How Many SE's Do You Submit To?, When is SE submission enough? Options

[saschaeh]

Just went to a company that offered SEO packages. They boast submission to 200 Search engines. Is this not over kill? I imagine there must be some really obscure ones in there.

What is your usual search submission process when setting up an initial SEO campaign for a client?

This post has been edited by saschaeh: Sep 26 2007, 12:45 AM

[bragadocchio]

I think the last time I submitted a URL to a search engine might have been in 2002 or 2003.

[EGOL]

I have never submitted a page to a search engine. Not once.

If you have a few good inbound links into your website from viable other sites that are in the search indexes then submitting to search engines is a waste of time.

[saschaeh]

Really... Ok. What do SE's even have it for?

This post has been edited by saschaeh: Sep 26 2007, 01:03 AM

[kulpreet_singh]

Strange metaphor of the day:
In most residential neighbourhoods, the garbage collection agency will send out a garbage truck to pick up your garbage on garbage day.

If you put your garbage out, they will collect it.

You do not need to call them, it is their job to collect it and they do it on a specific day every week.

Not to say that your website is garbage, or that search engines are a garbage dump.. (haha)... but basically they'll come when they come and pick up your site if you put it out there (and if it has some decent inbound links) ..

This post has been edited by kulpreet_singh: Sep 26 2007, 03:48 PM

[fisicx]

Really... Ok. What do SE's even have it for?

It's part of a secret society. If you know the secret code you automatically get the #1 position.

Bill and Egol haven't submitted because they are Grand Click Masters of the Golden Mouse. I'm still waiting for my application to be approved.

[AbleReach]

I experimented with submitting to both Google and Yahoo a test site with no inlinks that was nofollow, noindex. Soon, the home page was listed but not cached on Google, and did not appear at all on Yahoo. I took off the nofollow, noindex and submitted them again. Within a week Google had found about 20 pages of 100 total. Six weeks later Yahoo had still indexed only the home page, while Google had found and cache'd about 50 pages. Most of the pages that were within one click of home were still getting spidered by Google a couple of months later, though they didn't spider the rest after the original indexing. I suspect that Yahoo didn't move past the home page because there were no inlinks and the site had previously been restricted to spiders - in the past I've seen Yahoo move slowly after lifting spider restriction. I think it's a little bit remarkable that Google kept spidering with so little encouragement.

Make it in any way easy, and they will find you.

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Sep 26 2007, 02:09 AM

[FP_Guy]

Thanks for sharing your experiment with us AbleReach!

Saschaeh, run away from this so called SEO company as fast as you can. Everyone that knows even a little bit about SEO know that the top 3 search engines Google, Yahoo, and MSN comprise of nearly all of the search traffic out there and if anyone makes a boast as they did all it proves is that they don't know the first thing about search engine optimization.

[saschaeh]

Thanks guys!

Its probably just a really bad sales line!

This post has been edited by saschaeh: Sep 26 2007, 08:59 AM

[Ron Carnell]

Your experiment is interesting, Elisabeth, because it directly contradicts a series of experiments performed about two years ago. When did you do yours? Are you absolutely certain the spiders couldn't have found your site any way other than through the Submit URL form?

My experience has been that you can submit to Google all day long and they won't send a spider until they find an inbound link. In short, Google ignores submitted URLs entirely. Yahoo sent a spider and briefly indexed the page, but without an inbound link it didn't stick for much more than a week.

In my opinion, the Submit URL forms are a vestigial appendix from the early days of search engine technology. Their only useful purpose today is essentially as a pacifier; they give webmasters something concrete to do while they wait for inbound links to be processed.

[AbleReach]

Ron, this was recent - maybe this Spring? There were *no* inlinks, AFAIK.

Here's some additional detail.
With the talk about submitting, I forgot to add that I also put the site into the webmaster tools at both Google and Yahoo, including Google Analytics. I was curious about if that would get Google to spider at all, when I still had noaccess, nofollow in place - it didn't.
When I was putting it together the domain was password protected via htaccess.
The domain name is unique enough not to return other results.

