Search Engine Submission

I wrote most of what you may read below some years ago. In the SEO community, you see, it's been understood for years (I'm writing this in the last days of November 2006) that you just don't waste your client's money and your time in search engine submission. Yet, still, doing related keyword research just recently, I was astonished by how many people are still searching for someone to perform search engine submission. Philosophers might suggest it's easier just to take peoples' money than it is to educate them in what they really should be spending it on. While we're pondering that, you might try asking the many SEO companies, not all of them transparently crooked, who offer search engine submission, which engines they submit to, what the specific benefit of being included in them would be for your individual site, what proof of submission do they offer, and lastly what guarantee of getting in any of these search engines' indexes do they offer.

Then you can take the money you've saved and spend it on some SEO that'll actually bring some benefit to your site. Did I mention I do such work myself?

Here's what I wrote when I put this page live some years ago;

If submitting your site to ten engines is good, then submitting to one hundred must be better, right?

Wrong. There's a handful at most that have any real impact and will index sites written about almost anything. Many of the others (from our Western European point of view) are foreign language anyway and won't index your English language site.

Still others are highly-specialised. If you're engaged in the manufacture of ladies' underwear in the United Kingdom, you're unlikely to see any benefit from being submitted to an engine which only indexes tractor manufacturers resident to the United States. Further, since most of the engines neither confirm nor deny receipt of submissions, there will be no proof that your site was ever submitted. So submitting to more than a handful of engines was never anything else than pointless. Companies which offer to submit your site to hundreds of engines are simply offering to take your money for nothing.

Since I wrote that, the position has changed again (in fact, since I wrote this it will have changed again - it's a volatile beast, the internet). It's now generally accepted that almost all submission to engines is largely redundant. So long as there's a link to your site from a site already indexed in their database and your site is reasonably well-constructed from a technical viewpoint, an engine will eventually include your site in that same database. When? Who knows?

Sites in an engine's database have been indexed purely by software. The engines send out software devices usually called spiders or robots which search through the web making note of what they find and returning their findings to their respective engines where what they've found is sorted automatically, again purely by the engine's software, into appropriate categories. The most popular search engine is undoubtedly Google, though I think the best search engine is probably Teoma.

Sites in a directory have been inspected and approved by actual people. The site authors or their webmasters have to submit the sites for approval. If they meet the directory's criterion then they will be displayed in the appropriate category. The most popular directory is probably DMOZ, the Open Project Directory. There are hundreds of lesser-known directories, many of whom are well worth submitting to. I have lists of some on my Link Popularity page.

Like Google site maps for instance? Well, yes, the news that Google have combined with Yahoo and MSN to agree on a sitemap protocol is a Good Thing and you should indeed be making these and submitting them. More at Sitemaps.org

So submit to as many quality directories as you wish, but please don't waste your time and money in making totally pointless search engine submissions.

Search Engine Submission - avoid the traps, get expert advice.