when to submit?

newbie question

[ahmed_uk]

is it worth trying to get my site indexed before it goes live? At the moment, I've just got a holding page with some info and a contact page.. the site wont go live for another month or so.

Should I put up some spider food and start building links and submitting the site to search engines or should I wait until it's live?

[SIRokai]

I dont think it hurts to feed them... although if someone hits your site and it's empty they might not come back again.

on another note:
I believe google indexes every month.

Wait for a few more commments before deciding.
J

[millie]

If I was in your position I would wait 'til your site goes live because *submitting* to the search engines is really not very relevant any more - it's good quality links you need. And you won't get good quality links unless people think your site is worth linking to. And if it's got no content all your link requests will be in vain. I'd use the next month or two to build up a database of potential links and then make your link requests on launch.

It can be a significant disadvantage to get spidered when you've got weak content and then the spiders might not come visiting again because you didn't have optimised pages.

Millie

[pleeker]

millie has it right -- finish your site.

Submitting to the crawling search engines (Google, ATW, Inktomi) is useless, they will find your site once you have links pointing to your site from other sites in their indexes.

And submitting to directories such as ODP, Skaffe.com, JoeAnt, etc., is useless because no editor will approve an unfinished site for inclusion in the directory.

So - finish your site. :) Then get some incoming links, and submit to the appropriate category in directories. Good luck.

[tbear]

Totally agree with the above.....
I would suggest though, that it's not a bad idea to go out getting one or two 'links' organised. This will bring 'sniffing' crawls, and so, a little attention within the search engines.
Then, when the site is ready to be given to directories, you will already have one or two, hopefully, relevant, links both in and out, giving a good impression of the site. I've found that this can give a bit of a rush when things do finally kick in...;)
IMHO you would be helping your site to get found and putting on your best face at the same time.