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I. Background About Submitting Your Site
Before we go any further, it is helpful to understand what you are getting into when you contemplate site submission on the internet. There are three major places you can submit your site: Search engines allow you to pull up web sites by topical searches and usually by category. For example, if you look at a typical search engine, they will give you a box to search to enter key term search inquiries and a directory of category names where your site can be found. You can choose the method of search. You will see listings of the top search engines below.
Directories are more akin to telephone books. In fact, a lot of these are based on telephone book directories. They will give you places, companies, products, and services listings. According to Relevant Knowledge , the top 10 directories visited by the internet public in January, 1999 are: The actual survey can be found at Relevant Knowledge's 11/25/99 . This site is a great place to go for updates on web traffic and activity at various sites. It is especially good for ecommerce enterprises. Links to other sites simply means you need to find other similar sites that accept link submissions or sites where your page or web site would be useful. Now this can take a long time and is usually an ongoing process. One easy way to do this is to offer your link at your own web site for others to grab. A great starting point is to visit a list of the top 100 web sites in the various areas you think your link may be relevant. Hot 100 has lists for all categories including techology, entertainment, business, shopping, lifestyle, game sites, sports, news, world, and hotels. After going just this far, can you see why a lot of sites decide to get professional help instead or seek out automatic agencies or download programs like the ones listed in the chart below. A quality submissions program is a lot of work. The main focus of this page is search engines submission. However, there will be more sections focusing on directories and subject matter placement in future editions of this site so you might want to check back periodically for updates. The chart at the end of this page applies to all forms of submissions.
II. Search Engine BackgroundFirst, Some quick background on search engines may be useful. A search engine works by cataloging web sites into databases for quick retrieval by subject matter. Search engines build their databases by two ways. First, they receive site submission requests from people like you. Secondly, they comb the web searching for sites to add to their databases.
1. Some Search Engine Statistics Did you know that Yahoo was 36% busier than its nearest rival according to a 6/98 survey report found at NUA 30.6 million individuals visited Yahoo. AOL was second with 22.8 million (but due to technical reasons, their numbers are somewhat understated.) Netscape had 18.8 million. a. Top 10's Would you like to see who hit the top in December, 1998? Check out these results from Relevant Knowledge .
1/25/99 The Most Visited Sites for December, found at Relevant Knowledge : Do you want a second opinion? Take at look at the top search engine and directory sites at Hot 100 for March 10, 1999:
1. Aol.com and Netscape Infospace and four11 are directories. (We will be discussing these below.) Why are these different from the first group? The first list was a list of unique visitors to each site. How many different people visited each site in a given time period. This list is a list of how many total views each site is getting. (Total click throughs to the site.) As you can see, either way you slice it, Yahoo is still on top. b. General Stats In fact, according to IDC , Yahoo has the biggest market with 47% of the audience. AOL and netscape are second and third but they also have home default page advantage. The highest consumer loyalty percentages also goes to Yahoo with 36% of this audience as loyal, return visitors. Netscape was second with 34%. Time spent at Yahoo for the loyal visitors was 161 minutes per month. The discreet visitors spent an average of 67 minutes at their site. Excite was second with 45 minutes for the average discreet viewer and 160 minutes for the average loyal viewer. The article where this information can be found is called "The Power of the Portals - Who is Using Them: A Study of 6 Top Portals (Yahoo. Aol, Netscape, Infoseek, Excite, and Lycos.)" c. How Many People are on the Internet? In case you are curious, there are currently over 79 million people over 16 from the United States alone surfing the web according to Commerce Net and Nielson Polls . 68 million are on the web. They also reported that there was a total population of 225 million in the United States and Canada alone. This leaves a lot of room for future growth. It also means a lot of web sites to manage.
d. Why do people visit search engines?
"80% of the traffic to a search engine a year ago would be related to searches. That percentage has now fallen to 30, as consumers turn to portals for information."This means more people are turning to search engines for other needs as well. In fact, if you look at the top ecommerce sites for January, 1999, AOL's Shopping Channel was #2 with over 8,675,000 unique visitors. (See, Relevant Knowledge .
