Getting a topical search engine going

[altyfc]

Over the past 18 months I've been working on a number of search engines. All the submissions to the search engine are checked and edited by hand. Whilst we're up to date on all the submissions, and try to remain that way, one of our main problems has been getting to a sufficient content level submitted, even though we seem to be getting a healthy traffic level. Can anyone suggest what we can do? Also any opinions on the travel search engine (the most content rich of the three) would be welcomed...

[figment88]

Maybe you should stop sending so many emails out to people.

[Skier]

Take a good look at how Webmasterworld works, and why there is such a volume of traffic/content here. It is the best example of its category, and yours. The forum's early history might be particularly useful to you.

[Marcia]

We don't deal with individual sites, but in general principle, specialized topical search engines generally don't come up at the search engines, from what I've ever seen. They've generally got long, dynamic URLs and that isn't compatible with search engine listings, for starters.

On the other hand, I have seen topical directories come up for searches on quite a number of subjects, but those were static URLs and also pretty well optimized, with well structured navigation and decent PR on the inner pages.