But, our site is brand new, and advantage to Yahoo!'s pay inclusion program is that your site will be reviewed for possible inclusion within 7 working days. So, depending on our finances, we may want to add Yahoo!'s pay inclusion costs, just so we can get fast visibility for our new site.

(According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, audience reach of Yahoo! was 28.5%. Source: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including Yahoo!, but not AltaVista: $520 (Includes Inktomi engines, Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo!. This does NOT include AltaVista.)

Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including both Yahoo! and AltaVista: $714 (Includes Inktomi engines, Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, and AltaVista.)

What About Google?

Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Google is only major engine that doesn't have a pay inclusion program. So, only way to get your pages into index is to let spider find pages on its own through links on other pages or to submit through Google's free add URL.

Personally, I always let spider find pages on its own and never submit to Google manually. By going this route, while your site is busy being spidered by other engines and you're busy building link popularity, by time that Google "finds" your pages, you should have had time to build some link popularity, which we all know is so important with Google.

According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, audience reach of Google alone was 29.2%. Add to that AOL at 19.7%, Yahoo! at 28.5%, and Netscape at 5.5%, and it's quite easy to see power behind Google. Source: (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

In Conclusion

Rather than worrying about submitting your pages manually to each of major engines, take advantage of tremendous benefits of using pay inclusion.

Then, let Google find your pages on its own, and hold off submitting to Yahoo! directory for a while.

Based on our example here, if we were submitting three pages, our total yearly cost would be either $221 or $415, depending on whether or not we chose to use AltaVista's pay inclusion program.

So, as you can see, benefits far outweigh costs. Repeating what I said earlier in this article, "key" to successful submissions these days can be summed up in two words: pay inclusion.

* Here's audience reach of some of engines that use Inktomi's secondary results, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002: MSN: 28.1%; Overture: 5.4%; LookSmart: 3.0%; (also provides results to "new" HotBot) < http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html >

* Cost? $39 for first URL, and $25 each for additional URL's up to 1000. So, total cost for our three pages would be $89. (See Special Note at bottom of this article on how you can save 20% off price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time only.)

Fast (Provides search results to AlltheWeb, Lycos, and HotBot) < http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm >

You can use Position Tech to submit your Fast pages too, so be sure to enroll in both pay inclusion programs at same time.

Benefits:

* Upon submission, your pages will make it into Fast index within 48 hours, as a general rule.

* Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.

* The term of pay inclusion program is 12 months.

* Reporting services are included, such as verification of page acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account management.

* With Fast, you can choose between several different programs, including some that include a free onsite search engine, bulk inclusion, etc.

* The audience reach of Fast, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: Lycos: 4.4%; (also provides results to "new" HotBot) < http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html >

* Cost? $34 for first URL, and $16 each for additional URL's up to 1000. So, total cost for our three pages would be $66. (See Special Note at bottom of this article on how you can save 20% off price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time only.)

Teoma and Ask Jeeves (Provides results to Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and HotBot) < http://ask.ineedhits.com/ >

The only way to get in Teoma index is through pay inclusion. This is one engine that doesn't have a free add URL page.

Benefits:

* Upon submission, your pages will make it into Teoma and Ask Jeeves indices within 7 days.

* Your pages are respidered every 7 days.

* The term of pay inclusion program is 12 months.

* Reporting services are included, such as click-through reporting.

* The audience reach of Teoma/Ask Jeeves, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: Ask Jeeves: 10.3% (also provides results to "new" HotBot) < http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html >

* Cost? $30 for first URL, and $18 each for additional URL's up to 1000. So, total cost for our three pages would be $66.

Special Note:

After writing this article, I found that Lycos is offering a discount on both Fast and Inktomi pay inclusion programs for a limited time. If you submit to both engines, you can receive a 20% discount! I don't know how long this will last, but here's URL:

< http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/select/ select_overview.asp?co=undefined >