Excite also seems to drop pages in subdirectories, favoring those pages in root directory. It is highly recommend that you have your doorways and most other pages in root directory (that's where your home page is) and make sure you have your own domain name. If you cannot do that, get a separate domain name and hosting account just for your doorways (even better!) so that you can have them in root directory.

Tip: Lycos

Nothing much new hear but one small tip. The best way to get into Lycos is to submit your site to Lycos as usual AND submit to www.dmoz.org, Open Directory Project that Lycos and many other engines use as a source of results on certain searches. Lycos also uses FAST engine for some of its results so you should also submit your site to FAST engine (at www.alltheweb.com.)

Tip: Hotbot

Hotbot is still mysteriously dropping pages off their index for no apparent reason. Other than that, they are doing fine. Here is a tip from www.searchengine-news.com. Their newsletter said that fastest way to get indexed by Hotbot at moment is to submit to Canada.com at http://canada.com/search/web/addurl.asp. Try it! You should also submit to www.dmoz.org, Open Directory Project, which Hotbot uses.

Hotbot is also first engine to index dynamic pages (pages created on fly from a database or CGI script). To have your dynamic pages indexed, if you have any, simply submit your dynamic page with all arguments added onto URL (e.g. www.mysite.com/page.asp?catalog=5369&state=florida) or submit a static page with a bunch of dynamic URLs you need indexed.

Note: AltaVista "Too many URLs problem"

AltaVista recently installed an ultra-tight and aggressive spam filter which according to numerous reports is causing a very large problem to thousands of web site owners. The spam filter is often improperly tagging many pages as spam. The good news is that your site is not dropped off their index if you do get tagged, but offending pages are given low ranking and you are blocked from submitting any new ones. So it isn't a very grave situation and especially because way too many webmasters have been affected unfairly this situation will likely get better soon. For most webmasters, simply avoiding known spam techniques such as hidden text etc and abstaining from submitting more than one page a day at most should keep you clear off their spam filter. If you feel you have been cut off from new submissions unfairly, simply use AltaVista's feedback form and let them know and they will put you back up.

Tip: DirectHit, LookSmart and Open Directory Project submissions

Several search engines such as HotBot and Lycos use DirectHit and Open Directory Project as a major source of their search results. It has been found advantageous, for this reason, to also submit your site directly to DirectHit at http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html as this gets you a better position much faster because DirectHit updates its engine much more timely than engines that use it such as Lycos and Hotbot. You should also submit to www.dmoz.org, Open Directory Project, as this is only way to get into certain results served by an increasing number of search engines (over 20 major search engines and directories use it). LookSmart is also being used by a very large number of search engines and directories so be sure to submit there too at www.looksmart.com.

Suggestion: Automatic submission tools plus getting listed on as many places as possible

Automatic submission tool (software or web based) are extremely useful and timesaving when it comes to submitting your site to several hundred search engines and directories. By all means, use them. But make sure that you do not use them for Infoseek and AltaVista if you are submitting more than just one page. These two engines have high-speed submission detection that can get your submitted page penalized. How this works is that they watch for more than one submission per, say, 30 minutes from any one site. So if you submit two pages from your site to Infoseek or AltaVista in less than 30 minutes, that's not good for you.

On other hand, you should use these tools and get yourself listed on as many places on web as possible - directories, search engines, free-for-all link pages, About.com, etc. It is very important, especially for Infoseek rankings, that you have as many incoming links into your site from other sites as possible, especially from larger sites such as Yahoo and About.com.

Final Note: Delayed index updates

Most of major engines are now taking between 30 and 90 days to refresh their databases, although their information pages claim shorter periods than that. What this means is that a page you submit today and any pages on your site linked from it will appear on search results in 30 to 90 days. Excite is especially slow. The Internet community believes that this situation will definitely change because no engine wants to have old information in its database - its bad customer service to its users. So they will work at correcting these delays.

This is a time of great opportunity, and marketing your site through search engines is one of world's greatest advertising opportunities. Where else can you reach such vast numbers of people worldwide at practically no cost to you? So it does pay to keep a close tab on engines and use them wisely but ethically to your advantage.

If you need any more information on this topic, please see Additional Resources section at http://www.positionweaver.com.

Doorway pages are definitely very effective Web promotion tools. But they are also controversial, misunderstood technically and ethically, and can sometimes do more harm than good when abused. None of us really knows 100% what best approach to all this is. I believe that sharing, discussion, and putting issues out in open are what promotes awareness, better decision-making, and progress. I am therefore inviting all readers to contribute their experiences, thoughts, fears, ethical concerns, successes, tips, and problems with doorways. We can all learn from each other about this most important and effective aspect of Web promotion. I also wish to invite you to our Web promotion discussion forum at www.searchpositioning.com.

To get discussion going, let me say something about one thing that everybody asks about doorways: is it fair and ethical to use them? I’d say yes. Doorways are not inherently good or bad, it is how they are used that is. In good use, they help people find what they are looking for. They also solve some serious weaknesses in search engines. You could, for example, have a site on parenting. But because your site may be made almost entirely of dynamically generated pages (database or CGI driven), behind a membership system, be highly graphical, of have long editorial text that scores poorly with search engines, your site will go unnoticed by search engines. It may be best site on parenting, but engines will rank it very poorly. Doorways here can give you justice you deserve. And until search engines learn to properly index dynamic content, images, pages with long text, password protected pages, and, best of all, learn to rate and weight in entire site’s content and factor it into search results, doorways are best solution for many webmasters.

David Gikandi