Forum Moderators: open
Abacho.de = 1 week
Altavista.de = 2 weeks
Acoon = 4-6 weeks
Fireball = within 3 days
Google = 4-10 weeks
FAST = 4-8 weeks
Infoseek.de = no update since Nov ī00
Excite.de = 6-9 months (last update Apr 27, 2001)
Speedfind = 2 weeks
Lycos.de = see FAST
Altavista.com = 3 days
Inktomi = paid within 3 days, non-paid...?
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MSN = results from Allesklar and Inktomi
AOL = results from ODP and Inktomi
T-Online = Infoseek.de
Freenet = results from Dino-Online and Inktomi
Yahoo = ...Google as backup
Hotbot.de = Inktomi
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any comments, thoughts?
It seems that you are looking for a strategy that will give you the greatest possible global reach with the smallest possible cost in terms of translations. This is an interesting question, not before discussed in this forum.
USA+UK+Germany won't take you far though. Together they account for only 41.3% of the world's economy, not the 95% that you assume. Not even adding all of the 15 European Union nations (28.2%) to the USA (29.6%) and Canada (2.0%) is going to get you further than 59.8% of the world's income.
To reach 95%, you will need the 50 first countries in this document from the World Bank [worldbank.org] but that will involve many more languages than you would likely want to handle.
Looking at the World Bank figures from a language perspective, it seems to me that you could optimize at 78% of the world's economy by using English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, French, German and Italian. That would probably be the most cost effective alternative.
As to your other questions: Submitting to OPD should get you into Google and all the Fast based engines (incl. Lycos and 40 others [webmasterworld.com]) automatically. There is no Inktomi.de, you would have to contact and pay their agents in the US. You can get a good picture of the relative importance of the Inktomi based engines in the Germany discussion [webmasterworld.com] in this forum.
If you are serious about reaching Europe, I suggest that you read the European SEO strategy primer [webmasterworld.com]. It will give you the basics quickly. Also check our Asian forum [webmasterworld.com], where there is a wealth of facts on Asian engines and directories.