Why Don't We Submit to Hundreds or Even Thousands of Search Engines?

A common myth on the Web is that submitting to thousands of "engines" will gain you all kinds of new traffic. In reality, there are not even thousands of "engines" to submit to. The bulk of those submissions go to what are called FFA sites that are not search engines at all. Instead, they are simply a list of links to the last fifty or so URLs that were submitted to the service. Nobody ever uses these lists to find anything because they are just a random list of Web sites, generally with no organization to the list. The primary purpose of these sites is to gather e-mail addresses from Web marketers so they can be sent offers for other products and services. By submitting, you are unknowingly giving your consent for them to e-mail you.

So why do all those submitters on the market submit to these FFA and other "junk" sites? Because the general public perceives that "more is better." Therefore, many competitors spend the bulk of their resources trying to add more junk sites to their list so they can say they submit to more than the next guy. However, 95% of the traffic on the Web is going to come to you from the top 15 to 20 engines and that's only if you rank near the top. In addition, if you don't take the time to be positioned near the top of the search results for the sites you do submit to, then the odds of anyone finding you're site is extremely remote.

The other argument for bulk submission tools is that it will increase your link popularity. The more sites that link to you, the higher rankings you can achieve. Link popularity does influence rankings. However, the problem is that the search engines do not normally spider the databases of these obscure search engines, so being in those indexes does not improve your link popularity.

In addition, having your site listed on an FFA page does not normally improve your link popularity. That's because most FFA pages only maintain the last 50 to 100 submissions. Older submissions get bumped off the list as new ones come in. Therefore, you have to hope that a major search engine will index that FFA page before you get bumped off the list. Since thousands of people normally use the same bulk submitter you do, you'll often get bumped off an FFA page within hours of your submission. This doesn't give the engine much of a chance to find your FFA link, particularly when they often take weeks just to index a page after its been submitted. This assumes that someone takes the time to submit each FFA page to the major search engines and the engine doesn't decide the page is spam when it arrives.

Admittedly, you can get lucky sometimes and temporarily increase your popularity by a handful of links if you submit to enough FFA sites often enough. However, based on tests, the number of links achieved often does not exceed a dozen links at best. The bigger problem is that those links will not influence your rankings nearly as heavily as having a link to your site from a highly popular site like Yahoo or Open Directory, or from Web sites with related content to yours.

In conclusion, your position on the major engines is what matters, not how many submissions you make. Focusing your efforts on optimizing your pages for the major engines will reap far more rewards that bulk submission. TIP: If you do choose to try a bulk submitter to see the results for yourself, do NOT use your real e-mail address! Otherwise you'll receive dozens, if not hundreds of e-mails from the sites you submitted to within 24-48 hours.