Everywhere you look, there are advertisements for website submission services and programs. They claim to submit your website to hundreds, or even 1,000 search engines on the internet. Are there really that many search engines on the internet? Is it worth it to submit to all of them?

I don't know how many search engines are on the internet, but if there are 1,000 nobody uses 98% of them. Many of the successful small search engines specialize in a certain region, industry, or topic. Others use the databases of larger search engines to supplement the submissions sent directly to them, making it useless to submit your website to them if you're already listed on the bigger engines. (This is even more true of the Meta Search Engines which have gained popularity as collections of websites from all, or at least several, of the major search engines.)

The submission services or programs will send your URL and description to all the search engines they can find on the internet - whether they relate to your website's content or not. Only the really expensive services and programs will target specific search engines and send descriptions and keywords formatted specifically for each one, submitting in a way the search engine will recognize as being from their website (even if it isn't).

Every website with links wants the people submitting websites to visit in order to get listed. That is how they get much (if not most) of their traffic. Some computer programs understand how to confuse submission scripts into thinking the website was submitted individually, when it was really submitted en mass to every website of the kind. Not all services and programs are created equal: some stay more up to date and/or offer more individualized submissions than others.

It's pretty clear I don't think submission services are necessary, or even desirable. But which search engines should you submit to? When? And How?

Submit at least your home page to all the major search engines and any search engines which focus on your region, industry, or topic. There are a few GIANT search engines: Hot Bot, Infoseek, Excite, Alta Vista, and Lycos. Submit to them at their websites. I offer links directly to their "Add A Site" pages.

Submit all the pages you want listed on search engines to Infoseek, Excite, and Lycos. Other search engines will "crawl" your website, listing the other pages by themselves. This process can take a long time, but your rankings will benefit. You can speed up the process by creating a page with links to every page in your website that you want indexed. Submit this "Hallway Page" to search engines instead of your home page.

Resubmit to the giants any webpages you've made significant changes to, especially when you're attempting to improve your search engine positioning. Also go back to submit new pages - especially traffic-attracting articles. (Some search engines claim to revisit websites in their database and reindex them often. They do, but it may be months before they get around to your website.)

You may eventually want to submit special pages to each search engine, designed to get you top listings. The good news is, for most topics and industries, you can still get listed in the top ten with keyword phrases of 2 - 3 words with minimal suffering. For more information, see my article on Doorway Pages.

There are other high-traffic search engines you may want to be listed with. Visit a free submission service, such as the ones listed on my Links page, or buy your own program, like Swiss Army App. Resubmit your website to these search engines whenever your website undergoes a major overhaul.

The smaller content-specific search engines will be more difficult to find. Look for advertisements on web pages with similar content to yours and check the major search engines. Submit on their "Add A Site" pages or with special software which lets you submit your web pages to free for all links, directories, and search engines. If you find search engines which apply to your region, industry, or topic, keep track of them with bookmarks or list their URLs and keep them in a special Website Promotion binder. Resubmit your website whenever you make major changes.

Submitting your website to search engines won't take too much of your time, and will make your traffic skyrocket - if you do it right. Save time by only submitting to the biggest (or content-related) search engines and money by doing it yourself!