From Yahoo!, LookSmart, and Inktomi, on to AltaVista and Fast, the directories and search engines are entering the paid submissions phase of the indexing game.

In light of this development, we have to ask ourselves several questions.

• Can we expect other search engines to follow suit?
• Is paying to submit your site worth the cost?
• How does this affect us - the search engine optimizers?   After all, if all we have to do is "pay" then, is optimizing necessary? ...should we be looking for another job? (Answer: nope ...read on)

Here's an obvious question...

"Will other engines adopt the 'paid submission' model?"

Certainly! Within the framework of the search engines, Inktomi tested the waters, and GO.com quickly followed the leader. AltaVista recently jumped on the band wagon, and Lycos is beta testing a pay inclusion program as well. Now that a workable model has been created, you should expect the other engines will certainly jump aboard. The question is "when," not "if."

Since paying to submit is clearly a reality, the question becomes,

"Is it worth the cost?"

Shortly, we'll examine each of the engines and directories that are currently charging for submissions and we'll outline the benefits involved on a case by case basis. Right now, let's look at what the new model means to the process of optimizing pages.

In light of paid submissions, will qualified SEOs still be needed?

Yes! ...actually, more than ever. Here's why. Getting a site into a search engine or directory is only a tiny portion of the battle. The fact that we can now PAY to guarantee indexing is a blessing to those of us who are tired of having our so-called free submissions ignored. Now that getting IN is guaranteed (in exchange for a fee) we can get on with the REAL battle, which is...

getting our site to the top of the rankings!

If you happen to be a professional "optimizer" here's some more good news. Companies will need you even more because few businesses will want to pay a fee for inclusion only to be buried in the listings. The new policy means that a company can pay to remove the most frustrating aspect of your job -- getting in. Now you can focus on pure optimization strategies without being encumbered by having your strategically optimized pages ignored at the entry gate.

Frankly, we professional optimizers think that is terrific. Bottom line, whether you are in the SEO business doing this for others or if you are a do-it-yourself-er the art of SE optimizing is, and will continue to be, needed now more than ever -- just to insure that submission fees are not being wasted.

Now, let's look at the individual engines and directories to see how they're handling pay submissions.

Inktomi

Advantages:

• Pre-spidered to see if the page is "Inktomi material"
• Accepted into the index within 48 hours
• Respidered every 48 hours, which means you can make optimization changes and see the results of those changes within a day or two (yeah!).
• Indexes dynamic URL's and cloaked pages
• Submitted pages get into the main Inktomi index that is used by all of Inktomi's partners, including HotBot, iWon, AOL, MSN, and Canada.com.
• A likely gain in ranking over the free submissions.

Jim Stob with Position Technologies, Inktomi's partner who is handling the pay submission program, adds,

"I think one of the most interesting things about the program is how many are submitting URLs which are excluded by either a robots.txt or META noindex. These people would be pulling their hair out if they had used the free submission."

Cost (non-refundable):

Number of pages	Price per URL
1st Page	$30.00
Pages 2-20	$15.00
Pages 21-1000	$12.00

You can still submit through their free Add URL form, but your rankings may suffer temporarily. Inktomi has stated that they'll be discontinuing their free Add URL service in the future.

By the way, to submit through their pay service, go to...

http://www.positiontech.com

Is it Worth it?

In our opinion, (resoundingly) yes. Inktomi is a major player, and there's no disputing that fact. Being able to get your site into the index within 48 hours and having it respidered every 48 hours is a major plus for any Web site.

Plus, with Inktomi's impressive number of partners, being listed in that index increases your visibility across numerous engines -- something that can add substantially to your link popularity.

According to Web Snapshot, a number of Inktomi powered engines are in the top 20 for popularity, including MSN, AOL, HotBot, and Canada.com.

Additional Notes:

When Inktomi respiders your site every 48 hours, does it pick up new links and spider those?

Jim Stob answers, "No, it will only spider the page submitted."

As mentioned above, HotBot is on of the engines using the Inktomi database. However, another (pay-per-click) method for building a stronger presence in HotBot is through GoTo. GoTo's top three results now appear above the regular search results in HotBot under "Featured Listings." Also, the #4 ranked site in GoTo appears as a Featured Listing before the #10 site in HotBot's results.

Yahoo Directory

Advantages:

At the present time, all commercial sites must be submitted through Yahoo Business Express service. So, if you have an online business and want a presence in Yahoo Directory, you don't have a choice -- you have to pay.

In the past, most sites submitted through Business Express got added to the directory. However, with the mandate that all business sites must go through Business Express, it is still a little early to tell if we'll find it more difficult to get indexed through Business Express. It's possible, but only time will tell.

Cost: $299 (non-refundable)

For information, and to begin the process of "suggesting" a site, go to http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add

For frequently asked questions, visit http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/faq.html.

Is it Worth it?

According to Web Snapshot, Yahoo is the #1 most popular search engine/directory. Assuming that you are in business to make money, yes, paying $299 for probable inclusion in this all-important directory is definitely worth it.

LookSmart

Details:

If you want to be listed in LookSmart, you have to pay, and they recently increased their pricing considerably:

Cost (non-refundable): Their Express Submit service is $299, and it guarantees a site review within 48 hours. The Basic Submit has risen to $149, offering a site review in approximately 8 weeks.

To submit, visit: http://submit.looksmart.com/info.jhtml

Is it Worth it?

LookSmart provides directory results to big players like AltaVista, Excite, MSN, iWon, and more. According to LookSmart, they, and their partners combined, reach over 77% of the Internet users compared to 65% with Yahoo, 64% with AOL, and 43% with Lycos. Source: http://submit.looksmart.com/info.jhtml

According to Web Snapshot, AltaVista is the #5 most popular search engine, and Excite is the #8. Not bad.

