Search Engine and Directory Paid Submissions – Why Pay??

There are roughly two types of search engine/directory paid submissions. Some engines/directories allow you to submit your URL to be indexed/spidered for free, but offer a payment option that ensures your site is listed more quickly and indexed (refreshed) more often. Other search engines offer pay-per-click services (Google) or operate exclusively on a pay-per-click basis (Overture/Looksmart). These pay-per-click services/engines may feed results to other engines and directories, and your site will appear on these as a “sponsored” or “featured” listing. Listed below are some of the major search engines/directories that offer paid listings or pay-per-click, and the reason(s) why paid submission might be the preferred option for your company.

AltaVista Express Inclusion

• Rapid URL entry into AltaVista’s global database
  
• Weekly page refreshes – allows you to frequently modify your site and have these improvements reflected in AltaVista results ranking
  
• Check URL status at any time through your personal Account Management Center
  
• Ends the need to continually submit URLs to AltaVista

Inktomi Search Submit

• Must pay fee for Inktomi to spider site – provides results to MSN and AOL
  
• 48-hour refreshes to keep your specified content up to date in the index
  
• Allows you to specify which pages are included in the index
  
• Enables you to decide when the pages become available in the index
  
• Verifies the validity of URLs upon submittal
  
• Notifies you upon the inclusion of your content in the index
  
• Enables your content to be found without resubmitting your URL multiple times

Ask Jeeves Site Submit

• No free submit available
  
• Fast 7-day inclusion into the database powering Ask.com and Teoma.com
  
• Refresh every 7 days

Looksmart

• Pay-per-click DIRECTORY

Overture

• Pay-per-click search engine that provides paid/sponsored results to several other engines

Yahoo! Express

• Commercial sites MUST pay annual fee
  
• Ensures that site will be reviewed by Yahoo! editors within 7 days
  
• Yahoo! Will send an e-mail to say if site is accepted or declined (with reasons for rejection, if applicable)
  
• Paying for Yahoo! Listing may help Google ranking (by boosting PageRank)
  
• Recommendation: pay for one year and see monitor traffic from Yahoo; review subscription after one year

Google

• All sites are spidered for free
  
• Google AdWords select: pay-per-click for sponsored ads that appear on regular Google search results pages

Based on the above descriptions and the data contained in the accompanying spreadsheet, it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you:

1. Optimize your site for Google and monitor ranking regularly
   
2. Set up a pay-per-click account on Looksmart

It is recommended that you:

1. Subscribe to Google’s AdWords Select pay-per-click service
   
2. Subscribe to Overture’s pay-per-click service
   
3. Subscribe to Yahoo! Express for a 1-year trial period, and evaluate traffic from Yahoo! after that time (Annaul Cost = $299)
   
4. Submit your site to the Open Directory project