9. If your Web site fails to respond when search engine spider pays a visit, you will not be indexed. Even worse, if you are indexed and they pay a visit when your site is down, you'll often be removed from their database! Therefore, it pays to have a reliable hosting service that is up 99.5% of time. However, at some point a spider is going to hit that other 0.5% and end up yanking your pages by mistake. Therefore, it pays to keep a close eye on your listings.

10. If you have ever used any questionable techniques that might be considered an overt attempt at spamming (i.e., excessive repetition of keywords, same color text as background, or other things that WebPosition Page Critic warns you about), an engine may ignore or reject your submissions. If you're having trouble getting indexed in expected amount of time, make sure your site is spam-free.

11. If your site contains redirects or meta refresh tags these things can sometimes cause engines to have trouble indexing your site. Generally they will index page that it is redirecting TO, but if it thinks you are trying to "trick" engine by using "cloaking" or IP redirection technology, there's a chance that it may not index site at all.

12. If you're submitting to a directory site like Yahoo, Open Directory, NBCi, Looksmart, or others, then a human being will review your site. They must decide site is of sufficient "quality" before they will list it. I recommend you read submission guide on directory tab of WebPosition Submitter. It contains tips to improve your chances of obtaining a good listing on these directories.

13. A number of engines no longer index pages residing on many common free web hosting services. The common complaint from engines is that they get too many "junk" or low-quality submissions from free web site domains. Therefore, they often choose not to index anyone from those domains or they limit submissions from them. It's always best to buy your own domain name (very important) and place it on a respected, paid hosting service to avoid being discriminated against.

14. Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be traveled to from home page. HotBot has been rumored to do this. You may want to consider submitting your home page that links either directly or indirectly to your doorway pages.

15. Make sure you're submitting within recommended limits. Some engines do not like more than a certain number of submissions per day for same domain. If you exceed limit, you may find that all your submissions are ignored. Fortunately, WebPosition's submitter will warn you regarding current limits and recommend you stay within them. Some submission consultants feel it is dangerous to submit more than ONE page a day to a engine for a given Web site. For those who wish to be ultra-conservative in their approach, WebPosition Submitter includes a checkbox to limit submissions to one URL per day per engine.

16. Last but not least, sometimes engines just lose submissions at random through technical errors and bugs. Therefore, some people like to resubmit once or twice a month for good merit in case they do lose a submission. Certainly if you've followed all "rules" and are still not listed, re-submit! Sometimes a little persistence is all that's needed.

If any of above scenarios apply to your submission, you should make necessary adjustments and re-submit. If that still does not work, you should consider e-mailing or calling search engine and asking them politely why you have not been indexed yet. Sometimes they will reply back with "Sorry, there was a problem with our system and I've now made sure you'll be indexed within next couple days." Or, sometimes they'll tell you why you were not indexed. In other cases, they will ignore your e-mail and you'll have to keep e-mailing or calling them until they respond. Still, it's definitely worth effort to get your site listed with major engines assuming you also take time to optimize your pages so you'll achieve top rankings. I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

4. How do I increase my PageRank?

Again, PageRank can be increased by number of incoming links to your website from other sites on Internet. In addition, it requires anywhere from five to seven times more to get from one level of PageRank to next.

So for example, (and this is not a true formula) if 100 PageRank 3 sites with a link to your page give you a PageRank of 4, then it would take around 500 more PageRank 3 sites to link to you before you became PageRank 5. However if you had 1 link from a PageRank 8 site, that might be enough to give a higher PageRank all by its self. It's really all relative and trying to figure it out will simply drive you mad, so don't bother. :) The best thing you can do is obtain as many quality incoming links from other sites with similar content as you possible can.

Another important factor is number of pages on your site. The more pages on your site, higher potential you have to gain in PageRank. More pages doesn't mean you will get a higher PageRank only that you won't hit a ceiling. Apparently Google has a cut off point somewhere on highest PageRank it will give to sites with a low number of pages.

5. When will my PageRank be updated or change?

According to Google website, they update index about once a month. However if you spend any amount of time reading search engine forums, you will find that results vary for every webmaster. PageRank may not update or may change drastically for a long period of time which is often times unexplainable. Usually as long as you follow good web site optimization techniques and maintain enough quality incoming links, index will eventually assign your website PageRank and adjust any changes which may have been made in error.

Patrick Carlow Reciprocal Link Exchange Directory http://www.most-relevant-links.com/ Free Internet marketing resources, traffic generators and reciprocal link exchange directory.