Hotbot closes free add url; Search Engine submission script update

[rmjvol]

Hotbot took their free add url page offline recently.
http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.asp

It's not a big loss as free submissions over the past year were taking anywhere from several months to *never* to get listed. Hotbot uses the inktomi database and there is still an option to pay for guaranteed spidering and inclusion in inktomi. Doesn't guarantee good rankings though ;)

Inktomi is still one of the important places to be listed if you want to generate targeted traffic. hint, hint.

With the Hotbot change, here's an update on the Search Engine Submission script found in the Cpanel3 tools:

13 SE's are listed in that auto submit script:
3 are major SE's & will find you without submitting if you have a decent inbound link or an ODP listing.
(If you submit and don't have a link soon, they may drop your site from their index)
4 no longer accept free submissions.
1 has announced they're shutting down soon.
1 doesn't accept auto submissions.
4 are not major players and for most sites, not worth the trouble.

Bottom line, take the time and hand submit to the important places and get a link or 2 to your website.

Good luck,
rmjvol

[MsSearch]

Auto submissions are not the best way to go when submitting to the search engines. Manual submissions are really the best way...

Once listed in the important directories, it's only a matter of time before other engines will find your site or a link to your site.

As for inktomi...you should get listed in DMOZ, Looksmart, and Yahoo (these are the 3 major directories). One of these listings should get you into Ink in about 2-3 months (if you don't want to pay Inktomi). The only downfall to not paying for inclusion into the Inktomi database is that your site will not be respidered every 48 hrs...

[rmjvol]

I wouldn't hold my breath on this:

Once listed in the important directories, it's only a matter of time before other engines will find your site or a link to your site.

One of these listings should get you into Ink in about 2-3 months

The only important major engine that actively crawls & *adds* documents/sites to their index for free is google. Fast seems to do pretty well but they're only a 2nd tier to me behind the 4 major search traffic sites.

Since the intro of paid spidering @ ink, their tendency to add sites they find on their own has plummeted. The add url on partner sites was the best option for free inclusion. They've now shut down the major US page for that.

Are you saying Inktomi doesn't follow links to other sites on it's own initiative? No, I've had Ink's spider, slurp, crawling all over one site for the past 3 months. AFAIK, slurp found it on its own. But it's not been added to the ink index yet.

Does that mean that inktomi won't add sites they find on their own? No, it means I wouldn't count on it. Hope? Yes. Count on it? No.

Does that mean getting listed in the major directories doesn't help my site? No, just that those listings aren't enough if it's *important* for your site to be in inktomi in a timely fashion.

Is being listed in Inktomi worth it? Depends, if you've a commercial or non-comercial site that needs targeted traffic, then it could be worth it. Inktomi is not as important as it used to be but they're still very important. Ink results show up on MSN, AOL and many other places.

good luck,
rmjvol