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Paid Search Engine Listings
As the world of the internet moves to a decidedly commercial footing, some search engines are charging for priority listings, and others are requiring that the site owner pays for any listing at all!
The search engines are fully aware of the value of a listing with them, and more and more will adopt a "pay for listing" model in the future. Unfortunately this is now a reality, and the days of the free ride are over. We recommend that an effective web site marketing strategy should include the following paid listings, and be budgeted for accordingly.
Paid listings don't take the place of free listings with the major search engines that still offer free placement. Although time consuming, you can do this yourself. Click here for a list of important search engines and links to their submission pages.
- LookSmart Australia: A A$330 (plus GST) submission fee that gets your site listed with LookSmart as well as NineMSN, Excite, Go Eureka (AltaVista), Anzwers, News Interactive (and other F2 sites), ANZ.com and others in the Australian network of over 50 sites. This fee does not guarantee that you will get listed, just reviewed within 48 hours, however most sites that are submitted will be included as the decision for exclusion is based on whether the content is "unsuitable" such as porn sites. More info...
- LookSmart USA: A US$149 submission fee that gets your site listed with the LookSmart network affilliates in the USA that include MSNSearch, AltaVista, Excite, iWon, CNN.com, InfoSpace, Dogpile and many others. Once again, this fee does not guarantee that you will get listed, just reviewed within 8 weeks, however most sites that are submitted will be included as the decision for exclusion is based on whether the content is "unsuitable" such as porn sites. More info...
- Yahoo: Yahoo.com, the international version of Yahoo, have an express submission service available for US$299 per year. There is no guarantee of being listed and the fee is stated as being only for a "human" editor to review your site and determine whether it's worthy of inclusion. Most sites will be accepted but there isn't any refund if your site is not of high enough quality or has innapproriate content. Yahoo is miles ahead as the most popular search engine in the world, and if you are only going to pay for one paid listing, this is it. More info...
- Overture: Overture (previously known as GoTo) is a search engine in its own right but also commercially provides content for AltaVista, GO/Disney (the old Infoseek site), AOL Search (America Online), NetScape Search, HotBot, Lycos, Earthlink, Search.com, Microsoft Internet Explorer, iFind, and many others. An express submission with Overture will cost US$99. More info...
- Inktomi: PositionTech offer a service that will submit you to Inktomi network of sites that include Anzwers, About.com, NBCi, HotBot, AOL Search, 4anything, Canada.com, MSN, CNet, iWon and several others. Although there is a fair degree of overlap between this service and the Overture paid submission partners (see above), it is cheaper, gives you access to a wide spread of second tier search engines, and allows you to submit multiple pages. They charge US$39 for the first page on your site that you submit, and then US$25 for each additional page. These fees are per year. More info...
- AltaVista: InfoSpider operate an Express Submit service for AltaVista which has a few added benefits over the free submission feature including being able to submit up to 500 URL's per session rather 5 with the free listing, and have your submission request processed "promptly" rather than in 4-6 weeks. Charges are US$39 for the first page on your site that you submit, and then US$29 for the next 9 pages, and a sliding scale thereafter. These costs are for a 6 month subscription period, so the amounts need to be paid again every 6 months.More info...
- Google: Definitely the dominant search engine on the internet, listing is free with Google however enhanced listings can be purchased through their Ad Words program. You buy a series of ads that are "attached" to search terms and hence displayed on the search results page for that particular search term. They are per impression (every time your ad is shown) and costs are as low as US$8 per thousand impressions. More info...
- Ask Jeeves: Another one of the internet old-timers that's experiencing a surge in popularity as more people discover the ease of use that's always been its hallmark. Annual listing fees are US$30 for the first URL, and $US18 for each URL after that. Not a "must have" choice, but worth consideration in an all round approach. More info...
If you are looking for Australian exposure, the LookSmart Australia option is definitely the way to go considering the popularity of NineMSN search to Australian internet users.
Internationally, Inktomi is an excellent value for money proposition. Although you miss out on a paid listing in Altavista (which will rank more highly than a free listing), it will still allow you to be included in quite a few of the top 10 search engines.
The LookSmart paid submission is probably the most prudent choice if you are looking for a good spread of quality listings, however Yahoo is clearly the best program (if you can justify the expense).
The following table shows the relative popularity with internet users of various search engines as at December 2001:
| Search Engines |
| Yahoo! | 34.2% |
| Google | 24.4% |
| MSN | 14.6% |
| Ask Jeeves | 12.1% |
| IWon | 11.2% |
| AOL.com Search | 8.2% |
| Overture (GoTo.com) | 7.4% |
| LookSmart | 7.1% |
| AltaVista | 6.8% |
| Dogpile | 4.9% |
| NBCi | 4.9% |
| DirectHit | 4.8% |
| Lycos | 3.7% |
| Netscape Search | 3.1% |
| Excite | 2.6% |
| CNET Search.com | 1.6% |
| HotBot | 1.2% |
| Open Directory Project | 0.9% |
| Metacrawler | 0.9% |
| Mamma | 0.3% |
| Northern Light | 0.3% |
A paid listing doesn't guarantee search visibility, it just pays for inclusion in the search engine database. Keyword and META tag optimisation is still critical prior to a paid submission to ensure that you don't waste your money.
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