Alphabetical Listing of
Popular Search Engines

This list was compiled mainly from two different sites, Search.com (http://www.search.com) and Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com).  Although many different sites exist, these are the best of the best.

AltaVista

Launched in spring 1995 to showcase speedy Digital Alpha computer clusters, AltaVista now offers an enormous index of more than 350 million Web documents. It's one of the ten most-accessed sites on the Web, so if your audience is searching for your site, there's a good chance they'll try AltaVista.

Submission page: http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=addurl
Home page: http://www.altavista.com/
Unique visitors: 20.07 million (PC Data 10/2000)
Index size: 350 million pages

Tips:

• Use a title tag, or else AltaVista will return the title of your page as No Title.
• AltaVista indexes alt tags and encourages the use of keyword and description meta tags by indexing those as well.
• AltaVista will ban known index spammers and URLs. Its policy includes removal of URLs associated with spam offenders.
• Scooter (AltaVista's spider) should see the same content that your human users see.

• Anzwers weights title tags first, then meta tags.
• Anzwers penalizes index spamming of all kinds.
• Submit only one URL to Anzwers; it will then crawl your entire site.

Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question. If it fails to find a match within its own database, then it will provide matching web pages from various search engines. The service went into beta in mid-April 1997 and opened fully on June 1, 1997. Some results from Ask Jeeves also appear within AltaVista.

• Make sure your web page has a title.
• For best results, make sure your page has a META description tag.
• Direct Hit search results are partially based on popularity, so your site may have to build traffic and user interest before Direct Hit recommends it.

Dogpile
Popular metasearch site that sends a search to a customizable list of search engines, directories and specialty search sites, then displays results from each search engine individually. Owned by Go2Net, which also owns MetaCrawler.

• The Excite network spider does not recognize meta tags other than description tags.
• Excite tries to crawl your site every two weeks.
• Excite's Web crawler goes deep: it attempts to index every page in your site.

• Expect to wait as long as six weeks between registration and indexing.
• Go URL submission is often down for scheduled maintenance on evenings and weekends.
• Go's strict policy on spamming includes permanent bans and even legal action against index spammers.

• Google wants only your top-level URL; it'll crawl your site from there.
• Users can view a cached copy of your pages through Google's archive.
• If other pages in Google's index point to your Web site, your rank in Google search results may rise.

• HotBot refreshes its whole database of documents every two months.
• The engine's spider will crawl your entire Web site after you submit it. You can also submit up to 50 individual URLs for immediate addition.
• HotBot will not index pages that require cookies or employ index spamming, or URLs containing special characters (filenames with ?, =, %, &).
• Pages that use typical listing tricks--such as repetition of words, unrelated meta tags, and words that cannot be read due to their small size or color--are penalized in HotBot's search results ranking.
• See HotBot's Webmaster's FAQ for detailed information.

LookSmart
LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. In addition to being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to MSN Search, Excite and many other partners. Inktomi provides LookSmart with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's reviews. LookSmart launched independently in October 1996, was backed by Reader's Digest for about a year, and then company executives bought back control of the service.

Lycos

Lycos was founded in June 1995 to showcase search technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Now Lycos is a full-featured Internet portal that reaches 45 percent of all Internet users.

Submission page: http://home.lycos.com/addasite.html
Home page: http://www.lycos.com/
Unique users: 23.1 million (PC Data 10/2000)
Index size: n/a

Tips:

• Lycos needs about three weeks to spider your content. Be patient.
• Multiple pages that contain the same content will not be added.
• URLs with the special characters: &, =, $, %, and ? are not crawled.

MetaCrawler
One of the oldest meta search services, MetaCrawler began in July 1995 at the University of Washington. MetaCrawler was purchased by Go2Net, an online content provider, in Feb. 97. The commercial backing has helped improve the responsiveness of the service. MetaCrawler now also powers searches at the Go2Net portal site.

MSN Search
Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web sites, with secondary results that come from Inktomi. RealNames and Direct Hit data is also made available. MSN Search also offers a unique way for Internet Explorer 5 users to save past searches.

National Directory

NationalDirectory maintains a high-quality, low-spam directory to the Net. NationalDirectory claims to process URL registrations immediately, meaning pages from your site can appear in their search results within minutes of registration.

Submission page: http://www.NationalDirectory.com/addurl.html
Home page: http://www.NationalDirectory.com/
Unique visitors: n/a
Index size: n/a

Tips:

• To have your site reviewed by NationalDirectory, visit the directory, find your category, and choose Add A Site.
• NationalDirectory crawls your entire site, starting from the URL you submit. One URL is all the engine wants.

NBCi
NBCi is a human-compiled directory of web sites, supplemented by search results from Inktomi. Like LookSmart, it aims to challenge Yahoo as the champion of categorizing the web. NBCi launched in late 1997 and is backed by NBC. It was formerly known as Snap but had a name change in late 2000.

• Links are added and organized by volunteer experts called editors. The editors make sure that links adhere to the policies outlined on the ODP submission page.
• You have to find the Open Directory category best suited to your site before asking an editor to include it.
• According to the ODP, there are 214 other search engines / portals that use their listings

Search.com
Search.com is a meta search engine operated by Cnet. It offers both web-wide search and a wide variety of specialty search options. Search.com uses technology from SavvySearch, which was acquired by Cnet in October 1999. The SavvySearch site itself no longer operates. SavvySearch was one of the older metasearch services, around since May 1995 and formerly based at Colorado State University.

• WebTop ignores URLs that are excessively long or that contain special characters such as ?, &, and !.
• You must confirm your submission via email before WebTop will add your site.

• Allow one to four days for the WhatUseek spider, Winona, to index your site.
• WhatUseek removes outdated and dead links frequently.
• The engine sends a single confirmation email.

• Find the Yahoo category best suited to your site before registering.
• Is your site commercial, specific to a geographic region, or your own home page? Knowing this will help you make a successful suggestion.
• Yahoo evaluates and adds new sites free of charge. The suggestion process will also offer you an opportunity to pay for expedited consideration of your site.

Other Search Engines

• TrueSearch.com

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