Is Your Site Listed in the
Major Search Engines?

You have probably received many email solicitations to pay for having your site submitted to "3,000" search engines. I hope you ignore them! There really aren't that many true search engines. Most of the 3,000 are link-collection sites, called Free-For-Alls or FFAs, and they seem to exist mainly to collect your email address for resale. Once you submit your information, you start getting tons of spam. So ignore those solicitations!

Okay, so let's just concentrate on the true search engines. As you know, there are several major ones which web surfers use to find sites. Are they finding yours?

From time to time, you'll want to query those search engines to see where you're ranked for your top keywords. (In other words, do a search – pretend to be someone looking for a site like yours.) Of course, it would be incredibly time-consuming to search each of these engines for multiple keywords by hand, so you can buy software to automate the process.  I use WebPosition Gold.

There are a lot of engines, so I only pay attention to the top 30 search results. If you're listed further down, it's practically the same as not being listed at all, because most surfers don't bother to look past the first 30 results of their search.

Q. How often should I submit my site to the search engines?

A. It's actually better to let them find you on their own through links from other sites. Once you're listed in one engine, the others soon follow.

You can submit your site to the search engines as often as once per month unless you have made major changes which warrant resubmitting sooner.

If you're interested in learning more about how to get your site listed in search engines and directories, here is one way to get started:

  • Go to Danny Sullivan's SearchEngineWatch site. Danny is considered one of the top experts in the industry, and his site is so rich with content, you'll have to pay a yearly subscription fee to access it. But it's well worth it.

Please also read The Critical Difference Between Search Engines and Directories