Submitting Your Website to Search Engines

In order for your website to be found on the internet, it needs to be listed in the databases of the internet's search engines. Although there are many thousands of search engines worldwide, in fact the majority of all searches on the internet are conducted using only a very few of them. Some 80% of all internet searches are done using Google, Yahoo and MSN, as the statistics from a survey of American internet users given below shows. Google is by far and away the most frequently used search engine, accounting for nearly 50% of all internet searches worldwide. If you want your website to be found, it needs to be listed at Google.

Source: Nielsen Search Engine Ratings 2006

With many of the major search engines, you can submit your website for free, although they do not guarantee when your site will be indexed and added to their databases. For a fee, some offer to ensure that your site will be listed within 24hrs or one week. Other search engines, notably MSN and Ask Jeeves, levy an annual fee which you must pay in order to be listed by them at all.

There are various internet-based agencies around which offer site submission to '500,000 search engines' for a fee. Given that this will include 498,490 search engines that you and no-one else you know has ever heard of, it does not seem worthwhile paying these companies any money at all! By contrast, there are also many smaller search engines to whom you can submit for free. It does not hurt to submit to these minor search engines and it is not going to cost you anything.

In addition, New Zealanders should also submit their websites to the Australian and New Zealand based search engines, such as SearchNZ. There may not be any point in being listed in local German or Hungarian search engines, but if your business is conducted mainly within New Zealand and Australia, then you should also ensure that your website is listed in the local search engine databases as well as the major search engine players.

One point to note is that there are actually two different types of search engine - search engines (such as Google) and directories (such as Yahoo). One is more general in its scope than the other. With the search directories, you need to list your site within the specific directory that best classifies your website. You need to look in the specific area you are after to find what you want. Like using the Yellow Pages, you need to find the section on 'Plumbers' to find your local plumber first. With search engines, a search term will find all instances within the whole database - it will look through the whole of the Yellow pages from beginning to end to find "plumbers +devonport". Search directories help you pinpoint your search more precisely; search engines, on the other hand, are faster and more thorough.