have a marvelous site, it may receive a better
review over time.
The
good and the bad about search engines
There are three parts to a search engine. The robot
or spider which crawls around the web; the index where all the
pages the spider has discovered are stored; and then there is the
software which does all the ranking of the pages. Often you
will be able to
see that a particular search engine spider has been
through your site (it shows up in your traffic logs, and they all
have their own names eg slurp, mozilla, scooter etc), but you
cannot find your site when you
search for it on that search engine.
Don't panic, and don't resubmit yet - it's because
the information hasn't yet arrived at the index. With the
massive growth of the Internet, some of the busy search engines
now take upwards of 4 weeks to index your site, and more.
Especially at the moment. All of the promoters are talking
about the problems with Excite, Altavista and some of the others
since last November.
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