III. How Do Search Engines Work?1. Bots and Spiders
Enough stats for now, lets talk about how a search engine works. Most search engines have automated "Bots" or " Spiders" to help them comb and index the web. Please see, This page for more on this. These are automated programs that seek out new web sites and catalog the ones they already have into indexes for easy retrieval. These Bots and Spiders can function differently, depending upon their programming. 2. The Criteria They Use They use different criteria to rank your site, some count the keywords to determine where your site should be placed. Web Hut provides a meta tag analysis service that will count your keywords for you if you are interested to see how your site would place under one of these type of engines. Others rely on things like link popularity to help determine which sites should get top placement under various keywords. Do you want to see how popular your site is? Go to Alta Vista and enter "link:yoursitesname". This will produce a list of sites which link to yours. You can also visit Site Owner , or Link Popularity . Others will look for the keywords searched in the closest grouping on individual web pages. For example, if you search for "free submissions agents", they will pull up all pages that have these three words in there page. The ones that get top listing are the ones that have these words listed closest together on their web page. So if your title is "free submissions agents", you stand a good chance of a top rating under that search sequence because the search bot will give your page more relevancy points than one that just states "submissions agents" or "free submit agent". If you would like to see an example of this in action, run a search at Look Smart . The results will return with your keywords highlighted. The pages where these words are closest together will get top listing. Other pages list sites alphabetically. If you look at a typical Yahoo or Look Smart directory page, you will see that the sites are listed alphabetically. In a set up like this, your description matters most because it doesn't matter what you do, you will still end up at the same place on the list. Your site will be picked over others because your description matches their needs. Other sites list by your meta tags. For example, if you visit Alta Vista 's submission page, they state that they will use your meta tags as the description for your site and the keywords for your site. At pages like this it is very important for you to have solid meta description and keyword tags. Please visit the Meta Tag Channel for more information about how to prepare your meta tags. Some sites create sub-pages of information, with relevant listings on those pages. The Mining Co. is a great example of this. Each search result is a mini -news page for that particular area. Finally, some sites will review your site and place it where they deem relevant. For example, Excite only asks for a URL submission from you and their submissions page says they do not use meta tags to analyze your site. 3. The Look of A Search Engine The way a search engine is set up is also important to your submission needs. Yahoo and Look Smart both ask you to choose which category pages best describe your site to begin your site submissions process for their databases. Yahoo will ask you which other categories apply as one of their submission questions so you should have a list of relevant categories ready in advanced. They will also ask you if a new category would better capture your web site. Finally they provide an opportunity for comments at the end of your form to include information like language variations. They will let you create your own description up to 200 characters (about 25 words.) long. Look Smart asks you to choose each page that applies and supply a separate submission. They will let you create your own description up to 150 characters (10 - 20 words) . They will also let you submit 80 characters of top keywords (approximately 12 words). Some sites only require your URL (uniform resource locator - your web site address), and a return email address. Sites like this are Infoseek , Lycos , and Alta Vista . Excite is like this but it will also let you choose one relevant topic heading. At places like this, unless they specify otherwise, your keywords and description meta tags will be very important in determining where your site will place. If you don't supply a description, some sites will automatically pull your first sentence of your web page as the description for your web site. This is why you sometimes see descriptions that make no sense or seem to get cut off mid-sentence. Other places like Go offer fee based top placement. At sites like this, you bid for top placement in the keyword categories of your choice. This way allows you to pick where you want your site and treats top placement as an advertising expense. (You pay per click through only like an affiliates program.) Still other places like Search King offer a totally different approach. At this site, top placement is chosen by the viewing audience. The sites that receive the best votes, get top placement. You, as a listing web site, are given total access to your description, so you can make changes to it based upon the voting feedback. At a site like this, it is most important for you to have a lot of friends and ask them to vote often. (That was a joke.) On the serious side, it is most important for you to have a catchy description that accurately describes what the viewer will find at your web site. So they get what they came for. Yet another approach is offered by Village Links which takes all of the hard work out of submissions entry. For this search engine, all you have to worry about is that they categorize your site at the right places. All searches produce completely random results. This means, once your site qualifies for a search category, you have an equal chance at top placement every time your keywords are ran. Obviously, your description will still be important. Finally, as if this isn't confusing enough, at places like Yahoo and LookSmart, you have to worry about both search engine and catalog placement when entering your site submission. They give you an opportunity to submit your own description for your catalog submission. This submission may also be used however, to help their search engines catalog your site. No big deal right - wrong. (You probably have already guessed that right?) As you will find when you read Sample Tags That Work Part II , proper descriptive wording of your description can help better your chances of top placement at search engines. Using keywords that are searched for most often which best describe your own web site will help search engines to better catalog your sites. For search engines, it is more important for you to get top listing, than to have a catchy description. You can have the greatest description in the world, but if no one sees it, it is useless. However catalog sites are different. There it is more important for you to provide a catchy description. Your listing will remain the same no matter what you do. It is your description that will attract the click throughs. Do you see the potential conflict? Entering a good description for the catalog side may mean sacrificing top listing at the search engine side. Frustrating isn't it. Only you can decide how you want to best balance these somewhat conflicting objectives.
IV. Chart of What Search Engines RequireNow that you have a better idea what you are getting into, lets take a look at what each engine requires. This page will continue to grow so keep checking back for updates. This page also makes a great manual submissions link site if you prefer to do your search engine campaigns manually. For those of you who would rather visit a site where this is done automatically or would like to pick up a download that can help you manage your campaigns, visit our Submissions Agents Chart .We also encourage you to check out Free Links for another list of manual link sites and MMG Co for a list of the top 100 search engine and directory link sites. If you would like more information about search engines, visit Internet.com's Search Engine Watch . If you would like to see a whole directory of stats and research summaries, visit NUA . The following chart only deals with search engines. We will be developing a unique section for directories and a section for subject matter placement in upcoming editions of Promotion Network.
Please check back to this page for updates. If you have questions regarding this page or wish to submit your URL for consideration, please send an email to azurii@yahoo.com . If you are submitting a URL, indicate which page you would prefer it to be listed. Also include a description and keywords if your URL lacks meta tags.
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