Alta Vista
- Submit Site: Submit URL
- Index Method: Indexing spider that digs. Provide URL of index page only.
META tags used as primary source for indexing, visible content is secondary.
Description and keyword limit of 1,024 characters. "Each document gets a grade based on how many of
the search terms it contains, where the words are in the document, and how close to
each other they are.
Indexing Details provided.
Obsolete URL's can be removed from Alta Vista by simply re-submitting them
(URL's resulting in Error 404 are automatically removed if intentionally submitted).
Alta Vista provides a good explanation of
/robot.txt
files to prevent indexing of certain directories within a site.
- Availability/Maintenance: Minimum 2 days, spider auto updates site changes
- Verification?: No, perform blatant search of site title
Excite
- Submit Site: Submit URL
- Index Method: Indexing spider that digs. Submit only the Index page. Relies solely on
visible content and does not use META tags for keywords but will honor the "Description" tag.
Excite offers their reasoning on this method.
They do provide info on How to Get Your Site Listed.
- Availability/Maintenance: Requires up to 2 weeks for inclusion. Claims that
their spider revisits the site(s) and makes appropriate updates.
- Verification?: No, perform blatant search of site title
- Notes: Since Excite reads the actual content, good piece of advice offered on their
site is "Relegate unrelated topics to subsidiary pages. If you're advertising your Hawaiian Bed and
Breakfast, don't use the home page to emphasize the way the ocean looks from a bedroom window....For
the same reason, don't put price lists on the home page."
Lycos
- Submit Site:Submit URL
- Index Method: Indexing Spider that digs down 1 level. Multiple URL's can be submitted.
Although Lycos does not offer details, testing indicates that they index visible text, including image ALT tags.
- Availability/Maintenance: They revisit and update sites periodically.
- Verification?: Check Status on the submission page.
- Notes:
Planet Search
- Submit Site: Submit URL
- Index Method: Indexing spider that digs. Provide URL of index page only.
No clear indication of how they index the site but testing indicates they index actual
(visible) content.
Indexing Info provided but not very
informative. (USER NOTE: Planet Search provides a neat "text preview" of search results with your
search keywords highlighted. Very useful.)
Like Alta Vista, obsolete URL's can be removed by simply re-submitting them
(URL's resulting in Error 404 are automatically removed if intentionally submitted).
- Availability/Maintenance: Minimum 2 days, spider revisits site preiodically
- Verification?: No, perform blatant search of site title
Yahoo
- Submit Site: Start at home page, navigate to appropriate category(s) and submit.
- Index Method: Directory. Yahoo requests that you navigate as deeply into appropriate sub-catagories
as appropriate. All business sites must be listed in
"
Business and Economy: Companies". Sites can be classified
as "regional" but only as a secondary catagory if its a "Business". Pick 2 catagories, title, URL, 20 word desc.
Help Page on how to submit and
How to Suggest Your Site.
- Availability/Maintenance: Even heaven doesn't know.
- Verification?: Confirm Listing
- Notes: Becoming listed on Yahoo takes considerably more time than on other
search engines or Directories due to their editing process. A quote from Yahoo's
web site: "Sites are placed in categories by Yahoo! Surfers, who visit and
evaluate your suggestions and decide where they best belong. We do this to
ensure that Yahoo! is organized in the best possible way, making the directory
easy to use, intuitive, helpful, and fair to everyone." While this may result in
more effective searching for users, it requires additional patience on the part
of web site owners and developers. Although Yahoo allows the "suggesting" of
placement in related catagories, they determine the ultimate placement.
Hot Bot
- Submit Site:Submit URL
- Index Method: Indexing spider. Submit multiple URL's + email. "Basic factors affecting a page's ranking
are: the words in the title, keyword META tags, word frequency in the document, and document length."
How to Improve Listing page is provided.
- Availability/Maintenance: 2 weeks for inclusion. Info on Spider revisits not available.
- Verification?: Confirm Listing
- Notes:Compared to the other top search engines/directories, Hot Bot offers little
on-line information on their method of indexing, updating, etc.
InfoSeek
- Submit Site:Submit URL
- Index Method: Indexing Spider that does not dig. Submit seperate URL's up to 50 max in
24 hour period. Visible content of site is primary, META tags are secondary (including image ALT tags).
Limit META description to 200 characters and META keywords to 1000 characters, phrases should
be comma seperated list. They offer
Submitting Tips.
- Availability/Maintenance: Unknown
- Verification?: Check Status
- Notes: Infoseek stresses many warnings against
Spamming.
"The overuse and repetition of keywords may result in a lower relevancy score." Infoseek also claims
to be able to identify the use of colored text on same-color background which they may consider as
spamming. (This can be confirmed but has not at this writing).
Infoseek allows removal of dead or obsolete URL's on their "Add URL" page. Infoseeks spider does not
follow links. Submitting more than 50 URL's at one time is allowed with email.
Webcrawler
- Submit Site:Submit URL
- Index Method: Indexing Spider that does not dig. Allows submission of up to 25 URL's.
"WebCrawler indexes every word on your page up to 1MB of text." (Webcrawler does not clarify if META
tags are used). They encourage the use of descriptive Titles. Encourage the use of [NOFRAMES] content (this
may indicate they don't use META tags). Webcrawler Indexing Guidelines
- Availability/Maintenance: 2 weeks to be included. Revisits unknown.
- Verification?: Check Status
- Notes:
Linkstar
- Submit Site:Submit URL
- Index Method: Directory. Submit profile with e-mail, address, URL,catagories, 50 word description.
