author's bylines and author's resource box remain

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Title:Search Engine Overview Author:Sandra Lawton Contact:sandra@sandradesign.co.uk

Copyright:©2002 by Sandra Lawton All rights reserved. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More about Search Engines ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don't forget search engines are only one way to

promote your site. Ezines are an excellent source of

visitors. More about this topic at:

http://www.ezine-info.co.uk ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So Search Engines ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The page on our web site,

http://www.lawtoninfo.co.uk/se.htm, covers an over

view of search engines, so this page is very much

about giving you relevant links and prices, so you can

make your own decisions.

This information is accurate as we find it, but

changes happen daily on internet, so we make no

guarantees.

Before you begin any submissions you must submit your

site to Open Directory,

http://dmoz.org/add.html Read submission policy first, but you won't get in

AOL, MSN, Netscape etc. if you're not in here.

It's FREE!

If your site is non commercial also submit to Zeal at, http://www.zeal.com/users/become_a_zealot.jhtml

Free Submission ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Automated submission services submit to several

hundred engines at a time, either by software that you

can purchase and download or if you just want to

submit one site you can use a service such as World

Submitter.

Go to: http://www.worldsubmitter.com

For more control over free submission, visit our site

and use links to two services provided.

http://www.lawtoninfo.co.uk/freewebpages.htm

See below for free submission to Crawlers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paid Submission - Read submission policies first! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yahoo ~~~~~ If your site is non commercial you can submit to

yahoo, through their suggest a site, free of charge.

Go to:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest

Yahoo is still biggest in business, but they

also charge $199 just to look at your site. There is

no guarantee they will index you, and I know some guys

who are pretty expert on search engines and they have

had sites rejected by Yahoo.

If you want to give it a shot, here's link:

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?+Business

Good Luck!!

Ask Jeeves/Teoma ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Both of these are powered by Teoma. Ask Jeeves is

built to 'answer questions' and sites that feel they

fit this criteria can attempt to submit free, but it

is not easy.

Paid subscription covers both services and is for a 12

month period. For $30 for first URL and $18

dollars thereafter. You get:

>Your site indexed within 7 days. >Your page refreshed every 7 days. >Your page remains in index for 12 months.

Yahoo is largest search engine. Actually, that's not true. Yahoo is not technically a search ENGINE. It is a human compiled directory of websites and does not have a spider bot going to sites and indexing them. But, for sake of this article when I say "search engines", I am referring to search engines and directories, like Yahoo.

Did you know that recent estimates show that Yahoo is currently capturing an amazing 40% of all search engine traffic online? Do you know what this means? That means that almost 1 out of every 2 people who do searches on Internet use Yahoo, everyone on Internet has done searches at one time or another.

Nothing in world should be clearer to anyone with a website after reading above figures -- you need your site listed on Yahoo. A.S.A.P.

RECAP

If your site is not listed in YAHOO INDEX, you are losing lots of potential customers to competitors whot are listed with Yahoo. And with amount of visitors Yahoo can send you even with an average listing... this could amount to hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars of lost profits.

Note - being listed under "webpages" does not mean you are listed in Yahoo. It means you are listed with Google. Yahoo gets its "webpage" results from Google.

How to submit to Yahoo:

First you have to determine scope of your site. Is your site commercial or non-commercial? Commercial sites that want to be listed must use "Business Express" when submitting. This used to cost $199, however price has risen to $299 a year.

"Business Express" what is it? Good question and one that many people ask, well it's basically same as free submit except that with business express your site is guaranteed to be reviewed within a week's time. However please be aware that it does not guarantee that your site will be accepted and added to Yahoo index. If your site is rejected Yahoo will allow you to appeal for free within a certain time scale (usually 30 days) of being informed of your rejection. Also Yahoo staff usually tells you reason you have been rejected. Examine these reasons; fix any problems and resubmit after a week or so.

If your site is a non-commercial site, you will still be able to submit for free, but a review could take as long as 8 weeks or might never happen at all.

Before you submit, make sure your site is 100% ready. Under

construction pages need not apply to Yahoo because they are not going to get in. Your site should be aesthetically pleasing to reviewer. It should be quick loading and should have lots of content.

OK; let's get started. How does Yahoo return results? Search results on Yahoo are determined by words that appear within these four areas:

1) Category

2) Title

3) Description

4) URL

These sites are then sorted by relevance using an automated algorithm.

I will now go through these four different factors and how to optimize your submittal for each one. First up category selection: Many people don't realize this but when someone searches for a term(s) on Yahoo, it's algorithm searches through category name also. For example, visit www.yahoo.com and you will see results for a search on 'Internet Marketing'. You will see under each listing that these words are highlighted if they are in name of category, top listing has most occurrences of these words between its title, description, URL and words in category it's in.