Submitting

Why Submit to Directories and Search Engines?

It is true Search Engines have programs also called crawlers or robots that go out visiting domain names, following links and indexing, and ranking sites. The ranking of a site determines its relative importance based on many factors and complex algorithms which are trade secrets to search engines. Some of these factors are: the number of links linking to that site, the number and ranking of links within your site to other sites, the relevance of these links to your content, your content itself how 'fresh' (updated) it is - your use of keywords, amount of text, and on and on (it's an exhaustive topic). Dowload the Google toolbar and you can see the Google ranking of any site you visit. Search Engines use a combination of indexing and reading directories to build their index of sites and produce search results for users in a ranked order. Search results are often from primary feeds, secondary feeds, directories, and also ppc (pay-per-click advertisements). For example the primary feed for AOL.com is from Google.

The combination of directory and web crawling varies among the search engines. For example, Google builds its own index but it uses the Open Directory Project for its directory. Yahoo! crawls the web to build an index and uses its own directory. So in order to get found by Google you do not have to submit to Google, but in order to be listed in Google's directory you must get listed with the Open Directory Project. However, for Yahoo! you need only submit to Yahoo!'s directory and search engine.

DMOZ - Open Directory Project

Google for one, as mentioned above, uses the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) directory. It is the single, largest, human-edited directory on the web. The Open Directory Project feeds Google, Netscape, EarthLink, Lycos, AOL, Ask Jeeves, and more. You'll need patience though, but it is well-worth submitting to the directory. There are forums organized by directory category, where you can follow-up on your submission, the forums are overseen by one of the volunteer editors of the directory itself. This will take patience and diplomacy - never get agitated or angry - it is a worthy cause and a huge job these volunteers are working on and remember how vast the web is.

Google

Submitting to the Google search engine is easy, go to the 'Add your URL to Google' page and fill in the form. Google has a comment line for you to add some of your most-important keywords. I'm not 100% sure if your site will get indexed faster than if you don't submit but it certainly can't hurt. Always read Google's policies. This gives you information on what you are not allowed to do. Pay attention to these policies, you do not want to have your site removed from Google's index. Googles web crawler is named 'GoogleBot' - browsing and reading Google's site is always informative - there are many features that WebMaster's are allowed to include in their site and it is always worthwhile spending time to learn about Google and its offerings.

Yahoo! Directory

I've discovered that the search engines will find you, however, they will find you sooner than later hopefully if you submit your site to directories and search engines. If you have a business that you are looking to expand via the internet it may be worth the additional cost of paying the fee to be listed in the Yahoo Directory, but for our purpose, we would just submit the free route. You start by finding where in the directory you would like your site listed and navigate to that part of the directory. Being in Canada I start at the Canadian Yahoo (http://ca.dir.yahoo.com/), navigate deeper until you reach where you want your site to be, then click 'suggest a site' and your directory tree will be carried into the form to fill out. The rest of the form is straight-forward and short, you will need a short description of the site. There is a free-text area at the bottom of the form where you can suggest other places in the directory where you think your site would be appropriately included - so it is a good idea to browse the directory and have a list of these directory trees written down before you start filling out the form.

All the Other Search Engines

So many of the other search engines are inter-dependant and so I will leave it to you to further submit to the others if you want. More or less, the main ones in order of importance are: Google, Yahoo!, The Open Directory Project, Teoma/Ask Jeeves. You can't submit paid or non-paid to Ask Jeeves but you can check if your site has been crawled by Teoma. My favourite source for Search Engine Information is http://www.searchenginewatch.com (Search Engine Watch). There is a huge amount of dependable information and tutorials for free and beyond that, when you have exhausted all the free information, you can join to be a member for a small fee and have access to the members area.

In Summary

Submit to Google, The Open Directory, to Yahoo! absolutely. Also, do not submit with automated tools that you will see advertised, submitting by hand by filling out the forms yourself is the best method.