Search Engine Myths

Paid Inclusion is great in theory, but is it really the best choice?

(Note: this article is about paying for Search Engine Submission. To view information about Pay-Per-Click and other Internet Advertising options, click here.)

"Subscription" versus "Regular" Web Page Inclusion

• When a search engine offers paid URL inclusion, it uses an additional spider (or robot) that goes out and indexes those specific paid web pages for immediate presentation.
  
• "Regular" spiders must crawl through and index more than 4 billion web pages one at a time before they start over and do it again to add new pages or update changes to old pages. This process takes approximately 3 months or more.

In other words, the "subscription" spider will immediately index only the pages for which you have paid a fee whereas the "regular" spider would eventually find your site, follow your links, and index all of your pages.

"Subscription" versus "Regular" Web Page Updates

• Once annual fees are not renewed at the paid inclusion engines, the pages are removed for a period of time. From a business perspective, this only makes sense - engines that offer paid inclusion can't very well offer an "annual" fee only to have everyone discover that they only need to pay it once.
• "Regular" search engine indexes for most companies are updated approximately once a month each time they crawl the web. This process is totally automated, so changes to your site's content will be noted by the next crawl. In other words, updated or outdated link submissions are not necessary to sites such as Google or AOL. Other companies such as Exact Seek require that you periodically resubmit your site.

What this means

Where to next?