Is Manual (Free) Submission Dead?

David Wallace 

It is my professional opinion to ALWAYS submit manually, at least to the top search engines and directories. There are not too many top search engines you can manually submit to anymore but there are still a few.

The two main crawler based search engines you can still manually submit for free are Google (http://www.google.com/addurl.html) and Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com). Teoma which powers Ask Jeeves can only be submitted to through their pay for inclusion program or you can simply wait until their crawler finds your site on its own. WISEnut used to have a "free add URL" form but after Looksmart acquired them, it was removed, most likely because Looksmart is going to start charging to be included in WISEnut.

The only top directory that you can still manually submit to for free is Open Directory (http://dmoz.org) and here you have to select the category you want to be included in and then submit through that category's Add URL link. A volunteer editor who is in charge of that category will review your submission. If there is not a volunteer editor in charge of that category, it will be reviewed by an editor higher up in the directory structure.

You can only manually submit to Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) for free if you are a non-profit and are able to find a non-commercial category but I would strongly suggested to pay the annual $299 fee so you will actually be guaranteed that someone will review your submission. You can also still get in Looksmart (http://www.looksmart.com) for free if you are a non-profit. You would submit through a non-commercial category in Looksmart owned Zeal (http://www.zeal.com) whose results will appear in the Looksmart directory.

You can get listed in the remaining engines and directories as follows:

All The Web, Alta Vista and Overture (non paid results) - These come from Yahoo so submit to Yahoo and you will show up in these engines.

Ask Jeeves/Teoma - Get listed in the Teoma Paid Inclusion Program
(similar to Inktomi; $30 first URL; $18 each one thereafter up to 1,000 URLs).

Lycos - Uses Fast, the same search engine that powers All The Web. No current way to submit.

Looksmart - A pay per click service where you must create an account.

AOL, Go.com, iWon, and Netscape - Uses Google results so submit to Google to get listed in these engines.

WISEnut - no current way to submit.

Keep in mind there are also many smaller sites and directories that you can
manually submit to that won't necessarily bring you tons of traffic but will
help boost your Link Popularity. Some of those sites include Aesop, Alexa, Entireweb, ExactSeek, Gigablast, Gimpsy, GoGuides.org, IllumiRate, Jayde, JoeAnt, MixCat, National Directory, OnAMission, Quango, Scrub The Web, SearchKing, Skaffe, Sootle, The Search Site, TrueSearch.com, Web-Beacon, WebSavvy, Web World, WoW and Xoron. This is not to mention the ongoing task of building your Link Popularity by listing your site in trade related vortals and exchanging links with other non-competing but similar sites to yours.

So manual submission is still a very viable option and necessary to get listed in those general search engine indexes.