Following
is a list of what we at the AWC
consider to be the most important search engines
currently on the Internet. These are
the same engines that we use to market our own Websites
- subscribing to a combination of the following
engines offers virtually complete coverage of the
Web audience for search results. Additionally, each
engine offers potential benefits and drawbacks depending
upon the type of business you are running and the
type of audience that you are attempting to target.
We've constructed the following overview in order
to outline the attributes of each engine and also
in order to familiarize our visitors with the resources
that AWC uses so that they can utilize these fantastic
rersources on their own.
Address:http://www.about.com Price: Pay per click through Sprinks
(see Sprinks below) Response Time: 3 business days
Overview: About is a "Human
Internet" where real people help you to find
information you want from the Web. Each site
in About's network is run by a professional Guide
who is carefully screened and trained. An environment
is built around each specific topic to include the
best new content, most relevant links, How-To's,
Forums, and the answers to just about any relevant
question. The About network is composed of
hundreds of Guide sites organized into twenty three
channels. The sites cover more than 50,000 subjects. Unique Visitors Monthly: 36,574,000
1
Address:http://www.alltheweb.com Price: Annual Membership: $18, Annual
Cost Per Url: $12 (Under 500 pages) Response Time: 48 hours Overview: AllTheWeb is a
part of FastSearch.com, an "international company
with global ambitions." With strategic partners
and clients like eBay, IBM, Lycos, and Reuters,
they make sure to deliver the best products and
continuously stay ahead of competitors. AllTheWeb
refreshes content every 48 hours and guarantees
inclusion. Fast Search plans to become the market
leader in search and information-filtering technology
by using its FAST search engine: "the industry's
most effective search and real-time filter technology."
Unique Visitors Monthly: 111,464,000
1
Address:http://www.altavista.com Price: Free up to 500 pages Response Time: Updates:1 week, Suggestions:
4-6 weeks Overview: AltaVista, pioneered
as the first full-text search service in the world,
is a global leader in search technology. AltaVista's
patents have positioned the firm as a leading search
engine amongst Web users and the premier provider
of powerful search software to intranet, enterprise
and e-commerce clients internationally. Their Internet
search provides integrated results, offering users
instant access to highly relevant information including
Web pages, multimedia files, up-to-the minute news,
products and services, and a free language translation
service through Babel Fish.
Page Views Monthly: 1,381,181,000 2
Address: http://dmoz.org Price: Free Response Time: Variable Overview: Dmoz is affiliated with
the Open Directory Project, the largest, most comprehensive
human-edited directory of the Web. The ODP is constructed
and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer
editors. As automated search engines find it difficult
to scale to the fast pace prompted by the growth
of the Internet, the Open Directory provides the
volunteer manpower needed for the human-powered
Internet to organize itself. The Open Directory
powers core directory services for the Web's largest
and most popular search engines and portals including
Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot,
DirectHit, and hundreds of others.
Page Views Monthly: 84,522,000 2
Address: http://www.dogpile.com/index.gsp Price: N/A: Collection of other
search engine's results Response Time: N/A
Overview: Dogpile is a powerful,
Internet meta-search engine that assists people
in finding the results they are searchiing for fast.
Dogpile doesn't search just one search engine. It
combs many top search engines, such as AltaVista,
Ask Jeeves, Looksmart and About, at the same time
to give its users quick and reliable results. Dogpile
balances paid and non-paid
search listings to deliver comprehensive results
and to maximize the revenue share you earn. If you
prefer a balance towards paid or non-paid results,
they can adjust their algorithms to meet your needs.
Unique Visitors Monthly: --
Address:http://www.excite.com Price: Uses Overture, FAST, About,
Ask Jeeves, Inktomi Response Time: 2-5 business days
depending upon plan chosen Overview: Excite is an affiliate
of Overture (see Overture below). Excite is a destination
site offering world-class content and functionality
from over 75 leading sources. The engine has over
one million monthly unique users and is the leading
personalization portal on the Internet. Excite now
searches a large number of engines to return results
of the highest sponsor value. Unique Visitors Monthly: 17,535,000
1
Address: http://www.findwhat.com Price: Pay per click, minimum $25
non-refundable deposit Response Time: Variable
Overview: FindWhat.com was conceived
as a new search engine for offering better solutions.
Rather than position the company as another "everything
and the kitchen sink" web portal, bogged down
by excessive and irrelevant features, FindWhat.com
is a lean search engine. No clutter, no redundant
information, no wasted space. Fast, relevant searches
with the top results pointing to the most active
companies and Web sites regarding any given topic.
FindWhat.com uses a proprietary Pay For Placement
technology in which search results are sold to a
highest bidder. Advertisers are only charged for
actual clicks towards their sites.
