Search Engines: Why you may not be showing up like you used to!

The days of the free listing are nearly over. Search engine companies, starved for income after the collapse of the online advertising model, are increasingly turning to a "pay to play" model to shore up sagging bottom lines.

We've touched on this in past issues of the Client Update. But it's getting much more pronounced.

Following is a brief overview of the situation, as it stands today.

First, the last two major search engines that used those infamous invisible meta tags (keywords and descriptions) have stopped using them to list sites. While smaller and less popular search engines still use them, it won't be for long. They simply weren't an effective way to catalogue and rank sites and too many firms were abusing these invisible tags by listing competitor names (illegal) and spamming the search engines. Those were the companies who made wild promises about getting you in the Top 10 listings on a search engine for $99. Yeah, right!

Most search engines use a complex set of metrics to rank a site these days, ranging from how many other sites are linked to yours, the number of links on your site, keywords picked up in the text of your site and several other methods.

But the vast majority are moving away from "Free" listings toward a "Free and Play" model or a "Pay to Play" model.

Search engines that are used by thousands of other search engines for their
content:

PAY: searchfeed.com
PAY: kanoodle.com
FREE: dmoz.org
PAY: overture.com - Formerly GoTo
PAY: ask.com


Search engines with specialty directories:

FREE: directory.google.com/
PAY: secure.business.com/registration/suggestasite.jsp


General Search Engines:
google.com - FREE: Also also has a PAY program called AdWords
teoma.com - PAY
alltheweb.com - FREE and PAY
WiseNut.com - New contender (Powered by LookSmart)
AltaVista.com - FREE and PAY
Excite.com - PAY: Rated as one of the best search engines. Also owns Webcrawler.
Lycos.com - FREE & PAY: Owns HotBot.
IXQuick.com - PAY: Up and coming SE. Highly rated.
yahoo.com - PAY: not a search engine but a directory many use.

As you can see, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some still offer free listings but will bump you up higher if you pay for the listing.

If you'd like more information and some recommendations about how to work with these new models, give Sharon, our search engine specialist a call. Her phone number is (877) 895-2848, ext. 2 or her email is sharon@comstation.com.