Website Links
Internet Search Engines and Directories
List last checked April 18, 2001. Last entry added on March 23, 2005.
Appearance on this list is not meant as an endorsement for any of these search tools. Similarly, failure to appear should not be construed as a statement about a search tool. The author has no affiliation with any of these search tools. When a specific endorsement is intended, it will be explicitly stated in the search tool entry below.
You might want to read an analysis of the War of the Search Tools and its impact on the quality of search tool results.
You are welcome to e-mail comments, suggestions, or corrections for this list.
| Search Entry Point | Where to Submit URL | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Alta Vista | Add URL | Only URL required |
| Yahoo | Suggest URL | Need to pick category and provide Title, URL, and Description (up to 25 words). You have the option to pay a fee of $199 to have your submission considered in 7 days instead of the standard lengthy time. |
| Excite | Add URL | Needs URL, e-mail, and select category from list. |
| LookSmart |
Pay To Suggest URL |
Limit of 5 pages per domain. Fee for submission $99 - process time up to 8 weeks, $199 - two business days. |
| GoTo.com | Visit | You have to visit the GoTo.com site entry page to initate a session ID. Follow the List Your Site Now! or Premium Listings links at the bottom of the page to submit. Fee comes from success in search engine. You pay for each visitor click on a search engine response (minimum $.05/click) Monthly minimum $20. You can pay more for a higher ranking. |
| Lycos | Add URL | Requires URL and e-mail address only. Distinct web pages only. Only simple filename URLs, no symbols (&, %, =, $, or ?) in address. |
| Starting Point | Add URL | Form requires contact info, site description (<160chars), keywords, and category choice. |
| Add URL | Only URL required. Googlebot will follow all links so only top level site is necessary. Comments allowed but do not affect index listing. Note that the directory aspect provides access to the listings in the Open Directory Project. | |
| Northern Light | Add URL | Requires URL, Contact Name, and e-mail. Crawler will index through all links. |
| AskJeeves | Mail Suggestion |
Submission is done by an e-mail suggestion that their editors review a web site to see if it has content suitable for their service. |
| Inktomi | Add URL | Only URL and e-mail required. The Inktomi search index powers a lot of search engine portals and that appears to be the only way to use it. Inktomi does not themselves provide a direct interface that this author is aware of. The Canada site linked to here is a relatively fast entry point. You can also submit to Inktomi via MSN Search or HotBot. |
| Direct Hit | Add URL | Requires URL, e-mail, and keywords (60 character limit). Site ranking improves when visitors click on the site in the search results. It is a subsidiary of Ask Jeeves. The Direct Hit product is a spidered search engine whereas Ask Jeeves is a human edited database. Direct Hit's directory is the Open Directory Project. |
| Open Directory Project |
Suggest URL | Requires URL, Title, Description (25-30 words), and contact e-mail. Submission suggestions are made by navigating to the appropriate category and selecting add URL. Widely used by other search portals to provide a high quality directory. These partner sites get directory updates on their own schedule (from 2 weeks to several months). |
| NBCi | Visit | Requires "free" membership to submit a site. Requires choice of directory category, Site Title, URL, Description (<255 chars), Keywords (up to 10), and more optional questions. Fee for Premier Listing is $99. Also known as Snap.com. |
| PC Beacon | Visit | A self-proclaimed business-to-business search engine. Requires multiple step membership enrollment to submit a site. Must be owner/webmaster of domain submitted. Requires filling out a contact info form with a description of business (100 word max) |
| Scrub The Web | Add URL | Requires e-mail (confirmation sent), URL, Title (60 char max), Description (200 char max), Keywords (150 char max). They provide a free Meta Tag analyzer that is well worth using. |
| Splat | Add URL | Can add up to 10 unique pages per day. Spider uses META tags. You can optionally submit in "preview" mode and edit what the spider found before submitting it. Splat's directory is the Open Directory Project. |
| FAST Search | Add URL | Requires URL and e-mail. |
| Mamma | Pay To Add URL |
Mamma is a Meta search engine meaning that it looks in other search engines on your behalf to perform your search. Submitting to any of these other search engines will get you in Mamma. You can submit sites to its fee based Mamma Collection ($30 or $60 plus $20/year) to be human reviewed and gain better ranking in Mamma search results. |
| RealNames | Visit | RealNames is not a search engine but a word registering service. You can pay to register a word with them and have it associated with your web site. You are the sole registrant for that word. Search engines frequently allow you to do a RealNames search for a keyword. |
| WebTop | Add URL | Only requires top level URL (the spider will find the rest) and e-mail (confirmation action needed). Takes up to 4 weeks for submission to be processed. Based in the UK, but open to world submissions. |
| WhatUSeek | Add URL | Requires URL and E-mail. |
| Anzwers | Add URL | |
| NationalDirectory | Add URL | Appears to provide an independent spidered search engine. Also provides an Open Directory portal. |
Related Resources
These are collections that are useful places to look for info but they are not open for submissions They are included here for completeness.
