 Search Engine Submission
- $400
original research strategy fee
- $50 monthly maintenance fee
- pay-per-click campaigns have additional independent fees
Elements
of a Campaign:
Focus: most search engines will respond best to focused
content. And that focus will bring you higher positions. For
example, a company that sells software: If you have one master
site that talks about 5 different products, the page loses focus.
Sure, they may get high relevance for "software" but
so do 56,485 other sites on the 'net.
Patience: even our advanced URL submission can do nothing
about the time it takes for search engines to actually list
submitted sites. The search engines have a lot to do these days
and many of the big ones seem to be having trouble keeping up
with the explosive growth on the Internet. Engines will say
thanks for submitting and then promptly forget your URL and
you can end up never being listed. A basic rule to follow is
that an average submission will take 6-9 weeks to be posted.
Intelligence: knowing what your potential customers will
be typing into the search engines is the most important key
to getting the proper traffic. Going for general terms like
"software" or "free" can be pretty useless.
Doing some basic market research now applies to search engine
placement as well as other media outlets.
Advertising: search engines have been around for a long
time without making any money. But lately they have found a
way. Google for example, lists in their top result web sites
that have the most links pointing to them. The traditional meta-tags
and descriptions have been abandoned. The bottom line is that
now portals and directories occupied the place of most relevant
web sites. If a web site wants to take the top results, they
most work for the links or buy advertising. The good news, buying
ads in the web is still a bargain. We can manage and design
your next campaign, while also submitting to the free search
engines.
Main
Search Engines:
Google
Google
has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching
the web. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive
coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It's highly
recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are
looking for. In addition to Google's unpaid editorial results,
the company also operates its own advertising programs. The
cost-per-click AdWords program places ads on Google as well
as some of Google's partners. Similarly, Google is also a provider
of unpaid editorial results to some other search engines. For
a list of major partnerships, see the Search Providers Chart.
Yahoo
Launched
in 1994, Yahoo is the web's oldest "directory," a
place where human editors organize web sites into categories.
However, in October 2002, Yahoo made a giant shift to crawler-based
listings for its main results. These came from Google until
February 2004. Now, Yahoo uses its own search technology. The
Yahoo Directory still survives. You'll notice "category"
links below some of the sites lists in response to a keyword
search. When offered, these will take you to a list of web sites
that have been reviewed and approved by a human editor. It's
also possible to do a pure search of just the human-compiled
Yahoo Directory, which is how the old or "classic"
Yahoo used to work. To do this, search from the Yahoo Directory
home page, as opposed to the regular Yahoo.com home page. Then
you'll get both directory category links ("Related Directory
Categories") and "Directory Results," which are
the top web site matches drawn from all categories of the Yahoo
Directory. Sites pay a fee to be included in the Yahoo Directory's
commercial listings, though they must meet editor approval before
being accepted. Non-commercial content is accepted for free.
Yahoo's content acquisition program also offers paid inclusion,
where sites can also pay to be included in Yahoo's crawler-based
results. This doesn't guarantee ranking, Yahoo promises. The
CAP program also bring in content from non-profit organizations
for free. Like
Google, Yahoo sells paid placement advertising links that appear
on its own site and which are distributed to others. These are
sold through Overture. Yahoo purchased Overture in October 2003.
Ask
Jeeves
http://www.askjeeves.com
Ask Jeeves
initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as being the "natural
language" search engine that let you search by asking questions
and responded with what seemed to be the right answer to everything.
In
reality, technology wasn't what made Ask Jeeves perform so well.
Behind the scenes, the company at one point had about 100 editors
who monitored search logs. They then went out onto the web and
located what seemed to be the best sites to match the most popular
queries. Today, Ask Jeeves instead depends on crawler-based
technology to provide results to its users. These results come
from the Teoma search engine that it owns, which is described
below. Ask Jeeves is doing innovative things with invisible
tabs and with what it calls Smart Search. We think the future
of search will be this much smarter approach to delivering up
more than just web pages. It makes Ask Jeeves a well-worth a
visit by anyone looking for information.
AllTheWeb.com
http://www.alltheweb.com
Powered
by Yahoo, you may find AllTheWeb a lighter, more customizable
and pleasant "pure search" experience than you get
at Yahoo itself. The focus is on web search, but news, picture,
video, MP3 and FTP search are also offered. AllTheWeb.com
was previously owned by a company called FAST and used as a
showcase for that company's web search technology. That's why
you sometimes may sometimes hear AllTheWeb.com also referred
to as FAST or FAST Search. However, the search engine was purchased
by search provider Overture (see below) in late April 2003,
then later become Yahoo's property when Yahoo bought Overture.
