5 replies to this topic

[dbmasters]

I was looking at my rankings and realize I am not coming up AT ALL on some search engines across all my websites. I am just starting to take SEO more seriously in the last few weeks and findit VERY interesting...anyway, I go to each website entered some manually and then got to some places like askjeeves, looksmart and a couple others and they have the ol' "submit a site" link, I click thru and it's asking for money for inclusion. Well, I am not going to lay down money for some sites, but some I would consider.

However, I am wondering, do they have spiders search the net at all indexing and such as well, or is that payment the only way into their directory at all...is there any chance of even getting a low ranking without paying...

Just curious how these pay for inclusion models work, does everyone in their very substantial index actually give them the $30? And if so, which one are actually worth the expense...it seems some might be worth it, some maybe not...any thoughts to share?

[qwerty]

The index at AskJeeves includes spidered (free) results from Teoma. Their index is on the smallish side, and they don't seem to crawl very often, but all of my sites have gotten in that way. I've never paid to be in any index (so far).

The only free way into the LookSmart index is through Zeal, but that's only for not-for-profit content. Sometimes a commercial site with significant non-commercial content can get in, but you have to submit the specific area of the site in question, and it seems to be up to the editor to decide whether your non-commercial content is worthy.

For example, I think Zeal initially refused to list this forum because it's part of Jill's main site, but I've just looked, and it appears they changed their mind about us. We're in there.

[OldWelshGuy]

Yes Bob it depends who checks your inclusion, I am a 'zealot' and everything I include gets scrutinised, I am a straight guy anyhow, and only submit stuff that is relevant, I am just working my way through groups, as with Skaffe, and only submit my own sites when I get to the group they should be in.

[awall19]

As far as search engines go just a couple of ok links to follow and they will pick you up eventually... with the directories it is really easy to become an editor for joeant.

if you can pass the zealot test zeal is will allow you to submit sites...you can become a zealot after you have submitted 15 sites

skaffe and goguides recently split so i think they are both probably hurting for editors

i think dmoz is so large that it is just random in every aspect

search engines are free though if you give them enough time and a few links into your site(s)

[dbmasters]

thanks loads for the info people!

[SearchRank]

I have never payed to get into All The web (FAST) or Alta Vista with their pay for inclusion programs as both crawlers have free add url forms and will pick up sites pretty well on their own anyway.

As for the other two - Inktomi and Teoma/Ask jeeves, it depends. I have seen where content is already indexed in both and then you optimize it and each crawler seems to take forever to re-visit updated pages and add them to their public indices. In this case I will then submit those pages via PFI. If the site is new, I just wait for each crawler to pick them up. Also sometimes if you have optimized a home page of a site and the site is also listed in Looksmart, Inktomi will use the Looksmart title and description for that page. Therefore if you have a crappy un-optimized title and description at LS, submitting the page via PFI will prompt Inktomi to use you title and meta description tag as opposed to LS's.