Search Engines - Positioning
Aug 1999
AltaVista
Pages in index: 150 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: One to two days.
Time it takes to index crawled pages: One to 30 days.
How to check if your page is on the index: In the search box, type: +url: yourcompany.com/yourpage.htm. How to check how many pages link to your site: In the search box, type: link:yourcompany.com. To narrow your search to a particular directory or page: link:yourcompany.com/ourpage.htm. To eliminate from the results all the pages within your own domain that link to each other, use the -url command: link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com. Supports frame pages: Yes. Supports image maps: Yes.
HotBot
Pages in index: 110 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: Two days to two
weeks. Time it takes to index crawled pages: About two weeks.
How to check if your page is on the index: Select the advanced search options and enter your page URL. How to check how many pages link to your domain: In the search box, type: linkdomain:yourcompany.com. To eliminate from the results all the pages within your own domain that link to each other, use the -domain command: linkdomain:yourcompany.com -domain:yourcompany.com. To find the links to only a particular page, enter your URL into the search box, then choose the "links to this URL" option. Supports frame pages: No. Supports image maps: No.
Infoseek
Pages in index: 75 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: One day for pages
submitted online, seven days for email submissions. Time it takes to index crawled pages:
Though Infoseek rarely spiders, if it does, it will take one to two months.
How to check if your page is on the index: In the search box, type: URL: http://www.yourcompany.com/page.htm. How to check how many pages link to your site: In the search box, type: link:yourcompany.com. You can narrow your search to a particular directory or page: link:yourcompany.com/ourpage.htm. To eliminate from the results all the pages within your own domain that link to each other, use the -url command: link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com. Supports frame pages: No. Supports image maps: Yes
Excite
Pages in index: 55 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: About two weeks. Time
it takes to index crawled pages: Up to six weeks.
How to check if your page is on the index: In the search box, type in the full URL of the page. How to check how many pages link to your site: Not available. Supports frame pages: No. Supports image maps: No.
Lycos
Pages in index: 50 million. Time it takes to index a submitted page: Two to four weeks.
Time it takes to index crawled pages: Two to four weeks.
How to check if your page is on the index: Not available. How to check how many pages link to your site: Not available. Supports frame pages: Limited. Supports image maps: No
Yahoo!
Yahoo! is the most popular directory on the Web, yet many websites have difficulty getting
listed. Some estimates are that fewer than one of 10 submissions gets listed. Moreover,
for those that get listed, it takes an estimated four to 15 weeks. Some companies have had
to resubmit sites four times over several weeks or months before getting listed (but be
careful; resubmitting too often is spamdexing--see last week's article).
But regardless of the difficulty, one thing is certain: You must get into Yahoo! Yahoo! brings some sites more than 50% of their business.
Yahoo! also offers an express submission service whereby you pay $199 for a response to your submission within seven days. It doesn't guarantee a listing, but at least you get to know quickly if you got listed, and if not, why. These links will help you get into Yahoo:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/search/url/
http://howto.yahoo.com/chapters/10/1.html
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/9903-yahoo.html
WORTH IT
This may seem like a lot of information and work, and you may not want to bother. That
would be a mistake. Consider the value of high search engine rankings this way: The top
search engines charge $52,000 and up per year for banner ads tied to keywords. It costs so
much because the exposure is effective. If your website comes up in the top 10 or 30
results, it's as if you're buying $260,000 worth of advertising per keyword.
Search engine statistical information gathered from SearchEngineWatch.com and SearchPositioning.com.
By David Gikandi
David Gikandi is president of SearchPositioning.com, which features tools and resources that get your website top positions on AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek and Lycos. It also has forums, articles, links and other free resources useful for website owners and marketers.