Search Engines and Submitting URLS

#1 Yahoo
Total Alexa Visits: 11,709,555 (#1 -9.5%)
Search Area: http://www.yahoo.com
Site Submit Area: Navigate to the category most appropriate, use the small "suggest a site" link. It is almost impossible to get listed in Yahoo these days, unless you are willing to pay for their Express Service.
Notes: Yahoo is a directory, not a search engine. Each submission to Yahoo is reviewed by a human, if they like your site, your site will be added to the directory. For your best chance on getting into Yahoo, follow the formula in "The Search Engine News Update Newsletter" Your Guide on Winning the Search Engine Wars by Planet Ocean Communications. Backup search results are provided by Google.

#2 MSN Search
Total Alexa Visits: 4,685,845 (#3 -2.5%)
Search Area: http://search.msn.com
Site Submit Area: http://search.msn.com/addurl.asp
Notes: Submissions are handled by LookSmart. Search results come from the LookSmart directory followed by Inktomi technology. Real Names and Direct Hit also have a presence.

#3 Alta Vista
Total Alexa Visits: 4,489,423 (#2 -25%)
Search Area: http://www.av.com
Page Submit Area: http://www.altavista.com /cgi-bin/query?pg=addurl
Notes: A simple url (web page address) is all that's required to submit a page for free. Or you can use the paid LookSmart submission service.

#4 Excite
Total Alexa Visits: 3,457,380 (#4 -7.3%)
Search Area: http://www.excite.com
Page Submit Area: http://www.excite.com/info/add_url
Notes: Use the LookSmart submission or click on the tiny free link at the bottom of the page. There you'll find a small form to fill out. Excite has a nasty habit of binging and purging pages. One month you'll have hundreds of pages indexed and the next month only your home page. Be sure to link all your pages together to increase your stickiness in this engine. Excite continues to be a default search engine in the Explorer 5.0 browser.

#5 Google
Total Alexa Visits: 2,901,003 (#6 +59.7%)
Search Area: http://www.google.com
Site Submit Area: http://www.google.com/addurl
Notes: Here is what Google have to say about themselves. "A page has high importance if lots of other pages with high importance point to it. This well-defined notion of importance makes finding high quality sites easy." Translated, this means link popularity and link quality are very important. They've also added the Open Directory to their search results. Google continues to grow in importance as it's search results are accurate, and it's very easy to submit pages to it.

#6 Netscape Search
Total Alexa Visits: 2,238,091 (#8 +30.6%)
Search Area: http://home.netscape.com/escapes/search/netsearch_0.html
Page Submit Area: Use the Open Directory
Notes: This is the search area on Netscape. It is what you get when you click on the search button in the Netscape web browser. Search results come from Open Directory (dmoz.org). If there are no search results, there are just links provided to other search engines.

#7 Ask Jeeves
Total Alexa Visits: 2,119,854 (#5 -6.6%)
Search Area: http://www.ask.com
Site Submit Area: http://www.ask.com/docs/help/Help_faq.asp#submiturl
Notes: A search engine where you ask questions in plain English. Ask Jeeves offers many advertising and ecommerce options. Ad placement may be triggered by keywords, categories, channels or sponsorships. To get your site listed, they ask that you read their guidelines and then send the URL and a brief description of the site via e-mail.

#8 HotBot
Total Alexa Visits: 1,461,180 (#7 -16.7%)
Search Area: http://www.hotbot.com
Page Submit Area: http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.asp
Notes: An url and email address are required to submit to this engine. It uses custom filtered Inktomi results through Direct Hit technology. This engine is owned by Lycos.

#9 Go
Total Alexa Visits: 1,237,089 (#9 -26%)
Search Area: http://www.go.com/
Page Submit Area: http://addurl.go.com/dynamic/freeNewUrl
Notes: Formerly the great Infoseek. You can either pay to get listed and reviewed, or use their free "basic" submission service. The submit area is often offline. Requires a form to be filled out.

#10 InfoSpace
Total Alexa Visits: 1,228,649 (#10 -17.9%)
Search Area: http://www.infospace.com/
Page Submit Area: http://www.infospace.com/info/submit.htm
Notes: InfoSpace provides maps, directions and city guides to Alexa and other online services. They also provide a people and business finder to MSN Search. Search results on InfoSpace come from LookSmart followed by results from Goto, then Inktomi and others. You can use the large InfoSpace form (requiring keywords, description and MUCH more) to submit your site, but it's not clear where you'll come up in their search results by doing so.

#11 GoTo
Total Alexa Visits: 1,222,347 (#11 +23.9%)
Search Area: http://www.goto.com
Site Submit Area: No free submissions
Notes: Targeted paid advertising where keywords are purchased. Highest bidder on a particular search phrase ie: .08¢ comes up first in the results. You only pay for actual clickthroughs to your site, not by impressions. After the paid listings, searches default to Inktomi.

#12 LookSmart
Total Alexa Visits: 943,901 (#12 +17.2%)
Search Area: http://www.looksmart.com
Site Submit Area: http://submit.looksmart.com/
Notes: Unless you are a non profit organization, you'll need to pay to get reviewed by a human editor. LookSmart is partnered with, and providing directory results for Microsoft's MSN, Excite@Home, AltaVista, and InfoSpace. Default web search results provided by Alta Vista.

#13 GoHip!
Total Alexa Visits: 776,479 (#15 -0.3%)
Search Area: http://www.gohip.com
Site Submit Area: No submit area.
Notes: A meta search engine that retrieves the top results from other search engines. Rapid growth was due to a viral marketing strategy that infected / affected users email.

#14 Lycos
Total Alexa Visits: 736,470 (#13 -20.3%)
Search Area: http://www.lycos.com/
Page Submit Area: http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html
Notes: An url and email address are all that are required to submit your site. Lycos is notoriously slow to add spidered sites and it may take three months or more before your site finally shows up in the index.

#15 Northern Light
Total Alexa Visits: 444,539 (#17 -0.1%)
Search Area: http://www.northernlight.com
Site Submit Area: http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html
Notes: A good search engine with a large index. Makes me wonder why they are not more popular. As well as having a free database, they also provide paid searches in other media like newspapers, news wires and magazines.

#16 AOL NetFind
Total Alexa Visits: 413,574 (#18 -3.5%)
Search Area: http://www.aol.com/netfind
Site Submit Area: http://search.aol.com/add.adp
Notes: The America Online web site. There is no true submit area as they have switched to the Open Directory with an Inktomi back up.

#17 NBCi
Total Alexa Visits: 384,919 (#14 -51.1%)
Search Area: http://www.nbci.com/
Site Submit Area: http://home.nbci.com/LMOID/resource/0,566,-1077,00.html
Notes: Formerly known as Snap! To get your site listed, go to the above url, and sign up for a free membership by following the instructions. You can then find the most appropriate category and submit your site. Once your site is submitted, you can choose to "promote it" for a fee and get a better listing.

#18 Dogpile
Total Alexa Visits: 345,529 (#16 -46.6%)
Search Area: http://www.dogpile.com
Site Submit Area: N/A, a meta search engine.
Notes: Dogpile searches the web, including Yahoo!, Thunderstone, Lycos, A2Z, Goto.com, About (aka The Mining Co., Excite Guide, What U Seek, Magellan, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Excite & AltaVista. It is also handy for searching the newsgroups both current posts and archives. Currently it first returns the results of LookSmart, then Go2, then Thunderstone.

#19 Webcrawler
Total Alexa Visits: 305,723 (#22 -9.8%)
Search Area: http://www.webcrawler.com