Top engines to submit to

Top few engines that are "must haves"...

[digitalglove]

Shakey first timer here.

After spending most of my day (on the job time-*hengh*) reading posts it seems that there are only a few search engines that are worth posting to.

I checked out Inkomi and I like their pricing. $39 1 url $25 addtional urls. This'll get my client's sites on MSN and AOL right? Are there other that you would recommend that I submit to that are comparable? What about Google? Most of my sites are small to medium sized businesses and a few non-profits.

Thanks!

*whew! That was easy* :)

[mack]

The top are

Google - Free
Fast - Free
ODP - Free
Yahoo - free for your non profits.

Google is without a doubt the most importaint because a good google listing will ensure good listings on countless other engines.

And welcome to webmasterWorld :)

[msr986]

One link from a site included in Google will get your site listed in Google.

Try getting your site listed in ODP.

The rest of the 'free' SE's will find you!

Yahoo is good for many sites, but $299 a year is a little stiff.

[Go60Guy]

Don't forget MSN free submission here:

[submitit.bcentral.com...]

And, of course, paid submission at:

[positiontech.com...]

[Marcia]

Welcome to the board, digitalglove. AOL isn't Inktomi now, it's Google. You've got to have some decent inbound links to get ranked with Google, and it's not impossible to get into Ink for free, paying does do it quicker. Just don't try for Ink/MSN for keywords that have a lot of LS listings first. The single best thing you can do is get a good ODP listing - read their guidelines carefully.

We've got a couple of posts telling about the current search engines of importance, including an invaluable chart of relationships. There are links to them in this thread in our Community Center:

WebmasterWorld Welcome and Guide to the Basics [webmasterworld.com]

You should find several of the other discussions linked to helpful as well.

[JayC]

I checked out Inkomi and I like their pricing. $39 1 url $25 addtional urls. This'll get my client's sites on MSN and AOL right?

A clarification, because that reference to "client's sites" makes me think you might have missed this: when you submit "one url" to Inktomi it means just that. One url, one page. If you want to include ten pages even from one site in the paid spidering program, you have to pay for all ten, they're not going to crawl your whole site because you submit the index page. That said, Inktomi is spidering sites for free too, so you have to decide whether it's worth paying for it.

Of course it is still true that after paying $39 for one page you can put pages from both your own and your clients' sites in for $25 each. I just wanted to make sure you caught the part about paying per page.

As Marcia said, Inktomi is no longer a way into AOL, but it is a way into MSN. When Go60Guy dropped PositionTech's url as a way to get into MSN, that's what he was referring to. PositionTech is one of a few vendors through which you can pay to get into Inktomi.

[digitalglove]

Thanks everybody for their advice!

Here's a crazy question...if all the best search engines are free to submit to...why do people pay? And is it worth paying to submit sites?

Thanks again!

[Brad]

>>if all the best search engines are free to submit to...why do people pay?

They pay to get in fast. They might not have a couple of months to wait to be "found" by spidering.

[geezer]

Hi folks

On the subject of 'top engines'. I can't help but wonder this....

How important is it to spend time (and money if you want to do it with auotmated software) submitting to the 'thousands of smaller search engines' out there (the 'bottom' engines :))?

I have Web Position Gold which tells me the tiny engines are not important because no-one use them anyway. Is this true?

Thanks for any help

[Marcia]

It isn't worth it, and there are so few it pays to submit by hand. They'll find sites through links, anyway.

[ritch_b]

Automated software generally isn't worth the disk space it's written on. Hand submission to the small pool of major engines will be of more use and most other s/engines will eventually add you via these links in any case.

That's my 2 cents worth.

R.

[geezer]

OK...thanks for the advice guys :)