Search Engine Submission

A listing in these search engines is a necessity for any aspiring webmaster. The following 9 search engines are not only the largest and most popular of their kind, but many are listed amongst the top 100 sites on the entire Web! Systematically following this list should help you to generate a significant amount of traffic in very little time (and with very little expense).

Bing - In the English-language search market, Microsoft's Bing is now the only real competitor to Google in terms of market share. Before reading any further, sign up for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that your site is submitted to these two giant search indices. These also power many of the other search services on the web. Bing, for example, now powers Yahoo, Lycos and several other services that used to be search engines in their own right.

Excite was once one of the five top search engines on the web, incorporating both a categorized directory and a keyword-driven search engine. The company was famously offered the chance to purchase Google's technology from Sergey Brin and Larry Page for less than $1 million in 1997, but chose not to do so. These days, its search engine is still active, but it's unclear how to submit sites for inclusion. On a quick search, though, I found that mine are all indexed, so it possibly operates as a meta search, drawing from other indices.

Google features the most advanced website ranking algorithm around. This index utilizes a number of factors, such as the calculating the quantity and quality of inbound links, the level of expertise and authority assigned to a source website and the originality of content in order to determine a document's relevance. Submission should be managed through Google Seach Console. It's highly recommended that you join GSC and submit all of your websites there, before adding XML sitemaps and individual URLs. For more in-depth submission and optimization tips, click here.

Jayde Online Directory is one of the fastest-growing search engines on the Net. Jayde's 40 categories are easy to navigate, and a keyword search is also provided. Submission to Jayde's index may take a few weeks to process.

LookSmart now seems to operate primarily as a pay-per-click advertising network that delivers its advertisers' results in connection with billions of monthly search queries. If you're looking for paid search reach outside of the channels offered by the major engines, this could be an alternative worth considering.

Scrub The Web has, since 1996, operated what it describes as an SEO-friendly business directory. They don't have a huge number of sites within their directory, which raises questions about the popularity of the service, and there is a cost associated with listing within its directory, but for those in need of inbound links from a high domain authority site, this could be a reasonable option.

WebCrawler is a spider-driven search index listing millions of sites. The site is now operated by the same company that runs Info.com and Startpage.com, which are also web search services (Startpage known for its lack of tracking - in an offering similar to DuckDuckGo). It's unclear how to submit new sites presently, which either suggests that search results are syndicated from someone like Bing, or that the service relies on its crawlers rather than manual submissions.

neoBOT is one of the few remaining web directories that features no ads, and accepts free submissions. The site is devoted to helping organize the web's leading content sources according to easily browseable categories. Check them out, and submit your site in seconds.

Yahoo! Search began life as a humble, categorized directory of websites, whizh denizens of the early web would navigate through in order to find the content they were seeking. Then, at about the turn of the century, keyword-based search engines such as AltaVista and newcomer Google started to make it easier to find content quickly. Soon after that, Yahoo acquired AltaVista and even later picked up AOL; bundling their search technologies into its offering to deliver a decent search engine of its own. These days, Yahoo! Search is powered by Bong, so you don't need to submit directly to Yahoo. This does point to the growing importance of Bing, however, so make sure you are listed there.

The following list contains dozens of additional web directories and search indices to help generate more traffic for you. Note that some of these sites are content-specific, meaning that while some sites won't be able to be listed, others may receive great benefit from a listing on a site specifically targetted towards their audience demographic. Others might require payment to be considered for a listing. These can be worthwhile in certain circumstances, but it would be easy to burn through a digital marketing budget with little benefit if you pay for every directory listing, so be very selective.