Recently I made an online purchase and was lead through numerous options for additional purchases. Although I wasn’t buying anthing web-related, I was offered the option to have this company submit my website to various search engines (see below). Cool, a freebie!
It’s just a tad misleading. It advertises that your website will get “spidered” by the search engines and submission will “boost your website’s ranking.”
GOTCHA WITH CAPTCHA. Search engines discourage mass submissions by using CAPTCHA-those funny scrambled words, phrases, numbers, etc. you have to replicate and enter before the submission is accepted. The offer was to submit a site to Google. Google has a scramble to thwart mass submissions. So hence they are probably submitting the site “manually”, which is something anyone can do 24/7, free, and without any training or skills.
ABOUT SPIDERS. Spiders are also known as “bots” or “robots”. They are programs that the search engines run and they go from site to site, gathering the data that will be displayed when someone searches. Spiders use the links between websites to make their way around the world wide web. These are hard-working little critters! They don’t just visit a site once, but visit all the millions of websites over and over again. It’s likely that even if you never submit your site to a search engine that the spiders will find still find your website.
RANKING. Submission, spiders, and ranking couldn’t possibly be further apart in how they affect the appearance of a site in the search engine results. Just as submitting a site doesn’t guarantee the visit of a spider, neither does submission nor do spiders determine how your website will be ranked by a search engine. Whether a site appears at the top of the first page of search results or the end of the last page depends more on the code and text in your website.
Why make this offer? Submitting a site to Google is always free and doesn’t take any developed computer skills– just type in the domain address and what the site is about. There are other search engines that accept free submissions. It appears that this offer is a loss leader, an entrance to more expensive “Search Engine Optimizing” services (SEO).
My recommendation is to measure your website’s results through site statistics. When you are ready to consider improving your SEO, consult a trusted web professional and leave the special offers the grocery store.
by Vanessa Wood
Design to Spec LLC – Website Design in Darien, CT
All content copyright ©2005-2009, Vanessa Wood