| About | Visit | About.com is a network of content in the about.com domain. This is not a search engine or directory of the Internet but a well organized and indexed collection of information provided by about.com. This is essentially an online publishing house and you can browse through the professional quality content covering a wide range of topics. |
| Deja | Visit | Deja's archive of the Usenet newsgroups has been taken over by Google. Google is nearing completion of its archive search function. The Usenet newsgroups are automatically searched and indexed. Submitting to this search resource is done by submitting to the appropriate newsgroup directly. |
Uncertainty about Search Engines
This author is unclear about the full utilization of these search tools.
| AOL Search | Visit | There was no URL submission invitation for indexing on their web search. Not being an AOL subscriber, this author can only speculate that AOL members might get more information or access to a URL submission method. E-mail if you know. The directory presented is a repackaging of the Open Directory Project. It is unclear if they have an independent web index. |
Different Search on the Same Databases
These are a semi-independent class of search tools that offer a search facility for the Open Directory Project. Your ranking in their particular search is independent from other searches of the Open Directory Project.
| Hooting Owl | Visit | Here you can pay to get a better ranking in their search listing. A fee of $100 gets you premium listing for 5 search keywords. You can pay for more keywords. And like GoTo.com you pay a fee for each click by a vistor who visits your premium listed web site from this engine. |
Redundant Search Engines
Submitting to these is not needed if you have covered those above.
| Hot Bot | Add URL | Only URL and your e-mail required. This adds your site to the Inktomi Search Engine. HotBot appears to be affiliated with Lycos but Lycos uses an independent database. |
| Webcrawler | Add URL | Owned and run by Excite so you can submit to Excite's index (spidered) or LookSmart's directory. |
| Magellan | Add URL | Redirects to http://magellan.excite.com/ which allows submissions to Excite's index (spidered) or LookSmart's directory. |
| Metasearch | Visit | Redirects to http://local.find.com/ which presents a GoTo.com search. |
| MSN Search | Add URL | This is a LookSmart directory and an Inktomi index. They provide another way to add to the Inktomi index by: Add URL |
| Netscape Search | Visit | Netscape uses the Open Directory Project for its directory and Google for its default web search. It also offers links to other popular search tools. |
| Go.com | Visit | Search provided by GoTo.com |
| Infoseek | Visit | Redirects to Go.com. |
| Metacrawler | Visit | Metacrawler is a meta-search engine meaning that it looks in other search engines on your behalf to perform your search. Submitting to any of these other search engines will get you in Metacrawler. Metacrawler uses LookSmart for its directory presentation. |
| iWon | Visit | iWon is a meta-search engine that uses the LookSmart directory and a selection of search tools including Inktomi, DirectHit, and RealNames. |
| c|net's search | Add URL | c|net's search is a meta-search engine that uses many other search engines. It does have a facility for you to submit to 15 of the major search engines at once, apparently free. You provide your e-mail address to them, so they will almost certainly send you junk e-mail or sell your e-mail address. You can read useful details about each of the search engine's guidelines and practices. Funded by advertising, information on c|net's Add URL pages is a recommended read. |
| Dogpile | Visit | Dogpile is a meta-search engine that uses many other search engines (4 at a time). It does not have a facility for you to submit your URL. Do that with the search engines directly. |
| FindWhat | Visit | |
| Kanoodle | Visit | |
| SearchAllInOne.com | Visit | SearchAllInOne.com is a meta-search engine that uses many other search engines (you can choose which ones). It does not have a facility for you to submit your URL. Do that with the search engines directly. (Entry added March 23, 2005 at the request of SearchAllInOne.com.) |