Taking into account the reach of its partners, LookSmart is a major player. However, their prices are steep. If you have little visibility, have a brand new site, or can easily afford the submission, go for it. If money is an issue or if you have good visibility as it is, you may want to hold off submitting to LookSmart.

AltaVista

Advantages:

• Can submit up to 500 individual URLs to AltaVista for "rapid URL entry";
• Will be informed when your URLs have been added to the index;
• Includes automatic weekly refreshes of your pages;
• URLs in AltaVista's global database for a period of 6 months;
• Can track submissions and transactions online through your personal Account Management Center;
• New submissions take approximately a week to make it into AV's index and be displayed;
• Express Inclusion submissions will be given priority review and processing by AltaVista. Basic Submit URLs (their free service) will be reviewed within 4-6 weeks of submission. Basic submissions won't receive any feedback or communication about submissions, and you will need to resubmit your pages whenever they are modified.

Cost (non-refundable):

Unit	Price (USD)
1st URL	$39.00
URLs 2-10	$24.00 each
URLs 11-100	$19.00 each
URLs 101-500	$12.00 each

You can still submit through their free Add URL form, but your page may suffer in the rankings. Some site owners have noticed their listings being booted out of the index. Could it be because they were not submitted through the pay inclusion program? We're unsure at this time.

To submit through their pay service, go to...

http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/express_incl

Is it Worth it?

At this point in time, it's difficult to say. The program is much more expensive than Inktomi's, and AV doesn't have the exposure that Inktomi has.

We are seeing some difficulties with getting pages to stick in the index if not submitted through the pay inclusion program, but whether that's really the case, only time will tell.

If you're in a hurry to get your pages into the AV index and can't afford to wait for six weeks, use the pay inclusion program. Otherwise, the choice is yours.

Additional Submission Services at AltaVista

Kristi Kaspar with AltaVista outlined the following details on AltaVista's other submission services.

"Currently we provide a few different ways to submit into our index:

"A. You can use the add URL function, which is located on the left hand navigation bar below the fold. Users have the ability to add sites to the AltaVista index at absolutely no cost to them.

"B. Another option is to use the LookSmart express submit. This is a way to add a large amount of sites into the LookSmart directory, quickly and easily. These sites then automatically get updated not only into the AltaVista directory but to other sites that use the LookSmart directory as well. These are directory links, and are treated with the same relevancy formulas as the rest of the pages that are submitted to our index.

"C. The next option is to participate in the GoTo model. We are an affiliate partner of GoTo and list three of the paid listings on the bottom of the AltaVista results page. These sites are added through GoTo, and those that are most relevant with the query term that the user has queried are the ones that are returned on the bottom of the page.

FAST

FAST has implemented a trial pay inclusion program aimed toward medium to large companies, with a starting cost of $500. It's called FAST PartnerSite.

For more information, visit: http://www.fast.no/index.php?d=products&c=internet&s=partnersite.

Advantages:

• Listings updated every two weeks.
• It recognizes over 250 document formats, so users search for a wider array of files such as photo files and sound files - not just text files.
• With FAST PartnerSite, visitors enter a query on your homepage, and either search your site or the entire web.

Is it Worth it?

The program is in beta version now and brand new, so we don't have experience in using this service yet. It's expensive for small Web sites, but again, it's geared more toward medium to large sites.

Plans of Other Engines?

Now that pay submission programs are here and likely to stay, what are the plans of some of the other engines? ...will they jump onto the band wagon?

Excite

Currently, Excite doesn't have a pay submission service, and I couldn't get them to respond as to what their plans for the future are.

However, if you're looking to get into Excite's directory, you'll have to submit to LookSmart ...and choose between the $199 and $99 submission options.

Google

What are Google's plans for a pay submission service? Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President of Corporate Communications with Google, answers:

"Google has no plans for paid submissions. We believe that providing a search service that delivers objective and unbiased results is most useful to users."

Google is one of the few major engines that doesn't use either LookSmart or GoTo results. However, they do offer AdWords, where you can purchase keywords similarly to the way GoTo operates. Results appear on the right side of the search results page. -- http://www.google.com/ads/index.html)

Northern Light

Susan Stearns, Director of Marketing with Northern Light, responds to what their plans are for implementing a pay submission program.

"To my knowledge, we have no plans for such a program. While we often do priority crawling of certain Web sites, they are ones that are selected by our editors or are a part of a contractual arrangement with the site -- usually as a part of a site search agreement. However, as I am less familiar with these programs, I'll double check with our engineering group and let you know if I discover anything different."

If we learn anything else from Northern Light, we'll pass that information on to you.

In Conclusion

For companies who are serious about creating an online presence and able to maximize the potential of search engine optimization, the pay for submission model is ideal -- provided that the submission fees are considered "affordable" for you or your company. In most cases, the cost can be looked at as very cheap, yet effective, advertising.

Now, more than ever, it is important to evaluate which engines and directories are most effective as traffic sources and focus on optimizing for those portals first. It's also important to understand that, without optimization, you may be wasting your entry fees.

Finally, if you happen to be a professional search engine optimizer, rest assured that your services are likely to be even more in demand for the foreseeable future.

This article was written by Robin Nobles, Director of Training at the Academy of Web Specialists^TM. Over the past few years, she has trained thousands of people in her online and onsite courses in search engine positioning strategies and has written three books that can be ordered through Amazon. Visit the Academy's training Website to learn more about their online courses: http://www.onlinewebtraining.com.

This article first published by Planet Ocean in their Search Engine News Update Newsletter (http://www.searchenginehelp.com/acws).

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