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FAQ for dummies (but not just them)

Actually, the answer is simple: “No.” However, let’s go deeper behind this statement and explain what’s necessary to be listed and shown in all major search engines. Additionally, I’m going to explain the importance of search engines.

The idea of submitting a website into search engines was useful maybe 10 years ago when web spiders were less precise and it took much longer for a website to be crawled and index. In order to speed up this process, every search engine offered a manual submission process. These pages still exist today, but they are largely irrelevant.

A link pointing to website A from website B solved the problem of indexing new sites. Let’s look at how Google thinks: if site B has been online for 5 years, and receives approximately 10,000 daily visits, links to the new website A, then site A should be indexed and ranked as well. Naturally, the new website will not receive hundreds or thousands of visits overnight. On the other hand, being indexed is just the first step in attracting human visitors to the website.

Now, compare the above-mentioned case with a submission system. The difference is clear: the first case gets more weight than the second one, though either could be spam. For example, if you use well-known forum, where you’re able to use a link in your signature, your posts may be considered as spam and deleted by the staff. However, Google can keep crawling all the pages from the site, and links to your site will be found before deletion.

All in all, getting your site linked to from a good source is worth more than manually submitting your site into any number of search engines. Moreover, you should avoid any so-called “search engine submission services”, because you can never tell whether the process is manual or automated. Even automated submissions are presented as manual to the search-engine. So-called “search engine optimisation experts” often offer such services, without knowing anything about search engine positionign. Moreover, spamming usually delays the indexing of your site.

The question of “how to get listed in Google” has been discussed at least 100,000 times on the web, and even though there is a great deal of discussion on this topic, the answer is simple: get a few good links to your site and you’re done. It’s fascinating how misleading some guides are, and even more fascinating that they’re ranked in the top 10.

Naturally, acquiring a few links could be a difficult task for someone who is new at this, but it’s an easy task (5 or 10 minutes work) for experienced and professional SEO consultants.

In order to understand which search engine is the best option for your business, you can use the list below, which is based upon one site with approximately 100,000 monthly visits (with approximately 80,000 visits from search engines). The numbers are rounded.

Google: 70,500 visits
Yahoo: 5,600 visits
AOL: 1,400 visits
Search: 700 visits
MSN: 500 visits
Live: 450 visits
Ask: 200 visits
Netscape: 150 visits
Alice: under 100 visits
Altavista: under 100 visits

There is no need to list the rest because the conclusion is clear: Google has a massive market-share. There have been various studies published about overall share, and I think it really depends on what your site is about. It’s true that people in the USA use Yahoo! much more than people in Europe, but it’s still not the best idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

As discussed above, imagine that someone submits your site to Google, which views it as a spam submission. Moreover, consider that your website is submitted 20 times, and dismissed as spam each time. Now, Google’s algorithms penalise you, and indexing may be delayed by up to four months. Would you take this risk? I wouldn’t. Don’t look for a search engine submission service, ask for professional search engine optimisation services instead!