US and UK Search Engines and Directories

Part of the strategy to capture search traffic will require you get listed in the right places. Global search engines and directories will pick up a lot of US traffic. Then there are country specific operations for UK and many other countries, which may be independent or subsidiaries of global brands (like Lycos or Yahoo). The global brands do not all operate in the same manner from one country to another, or take feeds in the same way.

The table below shows how the different points of access: "Portals" to searching on the internet, get feeds from various sources: search engines, directories and paid listings. These can be country specific or global. This table covers >95% of the search traffic for the USA/Global and UK. To maximise the chances of getting found through these portals, you need to get listed in the directories or search engines that feed them. Most of the portals also carry their own advertising or channels, but this suits the larger advertisers. You can however, pay to get in the top search results, through paying to be found on particular search terms.

Note that the directories differ from the search engines in that people edit the listings of websites into categories, and may comment on the web site. Search Engines can list individual pages based on submissions or their software that "spiders" the web for content.

The portals have different ways to display the results sequence from their feeds, and these change from time to time.

UK	na	na	na
Portal	Search Engine	Directory	Paid Listing
MSN	Inktomi	Looksmart	na
Freeserve	Inktomi	UKplus	Overture
Ask Jeeves	Mirago	Ask Jeeves	Espotting
Netscape	Google	Open, UKplus	Espotting/Overture
FreeUK	Inktomi	na	Espotting
Virgin	Google	na	na
Tiscali	Inktomi	Looksmart	na
Demon	Various	Various	na
Yahoo	Google	Yahoo	Espotting
Lycos	Fast, Hotbot(Inktomi)	Lycos	Espotting
AltaVista	AltaVista	Looksmart	Overture
AOL	Inktomi	Looksmart	na
BT Internet	Excite	Looksmart	Overture
About	Inktomi	About	Sprinks
USA / Global
Portal	Search Engine	Directory	Paid Listing
Yahoo	Google	Yahoo	na
MSN *	Inktomi	Looksmart	Overture
AltaVista	AltaVista	Looksmart	Overture
Netscape	Google	Open	Overture
AOL	Inktomi	Looksmart	Overture
Lycos	Fast, Hotbot(Inktomi)	Open	Overture
Google	Google	Open	Google
About	Inktomi	About	Sprinks
Ask Jeeves	Various	Open	Sprinks

*MSN redirects to local version based on your IP address.

We have integrated the above table to summarise the main points into which you need to submit. This sumary table is shown below. If you want to get UK traffic, you need to submit to UK and Global. Each of the hyperlinks will take you to the submission point or instructions. Note : Goto changed its name to Overture in October 2001.

Search Engines	.	.	.
Mirago	UK	.	Submit site only
Google	Global		Submit site only
Alta Vista	Global		Pay or hand submit pages
Inktomi(viaPT)	Global		Pay approx $25 per URL per year
Lycos	UK	USA	Hand submit pages
Paid Listings	.	.	.
Overture	UK	USA	Only pay on click through
Espotting	UK	.	Only pay on click through
Google	Global		Pay for each impression
Findwhat	.	USA	Only pay on click through
Sprinks	Global		Only pay on click through
Directories	.	.	.
Looksmart	UK	USA	Pay £149 UK, $199 USA, suggest category for your site
Yahoo	Global		Pay $299 pa, for global, choose best category and submit from there
About	Global		Choose best category and contact the "guide" by email to request inclusion
Open	Global		Choose best category and submit from there
UKplus	UK	..	Choose best category for your site
Ask Jeeves	UK	.	Contact by email to request listing (chargeable?) url@askjeeves.co.uk
Lycos	UK	..	Choose best category within Directory and submit from there

Notes:

1) read the sections on search page optimizations and marketing strategies first before you design your web site, and before you submit.

2) plan your directory submissions carefully, read their notes, make sure you get listed in the right section. Be prepared to pay to get the directory listings at Looksmart and Yahoo, otherwise you could wait forever. You only need submit once.

3) the paid listings sites can be expensive to "buy" top listing on certain terms; experiment, and figure out what its worth to you.

4)be careful with the use of automatic, free or chargeable search engine multi submission tools. They are not effective for the main engines, who may treat them as spam. You can try for using on minor engines, although traffic is less sinificant. Follow instructions for search engines with regard to page submission and frequency. Pages can take between 1 to 8 weeks to appear

5)if you want to target other countries specifically, then you might want to submit to local engines. For a list of these consult: Search Engine Colossus. You can also check out local branch sites of Lycos, AltaVista etc. These may filter non local domains (eg .co.uk) but some may list global domains (eg.com etc)

6) To help you track where your pages are appearing for certain search terms, you can use:TopDog. This is very helpful. It also can be used to auto submit, but see note (4).

If you want to get more details and background information then join Search Engine Watch, it has a US bias, but is helpful in describing how the different systems work.

For specific advice about configuring and promoting your site to get found on the web, read the rest of this web site or contact us .

 

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