Search Engine Submission Basics

Search engines use robots called "spiders" to index (categorize) your Web site. You submit your Web site and/or page to a particular search engine and the "spider" will index your submission.

Here's how it works: A spider (which is also called a "crawler") visits your Web site, reads your page... and then follows links to other pages within your site. This is what is meant when someone says your site has been "spidered" or "crawled". The spider will also return to your site on a timed and regular basis (say once every couple months) to look for any new changes.

Once the spider has all your information, it goes back home to the search engine where it will begin to "index" what it has found. Most of the time, it can take a while for new pages (or changes that the spider finds) to be added to the index. Thus, your Web page may have been "spidered", but not yet "indexed"!

Until your site has been indexed (added to the index/search engine listing), you are NOT yet available for search (you don't exist yet as far as consumers are concerned).

Now, some promotional "gurus" say that you don't have to actually "submit" your Web site/pages to these "deep" search engines because in theory, these robots are "spidering" new Web sites everyday and supposedly they will find and index your site (eventually).

But the reality is that unless you have links from other sites leading to yours, OR you have registered your site with one of these search engines, your Web site will NOT be indexed - hence, you will never exist!

[I'll explain this in more detail later, but make sure that you submit all of your pages to the search engines. Don't wait for them to spider you!]

Examples of some of the more popular search engines that use "spiders" are:

Google
AltaVista 
Excite 
HotBot 
Infoseek 
Lycos 
WebCrawler 

Directories

Directories will NOT list your Web site and will never become aware of your existence unless you register with them. More often than not, they will only register your home page and not your sub-pages.

The main difference between directories and search engines is that directories will "categorize" Web sites. Hence, if your Web site has to do with cars, you will be indexed under the category of "automobiles" or "cars" or some other relevant topic.

This difference alone will usually make directories a more "relevant" search engine. Examples of some of the more popular directories are:

LinkStar 
LookSmart 
Snap 
Starting Point 
WWWYellowPages 
Yahoo

Your best bet is to submit to both "search engines" and "directories".