Listing Your Pages with the Major Search Sites

If you want people to find your pages, you absolutely must submit a request to each of the major search sites to index your pages. Each of these sites has a form for you to fill out with the address, a brief description of the site, and in some cases a category or list of keywords with which your listing should be associated. These forms are easy to fill out; you can easily do all of them in an hour with time left over to list yourself at one or two specialized directories you might have found as well. (How do you find the specialized directories? Through the major search sites, of course!)

Even though listing with the major search engines is easy and quick, it can be a bit confusing: Each of them uses different terminology to identify where you should click to register your pages. Table 23.1 may save you some frustration; it includes the address of each major search engine, along with the exact wording of the link you should click to register.

Table 23.1. Registering Your Site with a Search Engine

Search Engine	How to Register Your Page Address
Google	Visit http://www.google.com/addurl/, enter the address of your site and a brief description, and then enter the squiggly verification text shown on the page. Then click the Add URL button to add your site to Google.
Yahoo! Search	Visit http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request, enter the address of your site, and then click the Submit URL button.
Yahoo! Directory	Visit http://dir.yahoo.com/, navigate to the specific directory where your site should be listed, and click Suggest a Site in the upper-right corner of the browser window. Follow the directions to submit your site; be sure to choose the free option if applicable to your site.
MSN Search	Visit http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx, enter the verification text followed by the address of your site, and then click the Submit URL button.
AllTheWeb	AllTheWeb search results are provided by Yahoo! Search, so just be sure to submit your site to Yahoo! Search, as explained previously.
AltaVista	AltaVista search results are also provided by Yahoo! Search, so just be sure to submit your site to Yahoo! Search, as explained previously.
Ask Jeeves	Send an email message to [e-mail] requesting an evaluation of your site.
Teoma	Teoma and Ask Jeeves utilize the same search index, so your Ask Jeeves request also applies to Teoma.

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is just a fancy name for the address of a web page.

Did you Know?

There are sites that provide one form that automatically submits itself to all the major search engines, plus several minor ones. (http://www.scrubtheweb.com/, http://www.submitexpress.com/, and http://www.hypersubmit.com/ are popular examples.) Many of these sites attempt to sell you a premium service that lists you in many other directories and indexes as well. Depending on your target audience, these services may or may not be of value, but I strongly recommend that you go directly to the major search sites listed earlier and use their own forms to submit your requests to be listed. That way you can be sure to answer the questions (which are slightly different at every site) accurately, and you will know exactly how your site listing will appear at each of them.

Wait! Before you rush off this minute to submit your listing requests, read the rest of this hour. Otherwise, you'll have a very serious problem, and you will have already lost your best opportunity to solve it.

To see what I mean, imagine this scenario: You publish a page selling automatic cockroach flatteners. I have a roach problem, and I'm allergic to bug spray. I open my laptop, brush the roaches off the keyboard, log on to my favorite search site, and enter cockroach as a search term. The search engine promptly presents me with a list of the first 10 out of 10,254 Internet pages containing the word cockroach. You have submitted your listing request, so you know that your page is somewhere on that list.

Did I mention that I'm rich? And did I mention that two roaches are mating on my foot? You even offer same-day delivery in my area. Do you want your page to be number 3 on the list, or number 8,542? Okay, now you understand the problem. Just getting listed in a search engine isn't enoughyou need to work your way up the rankings.