Search Engine Waiting

[tinseltown]

Hi All,

I was wondering what the benchmark is for the amount of time one should wait to see his/her website show up on a search engine?

We've been live for barely two months and we've shown up on Google somewhat (not including our Google Adwords), but not at all on Yahoo!.

Ideas? Suggestions? Feedback?

[christof]

I think you should definitely register your site with http://www.dmoz.org - it's the world's largest independent human edited directory (A.K.A. Open Directory Project). Your site's presence there will help it to show up in other search engine results. As google says in its webmaster's section:

http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/guidelines.html

"When your site is ready:

Once your site is online, submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!.
Periodically review Google's webmaster section for more information."

I assume the same is probably true for much of yahoo's search which uses inktomi for its index based results and ranking system. Yahoo often uses lots of results all pulled together (depending on the search term) i.e. some results are paid inclusion from overture, Yahoo's own directory, inktomi etc.

I'm not sure I'd want to spend the amount of money Yahoo! is asking per year to gain inclusion in its directory- I think its about $400!

Ouch.

CT

[dferguson]

Two months is simply not enough. We always advise our customers (if they ask us about it) that search engine rankings dont come over night - They take minumum of 6 months but you really need to wait 12 months before you can expect good results, and thats if you have optimised your site with good content and keywords etc.