Is it critical that I submit my site to search engines?

Or will the search engines find me anyways?

[budbiss]

How many of you all submit your sites? Do you use any of those services or tools that supposedly make it easier and quicker?

BTW, I am doing ok on google, I'm just trying improve my presence on the others as well.

[d_stew]

This is an interesting topic. I am currently researching this same subject, but with a little different angle. I have some sites that were not submitted to Google, ODP, or any other popular SE. They were submitted to Search Hippo only. In my test group, every single one was gobbled up by the googlebot. However, even though all sites have very similar structure, it really varies as to how deep the spider goes.

As to your topic directly, you should not have to submit to any search engine, as long as someone else who is indexed finds you and links to your site. Submitting in and of itself doesn't hurt though.

[JayC]

>> I'm just trying improve my presence on the others as well

Well the question is... which others?

The ongoing consolidation of search engine databases has brought a near-complete devaluation of submission services and software, and submission itself. The few remaining "major" search engines are likely to spider and add you before they'll do so in response to your url submission. The only significant reason to consider submission now is to get into more obscure minor search engines and directories and, depending on your industry, any applicable vertical directories or similar resources.

If you're considering submission services or software, you'd want to make sure that they cover any of those for your industry -- and you'd want to check whether automated url submissions will even work with the places you're targeting. But the bottom line is that automated submission today is pretty much dead -- which is why this forum [webmasterworld.com] has been deprecated for more than a year.

[bufferzone]

You will discover that 95 % of your targeted traffic comes form 2 to 4 SE’s, the rest delivers og the SE’s delivers the rest 5 %. This means that it is critical that you select the right SE’s to submit to and concentrate your efforts in getting good placements for the right keywords.

You will also discover that some keywords deliver more traffic then others. It is critical that you find the keywords and key phrases that people actually use in the SE’s.

Read the posts in Webmasterworld, learn to pick the right SE’s and learn to pick the right keywords and you will multiply your traffic quickly and if you learn good you will also be able to convert the traffic to sales