By David Gikandi, Founder, SearchPositioning.com
[July 24th, 1999]

See Also   Email Marketing Primer   How to Increase Your Online Sales   Take Advantage of Google's AdWords   Using Foreign Search Engines to Boost Your Sales   Getting Sure Profits Through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit   Ten Places You Must Submit Your Site   Clever Profit Growth Software   The Power Of Personalized Email   How To Go Long With Your Web Marketing   How NOT to Promote Your E-business   Winning the Search Engine Wars   Latest Tips on Search Engine Marketing   Are You Wasting Your Money Online?   Should I Hire Another Salesperson or Invest in an Affiliate Program?   The Death of Positioning?   Links: Why You Need Them and How to Get Them   Your #1 Overlooked Business Asset

[This is the third part of a three part article. The first part can be read here].

Search Engine Statistics

Below are several useful facts and tips for each major search engine that you can use to improve your search engine marketing.

AltaVista

Pages in index in millions: 150

Time it takes to index a submitted page: 1-2 days

Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): 1 day to 1 month

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'.
You can narrow your search to a particular directory or page like: '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 like: 'link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com'

Supports frame pages: Yes

Supports image maps: Yes

HotBot

Pages in index in millions: 75

Time it takes to index a submitted page: 1 day for pages submitted online, 7 days for email submissions.

Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): Rarely spiders, if it does then 1 - 2 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 like: '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 like: 'link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com'

Supports frame pages: No

Supports image maps: Yes

Excite

Pages in index in millions: 55

Time it takes to index a submitted page: About 2 weeks

Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): Up to 6 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: N/A

Supports frame pages: No

Supports image maps: No

Lycos

Pages in index in millions: 50

Time it takes to index a submitted page: 2-4 weeks

Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): 2-4 weeks

How to check if your page is on the index: Not available.

How to check how many pages link to your site: N/A

Supports frame pages: No (limited)

Supports image maps: No

Yahoo!

Yahoo is the most popular directory on the Web. Many people have problems getting their site listed. A rough estimate is that only 1 out of every 10 submissions gets listed, if that. Moreover, it takes an estimated 4 to 15 weeks to be listed for those who actually get listed!

Those who got listed had to resubmit their site an estimated 4 times over several weeks or months before getting listed (resubmitting too often is spamming, by the way). One this is for sure - you must get into Yahoo! For some sites, Yahoo actually brings them over 50% of their business.

By the way, Yahoo now has an express submission service whereby you pay $199 for a response to your submission within 7 weeks. It doesn't guarantee that you will be listed with them, but at least you get to know within 7 days whether you are in or if not, why. Here is a set of links that you need to visit to learn how to successfully 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

Article by David Gikandi, of SearchPositioning.com. David is a programmer at SearchPositioning.com. SearchPositioning.com features tools and resources that get you top positions for your Web site on AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, and Lycos. It also has forums, articles, links, and other free resources useful for the Website owner and marketer.