Tips for Announcing Web Sites to Search Engines and Directories
Search engines utilize indexing software agents often called robots or spiders. These agents are programmed to constantly "crawl" the Web in search of new or updated pages. They will essentially go from URL to URL until they have visited every Web site on the Internet.
When visiting a Web site, an agent will record the full text of every page (home and sub-pages) within the site. It will then continue on to visit all external links. Following these external links is how search engines are able to find your site regardless of whether or not you register your URL with them. Submitting your URL, however, does speed up the process. It notifies an agent to visit and index your site instead of waiting for it to eventually locate you through one of your external links.
Robots will then revisit your site periodically to refresh the recorded information. The revisiting of links is the reason why some search engines don't require you to inform them of dead links. Eventually, their robot would try unsuccessfully to update the information on a dead link and realize it no longer exists.
Finally, an easy way to tell whether a Web index is a search engine as opposed to another type of directory is by the information it requires when adding your URL. A true search engine will only need the Web address. The indexing agent takes care of the rest.
Directories:
The main difference between a search engine and a general directory is that a directory
will not list your URL if you do not register it with them. They do not make use of
indexing software agents and so have no way of knowing it's out there. As a result, their
registration form will be considerably longer than just your URL. Directories are usually
subdivided into categories and you have to submit your URL under the most appropriate
heading.
Announcement Site:
The explosion of sites being added daily to the Web has created a need for announcement
sites that track all of the new sites that join the Internet. Announcement sites are not
only useful for Webmasters and marketers to kick-off their online promotion campaign, but
also for users to keep current on what's happening with the WWW. Depending on the
announcement site, different Internet documents can be announced -- new web pages, new
articles as well as new resources. The time period policy also differs from announcement
site to announcement site, but all "announcements" are posted for a temporary
period of time. Once removed from the What's New section, most announcement sites archive
these pages so users can continue to access them.
Guides & Cool Sites:
Guides are quickly becoming an important source for finding interesting and useful sites
on the Web. In general, Guides review and rate only a small percentage of all sites
submitted. Therefore, make sure your site is "rate-worthy" before posting. Most
of the guides allow reviewed sites to use their special icons as a sign of quality. Cool
sites usually select one new Web site every day. Getting selected as a cool site will
attract high traffic, but that traffic will usually only be experienced for a temporary
period of time.
For example, instead of using <TITLE> Suncorp </TITLE> as the title of Suncorp's home page, <TITLE> Suncorp: Tanning Supplier </TITLE> would be much more descriptive. It would also place greater emphasis or relevancy on "Tanning Supplier" when calculating keywords.
<META name="description" content="a health and fitness center located in Atlanta">
This will control what appears as the summary of your Web page and will be displayed after the title of your document in the index listing. The content of the description should clearly convey what one can expect to find when linking to your site.
<META name="keywords" content="running, weight control, nutrition, aerobics, cholesterol, Georgia">
This will allow you to provide extra information about your page to the search engines without it being visible to the reader. While search engines do take these keywords into account when indexing your page, they are still going to index the entire contents of your page as many sites do not include <META> tags. Since this is the case, there is no need to be redundant. Include keywords that will not necessarily be derived when a robot visits your site. In other words, "health" and "fitness" need not be included in your list of keywords as it is part of your <TITLE>. Robots index both the description and keyword <META> tag contents as searchable words. Hence, your site will come up in a search if someone typed in "nutrition" or "health center" from your description. One way to maximize the usefulness of keywords is to incorporate singular and plural cases of words as well as active and passive verbs. For example, diet, diets, and dieting will yield similar but somewhat varying results in a search. Since you're able through <META> tags, why not guarantee you come up on all of them.
Do not, however, excessively repeat keywords in a
keyword <META> tag as search engines may penalize you for this. At present, InfoSeek
and Lycos are two such examples and others may adopt similar policies in the future. The
penalty will most likely be the spider disregarding the <META> tag and extracting
keywords from the content of your page- as is usually the case. However, some Submit It!
users have reported being dropped from a search engine's database and felt keyword
repetition played a role in the removal of their listing.
<img src="/images/submits.gif" alt="Submit It!" >
At the present time, Excite does not make use of tags. Since keywords and summaries are automatically generated by Excite, you have less control over their creation. However, there are still a few things you can do. Excite's software looks for common words or themes within a page. It then selects sentences for the summary that either contain these words or convey the overall theme. The words within these sentences are also used as keywords for which the site can be searched.
InfoSeek Ultra will make use of <META> tags allowing you to control the description that appears in a search result as well as guide its web indexing in the selection of your site's keywords. If you do not make use of <META> tags, Ultra will simply use the first few words it comes across as your Web site summary.
Lycos creates Web site titles and descriptions from the text of your Web page. Lycos' search agent selects a portion of the site that well represents its theme. It then displays this section as the site's description.
The keywords are also chosen via artificial intelligence by Lycos' spider. With this in mind, do not open your page with an image map. If you do, Lycos will not be able to take an abstract for your document.
WebCrawler relies on the statement within the <TITLE> tag to use for the name of your page. While other search engines will derive a summary from the <BODY> text of the document, Web Crawler will default to the URL if you fail to include a title.