They maintain a company bio on password protected "E-Card". Prelim testing indicates that search results are based
solely on E-Card bio (title, description, etc.). Nice search result presentation.
- Availability/Maintenance: Unknown
- Verification?: No, perform blatant search of site title
- Notes:
Starting Point
- Submit Site:Submit URL
- Index Method: Directory. Submit Title, URL, contact and address, catagory, 160 character
description (not keywords). From testing, it appears they index your actual site and "dig" down
although this contradicts "directory" type.Uncertain at this writing what the 150 word description is
used for. May be substitution if site is missing META tags. A clarifying email has been requested at
this writing.
- Availability/Maintenance: Unknown
- Verification?: No, perform blatant search of site title
- Notes: Need more research for exact details.
LookSmart
- Submit Site:Submit Instructions
- Index Method: Directory. Conceptually the same as Yahoo where you navigate to applicable catagory
and submit URL, title, and a few keywords. Appears to be very new. Currently provides keyword search of the
entire web (apparently using some others services database) or click down through their hierarchical
catagories.
- Availability/Maintenance: Unknown
- Verification?: Confirm Listing
- Notes:
NetMall
- Submit Site:Submit Info
- Index Method: Directory. Similar to Linkstar, 10 keywords, 150 word description, password
protected company bio. Search results are based on company bio only, site not very informative. Prelim
testing indicated search result weighting not very accurate.
- Availability/Maintenance: Unknown
- Verification?: No, perform blatant search of site title
- Notes: Need to investigate further.
Metacrawler
SEARCH ONLY, does not take submissions, provides simultaneous searches on Excite, Infoseek,
Alta Vista.
Magellan
SEARCH ONLY, does not take submissions, uses Excite primarily for searching
Image Surfer
Image Surfer is a unique approach to searching where images are presented as the search results.
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Search Engine Submission Services |
Submit It!
Submit It (owned by Link Exchange) provides submission to up to 400 Internet search engines and directories.
Submit It publishes the list
of search engines/directories they use and explain their philosophy. Pricing depends on how many URL's (pages) are
submitted: $60 for 2 URLs, $125 for 5 URLs, $200 for 10 URLs, $300 for 20 URLs. They provide a
General Info page.
Promote One
Promote One is a printed strategy guide and newsletter on search engine
strategy and web promotion. No comments at this writing (9/18/98).
Position It
Here's a quote for their home page.."Allows you to maximize traffic
flow by maintaining top positioning with search engines. The top seven search
engines can account for as much as 95% of the traffic to web sites."
Somewhat confusing web site. Appears that the basic service is $295.00. They do
not list the search engines or directories that they submit to.
Web Promote
Provides submissions to the following search engines: AltaVista, Infoseek, Lycos,
WebCrawler, Excite, HotBot, PlanetSearch, and What-U-Seek.
- WP BLITZ Package: Search engine submission of up to 50 unique URL's to these 8 engines. Cost $295.00.
- WP 200 Package: Submission to 200 search engines, limited to 5 keyword phrases for Directory type
submissions. Cost $ 345.00.
- WP200 Complete Package: Same as WP200 above except they will confirm position with the top 30 search
engines and directories 3, 6, and 9 months after initial submission. Cost is $1,395.00
Web Promote exclaims.."You'll never hear us making exaggerated claims about how we can make your
site an overnight success. The truth is, there are no magical solutions to succeeding on the
Internet, just good old-fashioned hard work and intelligently-applied, proven Internet marketing techniques."
Web Position
WebPosition submits your site to the Top 10 major search engines which they list as: AltaVista, Excite,
HotBot, LinkStar, Yahoo!, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Lycos, Magellan, Northern Lights
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| On-Line Site Inspectors |
Link Exchange Site Inspector
Web Site Garage
Bobby analyzes web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities as well as their
compatibility with various browsers
TopHosts
Meta Tag Checker by Northern Webs (go to bottom of page)
is a free META tag verification service. They also provide a more comprehensive
SET SIMM (Search Engine Simulator)
available for a nominal fee.
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Tips for Search Engine Compatibility |
Several web sites provide good information on optimizing sites for search engines. Northernwebs offers
a SE tutorial on several pages such as
SE Details,
META tags,
Site Promotion and Other Links.
Marketing Online Learning Center provides a list of useful
links.
AccuSubmit provides promotional
resources for internet marketing.
There will be occasions when you have pages you do not want included in search engines. Webcrawler
offers the
Robots Exclusion
page to help prepare robots.txt files as does Alta Vista on their
Exclude spiders
page.
We've summarized some of the more basic Search Engine effectiveness strategies:
- Make sure visible text provides good descriptive and keyword content
- If using Frames, make sure index page (framesets) have proper META tags and [noframes] info
- Keywords should describe: What is the site about? Who is the site targeted for?
- Consider different keyword sets for various pages within the site
- FOCUS: You have a better chance of being higher up on the search engines using a narrow set
of keywords than you do with a broad generic set. Select unique and distinguishing words if possible.
- FINE TUNE: Make actual searches using your own proposed keywords and review results. Fine
tune by providing seperation from competition if possible.
- Use descriptive URL's that contain keywords within the file name (ie., microprocessor.html)
- Make sure your first 200 visible characters provide a good description of your site.
- Although it is very rare, confirm that the host server does not have a "robots.txt" file
which instructs search engines to ignore the site. This can be checked by entering the URL
"http://your.domain/robots.txt" to confirm one does not exist.
- Dynamically generated pages pose problems for search engines. All sites should have a good
static home page for search engines.
Lastly, no page is complete without a link to
Internic/Whois.
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