Unique Visitors Monthly: --
Address:http://infoseek.go.com Price: Pay per click listings from
Overture (see Overture below) Response Time: 2-5 business days
depending upon plan chosen Overview: See Overture - Go bought
Infoseek, went bankrupt, and sold to the Walt Disney
Internet Group (WDIG). Go advertises
that it uses no banner ads and implements fast page
loads. All Go results come from Overture. Unique Visitors Monthly: 23,477,000 1
Address:http://www.google.com Price: Free, option to purchase
advertiser sponsored links Response Time: 1 month Overview: Google is a fully automated
search engine that employs robots known as 'spiders'
to crawl through the Web on a monthly basis and
find sites for inclusion in the Google index. The
best way to ensure a high listing on Google is for
your page to be linked from many pages on other
sites. Google's robots hop from page to page
on the Web through hyperlinks. The more sites that
link to you, the more likely it is that the spiders
will find you quickly. Google includes unique text-based
ads displayed for search results. Their image-free
pages have yielded clickthrough rates five times
higher than industry standard. Due
to its explosive growth, Google is the most important
search engine to target with search engine optimization
techniques. Google provides backup results to Yahoo!,
as well as advertiser boxes on a number of its partner
OEM Websites. Unique Visitors Monthly: 34,246,000
1
Address:http://hotbot.lycos.com Price: Uses Lycos, Overture Response Time: 48 hours Overview: Hotbot is affiliated
with Lycos and offers guaranteed inclusion in the
Lycos web index within 48 hours of submission. This
combined network advertising reaches millions of
users monthly. Recent changes become available to
millions of Lycos users within 48 hours. Lycos also
offers automatic notification that your site has
been submitted and indexed. You'll have full online
access to submission reports so that you can see
exactly what has been added to the index and when.
Additionally, you'll gain access to Search Services
Central for full online account access to review
billing, make changes, and request support.
Unique Visitors Monthly: 40,320,000
1 (& Terra/Lycos)
Address:http://www.inktomi.com Price: First url: $39 per year,
Each thereafter: $25 per year Response Time: 48 hours Overview: Make your content findable
on the most heavily used search engine on the Web
via Inktomi Web Search partners. Inktomi uses advanced
relevance algorithms to serve the most relevant
content to users and to direct highly targeted visitors
towards your content. This ensures that you receive
only the highest quality visitors. Inktomi provides
48-hour refreshes to keep your content up to date
in its index, and also allows you to specify which
pages are included in the index and when they become
available. The most important of Inktomi's OEM partners
include AOL/Time Warner and MSN. Unique Visitors Monthly: --
Address:http://www.ask.com Price: First url: $30 per 15 months,
Each thereafter: $18 per 15 months Response Time: One week Overview: Ask Jeeves guarantees
inclusion in a database that powers search results
viewed by millions of Web users each month. The
biggest complaint with typical search engine submission
is that the Webmaster has no control over how quickly
Web pages are included or how often content is refreshed. Ask
Jeeves uses IneedHits.com and Site Submit to guarantee
that your most important pages will be included
in the database that powers Ask.com and Teoma.com.
They make sure that your latest, greatest content is
always available to their users. You can submit
up to 1,000 different URLs for inclusion and also
refresh your content on a weekly basis. Unique Visitors Monthly: 17,906,000
1
Address:http://www.looksmart.com Price: Set-Up Fee: $49, Per Click:
$0.15, Update: $49, Additional Category: $39 Response Time: Variable Overview: By listing your sites
with LookSmart, you are utilizing a network of partners
- including MSN and AltaVista - that reaches 77%
of Internet users. LookSmart offers highly targeted
listings for better-qualified customer leads. You
create the listings that best target your customers
and you pay only when your listing is performing.
Unique Visitors Monthly: 10,634,000
1
Address:http://www.lycos.com Price: Annual Membership: $18, Annual
Cost Per Url: $12 (Under 500 pages) Response Time: 48 hours Overview: Lycos offers guaranteed
inclusion in the Lycos Web index within 48 hours
of submission. Your most recent changes are always
available to millions of Lycos users, and your site
search index is fresh and accurate because Lycos
performs a full refresh of your site content every
48 hours. Lycos also offers automatic notification
that your site has been submitted and indexed. You'll
have full online access to your submission reports
so you can see exactly what has been added to the
index and when. Additionally, you'll gain access
to Search Services Central for full online account
access to review billing, make changes, and request
support. Unique Visitors Monthly: 40,320,000
1 (& Hotbot/Terra)
Address: http://www.overture.com Price: Minimum bid per click: $0.05,
Minimum monthly spending: $20 Response Time: 2-5 business days
depending upon plan chosen
Overview: Overture is the world's
leading provider of Pay-For-Performance searches
on the Web. Overture enables advertisers to bid
for placement in its search results on terms that
are relevant to their businesses. Advertisers pay
Overture the amount of their bid only when a consumer
clicks on their listing, providing advertisers with
one of the most cost effective ways to drive targeted
customer leads to a Web site. Choose between Self
Serve, Full Serve and Full Serve Advantage listing
plans. One of the most effective bidding strategies
is to bid into Premium Listings, which are the top
three Overture results for a particular search term.
