Search Engine Submission

Search Engine Information
With literally thousands of search engines on the web, you may find it interesting to note that about 90% of domestic search volume is done through the top 3 search engines.

The vast majority of your traffic will come from 3 places: Google, Yahoo and MSN. Other search engines like AOL and Ask.com will contribute to a program, but the traffic that they generate is typically much lower.

How We Submit Your Site
Over the years, submitting a site to the search engines has changed drastically. Today, the major search engines will find your site from the incoming links generated by your directory submissions and link building campaigns. Some offer Pay For Inclusion (PFI) programs that ensure a site will be crawled and updated on a regular basis, but this has typically been for dynamic sites that have had "spiderability" issues.

The Major Search Engines

  • Google - The king of all search engines. Not only is it vastly popular but it also supplies search results to AOL and Netscape.
  • Yahoo - Partnering with Microsoft and planning to use Bing going forward.
  • MSN - Introduced Bing in May of 2009 to try to gain marketshare back.
  • Ask - Formerly Ask Jeeves, this search engine is working hard to gain market share but still trails by a large margin.

International
If your company operates globally, there may also be some great opportunities to submit your site to search engines and directories outside of the US. There are typically language requirements and many will want your company to have a presence in their country or region. View more information on International Search Engine Optimization.

Specialty Search Engines
Over the years, many specialty engines have formed to target highly specific market niches. We typically find potential niche search engines in the link enhancement process. Examples would include WebMD and GlobalSpec.

Metacrawlers
There are a lot of "metacrawlers" on the Internet that simply compile the top results from other popular search engines. Examples include Dogpile, Mamma.com, and Infospace. The top spots in these search engines are often taken from the pay per click advertising engines while the remainder are grabbed from various search engines and directories.

Pay Per Click Engines
These search engines are discussed in our Pay Per Click Advertising section.