It no longer has a connection with FAST.
AOL
Search
AOL Search
provides users with editorial listings that come Google's crawler-based
index. Indeed, the same search on Google and AOL Search will
come up with very similar matches. So, why would you use AOL
Search? Primarily because you are an AOL user. The "internal"
version of AOL Search provides links to content only available
within the AOL online service. In this way, you can search AOL
and the entire web at the same time. The "external"
version lacks these links. Why wouldn't you use AOL Search?
If you like Google, many of Google's features such as "cached"
pages are not offered by AOL Search.
HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com
HotBot provides
easy access to the web's three major crawler-based search engines:
Yahoo, Google and Teoma. Unlike a meta search engine, it cannot
blend the results from all of these crawlers together. Nevertheless,
it's a fast, easy way to get different web search "opinions"
in one place. HotBot's
"choose a search engine" interface was introduced
in December 2002. However, HotBot has a long history as a search
brand before this date.HotBot debuted in May 1996, it gained
a strong following among serious searchers for the quality and
comprehensiveness of its crawler-based results, which were provided
by Inktomi, at the time. It also caught the attention of experienced
web users and techies, especially for the unusual colors and
interface it continues to sport today.
Teoma
http://www.teoma.com
Teoma is
a crawler-based search engine owned by Ask Jeeves. It has a
smaller index of the web than its rival crawler-competitors
Google and Yahoo. However, being large doesn't make much of
a difference when it comes to popular queries, and Teoma's won
praise for its relevancy since it appeared in 2000. Some people
also like its "Refine" feature, which offers suggested
topics to explore after you do a search. The "Resources"
section of results is also unique, pointing users to page that
specifically serve as link resources about various topics. Teoma
was purchased by Ask Jeeves in September 2001 and also provides
some results to that web site.
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com
AltaVista
opened in December 1995 and for several years was the "Google"
of its day, in terms of providing relevant results and having
a loyal group of users that loved the service. Today,
AltaVista is once again focused on search. Results come from
Yahoo, and tabs above the search box let you go beyond web search
to find images, MP3/Audio, Video, human category listings and
news results. If you want a lighter-feel than Yahoo but to still
have Yahoo's results, AltaVista is worth considering.
Gigablast
http://www.gigablast.com
Compared
to Google, Yahoo or even Teoma, Gigablast has a tiny index of
the web. However, the service is constantly gaining new and
interesting features. Give it a whirl, if you want to try something
experimental yet dependable. Read more about Gigablast in this
recent interview from our SearchDay newsletter.
LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com
LookSmart
is primarily a human-compiled directory of web sites. It gathers
its listings in two ways. Commercial sites pay to be listed
in its commercial categories, making the service very much like
an electronic "Yellow Pages." However, volunteer editors
at the LookSmart-owned Zeal directory also catalog sites into
non-commercial categories for free. Though Zeal is a separate
web site, its listings are integrated into LookSmart's results.
Lycos
http://www.lycos.com
Lycos is
one of the oldest search engines on the web, launched in 1994.
It ceased crawling the web for its own listings in April 1999
and instead provides access to human-powered results from LookSmart
for popular queries and crawler-based results from Yahoo for
others. "Fast
Forward" lets you see search results in one side of your
screen and the actual pages listed in another. Relevant categories
of human-compiled information from the Open Directory appear
at the bottom of the search results page.
MSN
Search
http://search.msn.com
Formerly
one of Search Engine Watch's top choices, MSN Search is definitely
one to watch. The service was previously powered by LookSmart
results and gained top marks for having its own team of editors
that monitored the most popular searches being performed to
hand-pick sites believed to be the most relevant. The system
worked well. Today, MSN Search is in transition. It provides
access to Yahoo listings but not as much functionality in terms
of other types of searches that you'll find at Yahoo itself.
However, MSN is developing its own crawler-based technology
and planning other changes that should revitalize the service
in later 2004.
Open
Directory
http://dmoz.org/
The Open
Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly
known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998. It was acquired
by AOL Time Warner-owned Netscape in November 1998, and the
company pledged that anyone would be able to use information
from the directory through an open license arrangement. While
you can search at the Open Directory site itself, this is not
recommended. The site has no "backup" results that
kick in should there not be a match in the human-compiled database.
In addition, the ranking of sites during keyword searching is
poor, while alphabetical ordering is used when you choose to
"browse" categories by topic.
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