Premium Listings give you maximum exposure to 85%
of all active Internet users by listing you on sites
like Yahoo!, MSN, Infospace, Netscape, AltaVista,
Lycos/HotBot, and many others. In comparison, you
only reach 40% of Internet users in positions four
and lower.
Unique Visitors Monthly: 23,477,000
1
Address:http://search.aol.com Price: Free Response Time: Uses DMOZ, Overture,
Inktomi
Overview: AOL Search is a hierarchical
Web directory, organized by topic. All of their
user submitted Web content is maintained by
the Open Directory Project (see dmoz above). The
Open Directory Project is run by a staff of volunteer
editors who choose to evaluate and classify Web
sites in one or more categories. AOL searches the
best and most likely sources of relevant information
starting with select sites within AOL's staff-reviewed
"Walled Garden," Overture paid placement
results, and then the Open Directory Project which
features about three million sites on AOL and the
rest of the Web. If those sources don't contain
what you requested, AOL Search uses Inktomi to query
over 150 million other pages.
Unique Visitors Monthly: 92,950,000
1
Address:http://search.msn.com Price: Uses Looksmart, Overture,
Inktomi Response Time: 5 business days
Overview: MSN Search is an affiliate of LookSmart
(see LookSmart above) Commercial sites may be submitted
at no charge for inclusion in the Web Pages section
of MSN Search. Sites in the Web Pages section will
be ranked below sites that are submitted via the
paid submission service and will not be included
in the MSN directory. There is no guarantee of acceptance
or turnaround time for these submissions. Unique Visitors Monthly: 83,792,000
1
Address: http://sprinks.about.com Price: No minimum bid per click,
Minimum iInitial account balance: $100 Response Time: 3 business days
Overview: Sprinks listings appear in search
results on Sprinks.com as well as in contextually
relevant placements on hundreds of high quality
sites across the Web, such as About.com, AskJeeves,
C|net, DogPile, Mamma, and TheGlobe.com. By utilizing
this network, Sprinks drives highly qualified, highly
targeted leads to its advertisers. Sprinks also
allows you to control your price: by bidding for
placement, youre not paying a cent over what
the marketplace requires. With pay for performance
advertising, you only pay for traffic that comes
to your site.
Unique Visitors Monthly: 36,574,000
1
Address:http://www.webcrawler.com/info.wbcrwl/ Price: Uses Overture, FAST, About,
Ask Jeeves, Inktomi Response Time: 2-5 business days
depedning upon plan chosen
Overview: WebCrawler is an affiliate
of Overture (see Overture above). WebCrawler is
a meta-search engine that examines the Internet's
top search engines such as AltaVista, Direct Hit,
Looksmart and About. With one single, powerful search
engine you can receive very comprehensive results,
because when you use WebCrawler, you are actually
searching many search engines simultaneously.
Unique Visitors Monthly: 17,535,000
1
Address:
http://www.yahoo.com
Price: Recurring annual fee: $299
per site, $600 per adult site Response Time: Express response within
7 days Overview: Good placement on Yahoo!
is an absolute must for any advertising campaign.
The Yahoo! directory is organized by subject. Most
sites included in it are suggested to Yahoo! by
its users. Sites are placed in categories by Yahoo!
Surfers who evaluate your suggestions, deciding
where they best belong. By doing this, Yahoo! ensures
that it is organized in the best possible way, making
the directory easy to use, intuitive, helpful, and
fair to everyone. Only
businesses submitting new sites to certain commercial
categories are required to use Yahoo! Express. Listings
in all other categories remain free with our standard
submission; Yahoo! Express is only an option. Unique Visitors Monthly: 80,165,000
1
1 The
figures for Unique Visitors monthly were taken from
Jupiter Media Metrix's "US Top 50 Properties"
at
http://www.jmm.com/xp/jmm/press/mediaMetrixTop50.xml.
These figures represent the number of unique visitors
for each entire network's domain, and not for an
individual search engine's domain. Many of the search
engines listed contribute to the same respective
network (e.g. Hotbot and Lycos, or Excite and Webcrawler).
David Wolf has worked in the adult industry for three years. He specializes in international marketing strategy and web spider creation. David holds a BS in Business Information Systems, is currently pursuing his MS in Strategic Intelligence, and can be reached for follow-up inquiries at Wolf@adultwebmasterconsultants.com or through www.adultwebmasterconsultants.com.