The Little Engines That Could .... or can they?

second tier roll call and why are they here

[Drastic]

Excite - too slow in updating. I am actually doing well right now, from submissions that are 6 months old. ok by me if they keep the current schedule, that is until I promote my next site. ;)

NorthernLight - too little traffic. I actually did decently with earlier uneducated SEO. They don't seem to like the one-SEO-fits-most technique. They must not penalize for a high KWD, since I was around 20% when I was listed well. Good engine for research topics.

Infoseek - We all know the Go story. And I do remember the almost realtime updates. Maybe resurrection/reincarnation will happen after a buyout.

Someone want to list some of the others?

[Brett_Tabke]

Good review. Excite is great if you are in the DB.

Northern Light. All they would have to do, is go low key on their results (ala raging/google), get a shorter domain name to promote, and they would double their traffic in 30 days. They've made the same mistake Alta made by trying to be too much, and forgetting they are search engine first through 10th. All they need is a nice looking site and a zippy name to be successful.

Direct Hit and Hotbot. The mysterious two'some. Inktomi killed DH when they tried to turn Search services into a commodity. Bottom line, the Inktomi search services are a failed business model. Just keep clicking. Dig your site out under your kw's once a day and click. Any referral that comes in, go find the page, and click. Even 1-2 clicks a day under targeted kw's enough to stay on the radar screen of DH and Hotbot.

Fast, Lycos, Sympatico. Get listed using old techniques. No themes here, just brute force optimization. (I love these guys). They are the closest to the old Infoseek going today. Submitted a page on Tuesday last week - no searchable. Their crawler could use a tad more work, as it doesn't dig deep the way it used too.

MSN has been a mystery to me. One week they send 2k referrals, the next they send 2 referrals. All you can do is solid optimization and hope ink likes you.

Looksmart listings are hit and miss. One category will produce a bounty, the next will produce nothing. Had a client fork out twice for the reg fee in December, since then he has received a whopping 21 referrals (they nuked our title and description). On the other hand, a simple little site that has been in ls for 3 years, continues to produce 100 referrals a day, rain-or-shine.

[Marcia]

I just recently had a brand new, never before submitted page appear very quickly with Lycos - Fast, too.

I was just recently made aware of the value of second tier directories. I believe it related to vertical markets. Is there a way to dig out these directories, according to specific types of categories?

Also, are there any second tier directories that are more general but still worth checking out?

[tedster]

MSN runs hot and cool for me as well. When they're hot they have been the number one referer for some of my sites, topping even strong ranking on Google, AV, AOL etc. I've only seen this in the last few months -- they used to always be way down the list.

I think their growing influence might be traced to all the new computer "discounts" that people have been getting when they commit to MSN as their ISP.

[ihelpyou]

Interesting thread.

Marcia... I just do not think that the second-tier's are really worth the hassle. I believe that if the site can do well in the majors, the "trickle-down" effect takes place.

Many seem to draw results from the majors anyway.... ala Dogpile getting results from Looksmart, GoTo, Ink., etc.

Many also draw from Looksmart, although you may not directly see it.

At this point in time, Excite is no longer in the 2nd tier as updates and traffic have jumped all the sudden.

I think their growing influence might be traced to all the new computer "discounts" that people have been getting when they commit to MSN as their ISP.

Exactly.

Look at the thing going with Dell Comp. and Microsoft. They are both awfully "FuzzyWuzzy" with each other these days, and becoming moreso. Now Dell has made the leap to webhost/dedicated webhost/web designer/programmer/copywriter/..on and on.... PLUS, they also sell computers, and kinda do faily well with that by itself. :)

All of Dell's clients get first-hand digs of the MSN search engine. The new guys/gals on the net sometimes do not know they can change the default search engine on their computers.

I get tons of hits from MSN as do many clients. I do believe a good Looksmart listing has far reaching, long-term effects, some of which we all do not even truly understand.