In conclusion, do not make it your goal to appear in the top ten list of every search engine. This would not only be a very difficult task, but would most likely end in disappointment. You are virtually guaranteed to have varying success rates with different search engines due to the collection of variables that play a role in every search result. These variables include size of database, method used for determining relevancy, policy on spamming, use of <META> tags and more. Hence, optimize your listings by capitalizing on the indexing criteria shared by search engines. If you have a favorite or preferred search engine that you feel strongly about being yielded as high as possible in a search, customize your Web pages accordingly. Just keep in mind that this might lessen your perceived relevancy on another.
Since directories are hierarchical databases organized by subject, subject category selection would logically be the most critical aspect of linking your site to a directory. Give some thought to which category(s) your URL should be placed as this location will ensure the right people (those interested in your site) will be visiting your link. URL registrations can quickly become complex process when every directory contains a different sub-categorization scheme.
There unfortunately is no formula or exact method for correctly placing one's site into a subject-oriented guide. However, here are a few tips:
Since Yahoo! is well ... Yahoo!, it will be discussed separately from the hundreds of other directories included in the Submit It! Service. It actually is unique from all other directories in that you could be listed on Yahoo! without having submitted your URL. They make use of a robot that searches for new sites at certain Internet locations (i.e. announcement sites, etc.). Despite Yahoo!'s implementation of this search robot, mostly all of their new additions still come via their "Add URL" form.
Your Yahoo Submission Made Easy
For Internet users, Yahoo! is one of the more notoriously difficult submission forms to successfully complete. In actuality, the Yahoo! submission form is far from a mind-numbing experinec. We have outlined the necessary steps below. If you follow them, it will not only simplify the process for you, but also enable you to gain the greatest advantage possible through your submission.
1. Find your Yahoo category.
From Yahoo's home page, drill down and locate up to 2 Yahoo categories that best describe
your Web site. A good indicator that you have found an appropriate sub-category is when
you scroll down and see sites already listed that are similar to your own, or, even more
so, find a direct competitor! If after searching through a number of Yahoo categories, you
still are not sure where to place your site, try searching by a keyword you would want
your site to be found under. Existing Yahoo categories will be displayed with the search
results.
TIP: Yahoo requires commercial sites to be placed within a Business and Economy subcategory - either under Companies or Products and Services. Personal Home pages must go in the Entertainment/People category. If your site is regionally specific, add it to the appropriate subcategory under the Regional heading category.
TIP: If suggesting more than one category,
press the ADD URL icon when on the category of your first choice. Then enter the string of
the second category into the Additional Categories field. To avoid making a typo to a long
string, copy the URL located within the Address or Location field of your browser. To do
this, highlight the text after http://www.yahoo.com/ with your mousse. Right mousse click
and release the mouse over 'copy'.
For example:
Business_and_Economy/Companies/Music/CDs__Records__and_Tapes/Online_Shopping/
2. Click the Add URL icon at the top of the
screen.
After finding the category you wish your site to be placed within, click the Add URL icon
at the top of the screen. This will take you to the Yahoo submission form with the
Category fields already pre-filled.
3. Fill out the ADD URL Form
Two particularly important fields are the Title and Comments fields. Yahoo does not allow
you to suggest keywords in their submission form. Instead, it will use both the Title and
Comments fields to derive search words for your site. Therefore, think carefully about
what keywords you want Yahoo to list you under and construct your Title and Comments
fields around them. Do not, however, just submit keywords separated by commas. Enter
complete, coherent phrases/sentences.
Example of a poorly constructed title:
Brian's Music Store
Example of an optimized title:
Brian's Music Store, CD's for sale
TIP: Your title should not exceed 50 characters (including spacing).
Example of a poorly constructed Comment:
Click to this page to listen to a wide variety of music sure to fit your interest.
Example of an optimized Comment:
Pop, Rock, New Age and Alternative CD's. Many artists, your favorite music, CD's on sale.
TIP: Your comment should not exceed 20 words or 200 characters (including spacing).
Yahoo has employees visit the URL of submissions to verify that the category you selected is appropriate and that the title and comments are accurate. As a result, do not exaggerate what is located on your site. In the end, your site will simply not get listed.
4. Click the Submit button.
Once you have completed the form, click the Submit button to send your Web site
information to Yahoo. If the form has been filled out properly, Yahoo will display a
screen that thanks you for the submission. If there is an error in the submission form,
Yahoo will display a screen informing you that the submission has failed and, depending on
the error, tells you why the submission failed. In the case of a failure, press the Back
key on your browser, make the necessary changes and resubmit.
Here are some general rules and indicators for knowing when you need to make updates to your listings. For more detailed information on the process involved in making updates to each directory, consult the Submission Hints and Tips accessible within the Submit It! Gold and Pro versions.
Make updates to listing:
Make updates to listing:
Do not make updates to listing:
There are several "tricky" things you can do to try to get your URL listed higher or more times on a search engine results page. We are listing these alternatives, but are in no way recommending them as these Web site promotion methods may be viewed as "cheating" by some members of the Internet community. In fact, some of the search engines are starting to penalize people that use these tricks. The reason why we list these tricks is to help you understand why some sites always show up multiple times or always at the top.