I had an experience years ago with Google sending a spider to a one-page starter site, no inlinks, moments after I'd put content on the page and then searched for the URL for the first time. That one was fun - I happened to be my stats program on another window. I don't know why it would happen, and I have seen it since, though infrequently and without rhyme or reason I can discern. It made me curious enough so that I still like to check server logs right after the first Googling of the URL.

[DianeV]

Elizabeth, you wouldn't have the Google toolbar on your browser, would you?

[AbleReach]

I own SE toolbars, but normally don't have them running and didn't turn them on when in the URL or Googling. I can't remember the last time I even turned on the Google toolbar - it's installed on IE, which I rarely turn on since finding IE Tab. I do have SEO for Firefox that I toggle when needed. Unlike the little green bar, it multi tasks.

Plus, when I googled the URL I wasn't signed into any Google or Yahoo services.

I don't know how much of this little detail stuff matters. The bottom line is that spidered and listed is not visited. For that you need some kind of human to human exposure via links, through WOM or advertising or whatnot.


Itty bitty disclaimer about SE toolbars - am now having a small fling with alexa, though I don't think that started as far back as Spring.

LOL

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Sep 26 2007, 01:37 PM

[SEOigloo]

saschaeh-

Kulpreet's example is a very good one. Search engines' job is to crawl and index web pages. Avoid any company that doesn't know this. It's a very basic thing.

Miriam

[cre8pc]

I LOVE those "200 search engine" pitches! It's one of the most ancients tricks in the book and one I was warning against back in the 1990's.

There are directories, not search engines that number in the umpteen thousands. Search engines go out and follow links to find sites and pages. Directories will never know about a site unless it is submitted and the better ones charge a fee. There used to be disclaimers on some submit forms saying you could submit but it was no guarantee of acceptance or being crawled. Those companies trying to sell you these services will never tell you this.

What always kills me is that people actually use the search engine that's most accessible to them. Dell users buying new laptops get Google intertwined with Vista. Students in schools are more often taught how to use Google first, followed by aux engines like Ask, Yahoo and the Wikipedia directory.

Why pay to submit to 200 search engines, when only a handful are being used?

Directories, social sites and verticals that match your target market are what the expert SEO's will be working on. They earn their money by investigating your company, your needs, and your target market.

Just tossing URL's into the air and watching where they fall is a waste of your money.

[JohnMu]

One thing you can do, that will help your site, is to set up a XML sitemap file and either link to it in your robots.txt or submit it to Google (make sure your site's ownership is verified in their webmaster tools while you're at it), Yahoo and Ask (Microsoft should be ready soon). The sitemap file will not get your site listed if everything else is not ready yet (as mentioned above), but it will help to make sure that the search engines know about your URLs -- especially if you regularly update your site and update your sitemap file with that.

There are lots of tools that will help you set up a sitemap file, many of them are free.

John

[lee.n3o]

saschaeh I think I remember seeing you post about using .NET? I maybe wrong, but if you are I posted about easily making a dynamic XML sitemap using .NET 2.0 on my blog. Let me know if it helps?

(And if you're not using .NET I'll delete this link and stick in a funky smiley to replace it )

[SEOColumbus]

I'm with the others. There is no need to ever, ever, ever submit a site to a search engine.

Build links, even from other sites you already own, and the search engines will find you.

[tambre]

What if you're going after foreign market? Is submitting to their search engines ok or are their search engines bound to find US/International site like we know US search engines do.

[send2paul]

[off topic] - SEOColumbus - hello and welcome to the Cre8asite forums and community I see you've been furiously posting since you got here earlier on. It's nice to see such enthusiasm around the forums!

If you want to, come and say a few words about yourself in the Introduce Yourself forum, and maybe have chat in After Hours ? [/off topic]

Paul