If It Sounds Too Good To Be True...

Every web site owner at some time receives unsolicited E-mail saying that their web site can't be found on the Internet. Then, of course, the offer is to submit the site to 8500 search engines for only $39.95, or some other ridiculously low figure.

First of all, let me tell you that there are NOT 8500 bona fide search engines commonly used by Internet searchers. The actual search engines people in the U.S. use are Yahoo, MSN and Google, who combined get 75% of all searches while AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, HotBot, WebCrawler and Ask Jeeves fight for the remaining 25%.

So who are all these other 8500 search engines?
Most are not search engines at all, but what is known as "Free For All" (FFA) sites that list your site, harvest your E-mail and can now legitimately "spam" you. No one really goes to these sites to conduct a search - they are designed solely to collect E-mail. Since you're submitting your site to them, they now feel they have every right to contact you and/or sell your E-mail address since they can now consider you a "client" because they are listing your site.

BUYER BEWARE!
Recently a new trend has started. Some companies are approaching sites with similar offers, but they are going one step further. This step, on the surface, sounds like a great idea. They will setup thousands of URLs for you - all of which will point to your site. Then they will submit all of these URLs to the search engines for you so that your main site can receive traffic from all of these other URLs - what a deal!

This practice is considered "spam" by the search engines and will get your site banned - even blacklisted. It is not difficult for search engines to detect this type of practice. Search engines frequently rely on IP address, not domain name to determine a site's address. Once they realize that thousands of domain names are pointing to the same IP address, your site will get penalized.

A variation on this theme is to develop "doorway pages." Doorway pages have their use on sites that are difficult for search engines to index - sites that have dynamic content generated using Cold Fusion, PHP, ASP, PHP or some other programming language. These doorway pages should be handled by a professional who knows the proper way to integrate them into the site. Other doorway pages designed solely to send traffic to a site is considered "spam" by the search engines and can get a site banned.

What do the search engines consider a "doorway page?"
This is generally a one-page site with little or no content on it that links to another site. For example, you could create a one-page site about boats where all the links go to your main site where you sell boats and boating accessories - but also sell camping gear. Another doorway page may be designed to capture searchers looking for camping gear who will also be sent to your main site. Both doorways would be considered "spam" because they are designed to do nothing more than capture Internet search traffic and send it to a site that may or may not be about the subject matter the searcher is seeking. It is not uncommon for porn sites to use this ploy to send someone looking for "toys" or "cars" to their porn site - thus the ban by search engines who are unable to determine with their spiders whether or not this is a legitimate site for children's toys or automobiles. (A search engine spider typically indexing only the files within a domain name, they do not follow to outside sites.)

The reality is...
that it costs money today to get listed with the search engines. The figure $39.95 will get you listed with one page at Inktomi ($25 per each additional page) - this is an annual fee. Other search engines are currently charging anywhere from $49 for 6 months (one page - AltaVista), to $299/year for Yahoo, to pay-per-click of 15 cents (LookSmart) plus a $49 setup fee. The minimum amount of money you would have to give the search engines to get listed today is $813.99/year to submit your main page only (this figure is based on paid submission to Inktomi, AltaVista, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, LookSmart and Yahoo - we limited the LookSmart budget to $299).

As you can see, an effective search engine submission program costs more than $39.95 and requires time, monitoring, and know-how to ensure that your site is properly listed. Don't trust your site to scam artists. If you don't have the time to submit your site yourself, are not sure about the best way to submit your site, or are in doubt at all about getting your site list; get a professional to do it. Getting back into a search engine's database, once banned, is no easy task. Don't take the risk. Web-Kare has been successfully submitting and monitoring web site search engine submissions for over 4 years now and we have a proven track record. We have never had a site banned and have successfully increased search engine traffic at all of our clients' sites.