| Is Search Engine Submission Necessary? |
Recently, a customer of ours was insistent on announcing his new
website to big search engines. Otherwise, he argued, *...how would
the world know that I exist...*. Indeed, the belief that one
*must* submit his/her website to search engines has spawned growth
of umpteen agencies (some with questionable intentions) that
promise *guaranteed inclusion in search engines* for hefty fees.
There are others who promise *guaranteed top placement* in search
engines. But that's a different story.
So then, what takes..! Let's first separate grains from the chaff.
It's worth looking at a few apparently contradicting, yet
important aspects.
Google is the king
Recent reports suggest Google presently is the most popular search
engine in the US. A May, 2003 research finds Google's share of
*search-pie* an overwhelming 76% among US web surfers compared to
MSN's only 15% (reference: article by Danny Sullivan on Aug 1,
2003 at Search Engine Watch,
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431).
In continental Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland and UK), in June, 2003 the average viewership
of Google (about 29.06%) was very close to (in fact a little less
than) MSN's nearly 29.43% (reference: article by Danny Sullivan on
July 31, 2003 at Search Engine Watch,
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156441).
With rapid-fire developments like Yahoo's acquiring Inktomi and
Overture and MSN's plan to float its own crawler, none is sure
what would happen one year hence. There are even talks of 3rd
generation search engines taking over soon. At the time of writing
this article though, Google remains firmly atop the surfers' list
of most preferred search engines.
Do not submit to Google
Yeah, you need not submit to Google. Google will find you. It has
been Google's long-time practice to extensively crawl the Web so
as to build its own comprehensive database of webpages, no matter
whether you submit or not. In the process it has *outsmarted*
others in producing the most relevant search results. Surfers love
Google. Since Yahoo presents Google's search results and the fact
that Looksmart has changed its listing procedure, it is obvious
that their paid-listing programs are just not working.
Google's famed robot, *Googlebot*, crawls millions of webpages
everyday and it's quite probable a new website will be
automatically crawled sooner than one may imagine, whether
*submitted* or not. One may also expect periodic visits by
AltaVista's *Scooter*, Inktomi's *Slurp* and numerous other
crawlers after you're *known* to Google.
Google's uppishness
Google doesn't like *orphan* sites. To quote Google's own words
(at http://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html), *The best way to
ensure Google finds your site is for your page to be linked from
lots of pages on other sites. Google's robots jump from page to
page on the Web via hyperlinks, so the more sites that link to
you, the more likely it is that we'll find you quickly*.
Dilemma indeed. Getting in Google is a MUST, yet if you want your
website to be liked by Google, it'd need *fingers* (meaning links)
pointing at it.
The way out
ODP (Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org/) is the first
choice. But there it takes a long time, being human-controlled
initiative (consider consulting Seotie http://www.seotie.com/ to
monitor your website's inclusion in DMOZ directory, in case you've
submitted to ODP).
Another factor to think over is once listed in ODP, it is very
difficult to alter your listing. Even a small change of a webpage
url may render your ODP listing unworthy.
In comes therefore the necessity of submitting to other search
engines, the relatively smaller ones, yet important ones at that.
There are in fact quite a few of them with decent traffic flow. An
advantage here is most search engines list websites in relevant
categories and therefore once listed, links from them are what I
call *highly-targeted-link-sources*.
Where to find them
A handy list of nearly 50 search engines and directories according
to their Alexa Traffic Rank is maintained by FreeWebSubmission
http://www.freewebsubmission.com/, refreshed on the first of every
month. For example, Google's Alexa rank is 5.
Other important ones in this list are AltaVista
http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new (Alexa Rank 58), AllTheWeb
http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php (Alexa Rank 199), What U Seek
http://www.whatuseek.com/addurl-secondary.shtml (Alexa Rank 2523),
ScrubTheWeb http://www.scrubtheweb.com/addurl.html (Alexa Rank
2555), ExactSeek http://www.exactseek.com/add.html (Alexa Rank
2471), SearchHippo http://www.searchhippo.com/addlink.php (Alexa
Rank 3041), EntireWeb http://www.entireweb.com/eng/basic/ (Alexa
Rank 3667), GigaBlast http://www.gigablast.com/addurl (Alexa Rank
6860) and Gimpsy http://www.gimpsy.com/ (Alexa Rank 7222).
FreeWebSubmission http://www.freewebsubmission.com/ also offers
free submission to 20 search engines at one go. [Note the Alexa
rankings given here are for August, 2003]. To know how Alexa ranks
webpages, go here
http://pages.alexa.com/exec/faqsidos/help/index.html?index=1.
Here is an interesting article by Barry Lloyd
http://www.searchengineblog.com/columns/optimising_for_inktomi.htm.
He proffers that optimizing for Inktomi can later translate into
Google success. Don't forget to look at it
http://www.searchengineblog.com/columns/optimising_for_inktomi.htm.
The bottom line
Search engine submission is but one small part of web success. If
you stay put on the Web taking good care of your core business,
chance is you'll be *discovered* sooner than later. Pause awhile
now and then and renew your *friendship* with smaller search
engines. The surfing traffic may seldom find you there, but Google
surely will. And that's important.
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Author of this article, Partha Bhattacharya, owns and operates
EzyPost.Com offering reasonably-priced nicely-designed website
templates and also website designing and promotion tips. Copyright
© Partha Bhattacharya, Webmaster, Www.EzyPost.Com,
. Get to know more at EzyPost. It pays.
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