Search Engines & META Tags

[MonkeyCode]

This is an area of the web I would appreciate some help on.

How do you get a submission onto a search site and how much does it cost.

What are these META things?

Thanks in advance.

[Matt]

Basically, META tags just describe the content of the web page. It isn't shown to the user, but generally just used by automated processed like search engines, etc.

META keywords and descriptions are not nearly as important as they were 3-4 years ago. Most major search engines don't even pay attention to them any more. Does that mean they aren't worth doing? No. They are simple to include in your pages and so you might as well.

Here's a resource to see how to use meta tags:

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html


As for submission, personally I only submit sites to DMOZ.org and I submit my main page to google at:

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

There are tons of other search engines you can submit to and an abundance of directories, but I don't usually waste my time on them.

[MonkeyCode]

Thanks Matt,

I've printed the article off, a little weekend reading.

I think this site is a fab idea.

[shibumi]

We have used a company called Inktomi in the past to get expedited service into search engines and been happy with the results. If you're in a hurry you might check them out, its http://www.inktomi.com I believe. Usually, I just submit my sites by hand at google and msn and call it good. Few people use any other search engines these days.

[clivewalker]

I know what you are saying about Google and MSN search engines being very important but I advise submitting to about 12 of the big search engines just to cover most of the bases.

Those kind of services where they promise to "submit your site to a million search engines" are just not worth it. Quality is better than quantity in this case.

[Matt]

I can think of the top 4 or 5...but 12? Can you give a list clivewalker?

[clivewalker]

How about these ?

Netscape, AOL, Google, Looksmart-MSN, HotBot-Lycos, Yahoo, FAST(Alltheweb), BBC, Overture, Mirago, Open Directory, Alta Vista, AskJeeves, Espotting

[BBC is an important UK website]

I appreciate that some of these use the same data. And some may be less important than others.