A question often asked, shortly after the new
site has been launched: "Why can't I find my site under (keyword/s)".
Most Search engines use different methods to rank a site.
Simply submitting to the search engine does not mean the site will show
up the next day. It can take weeks and months to get into the top 30 of
most engines.
Yahoo, for instance, accept only a very small percentage
of the submissions made to them - this means that you can waste hours and
hours, over a period of months, submitting the same site to them with absolutely
no result, and no way of finding out why not - short of paying them a considerable
amount of money for the privilege.
Open Directory advise that they may take anywhere from
two weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites
which use the Open Directory data such as Netscape Search and Google. I
know from personal experience that it can take much longer, and that your
listing may never appear in the ODP.
Other engines may list you fairly promptly, but you'll
most likely be somewhere near the bottom - and if you get 3 million results
for your search on "acme widgets", that's a long way down! It may take
months and months of work to get a listing anywhere near the top for given
sets of keywords.
Experts spend a great deal of time experimenting with
different methods of gaining a top listing in the search engines, so don't
be disappointed if you don't appear in the top ten immediately. There are
a great many sites devoted to the subject of search engine ranking, some
of which you will find listed here.
