So, You Want To Register Your Pages, Huh?

Use these to jump around or read it all...

[Registering Pages, What's That?]
[How It's Done]
[Registering At Each Page]
[What Are The Questions?]
[Registering Many Pages At Once]

Why This Tutorial? Didn't you sort of cover this in a few other places? Yes. I cover registering pages a bit in the META and the Database tutorial. I'm still getting e-mail letters asking how this is done so I thought I'd put something together. It's a fairly simple process.

Registering Pages, What's That?

My guess is that if you've used the World Wide Web to any extent, you've used a search engine. A search engine is something like Yahoo. You go to the site, put in some keywords, and the server searches a database and returns pages that contain your words.

"Wouldn't it be nice if I could put my pages on the search engine?" you ask calmly.

"You can!" I answer happily.

To "register" your page is to place it in the database of the search engine. That's what we'll talk about here.

Here are a few to get you started... there are others.

[INFOMINE] [Yahoo] [Galaxy (formerly EINet)] [Savvy Search] [ALL-IN-ONE Search Page]
[INFO Mine] [AltaVista] [Lycos] [INFOSEEK] [OpenText] [EXCITE] [Webcrawler]
[Virtual Tourist]

How It's Done

There are really only two ways to register your pages. You can either head to each search engine separately and register your page, or go to a registration page that allows you to register your one page with many different search engines a once.

Registering At Each Page

I've registered my pages at a few different individual search engines. Here's a general idea of what you're going to find.

Hierarchy Sites These are sites that build pages of lists. Yahoo is a site like this. As such, Yahoo wants you to help a bit. You'll log in at Yahoo, look for the category (or page) you feel you should be on and then click the "submit" icon at the top of the page. Magic occurs; you are asked to enter your URL address, a few other fine points, and that's that. Soon you'll receive an e-mail letter as to whether you were accepted or not. Yes, you can apply your same page to more than one category page.
Webs These are databases that do not have a certain hierarchy about them. It is just one huge group of pages. Webcrawler is one of these. These are fairly simple to register with. Usually on the main page of the search engine there is an icon that says something like "submit URL." Click on it and answer pretty much the same question you'll answer anywhere else and, again, that's that.

Sometimes, you won't have to answer any questions.

What Are The Questions?

Usually They Want...

Your Name: Good luck with this. Please use your real name. It feels silly returning an e-mail to someone named "Death-Tongue."
Your E-mail Address: Give it to them straight.
Keywords: Much, much more can be found on these in the Meta Commands tutorial. Quickly, these are words some (stress "some") search engines use to locate your page. Choose broad topic words. Also use the roots of words. Use "dog" instead of "doggie." The reason is if you use "dog," "doggie" will be found. Its a root. Using "doggie" eliminates "dog" since "dog" is smaller than "doggie."
That may have been the dumbest example on this site.
Description: Tell us all about your site... in 15 words or less. Again, see the Meta tutorial for loads on this.
Want to Pay? Some search engines offer higher level searches, or certain placement, or more input text if you pay a bit. That's up to you.
Passwords: Some ask you for passwords so that you can go back in and edit your entry later. I always put in "password" as my password. Strange that no one else thinks to do that.

Please keep in mind that each search engine is different. Some will ask for information, some won't. Some will allow you to re-submit or edit, some won't. Some ask you to put a link to their search engine in return, some don't. (I could do this for days.)

Registering Many Pages At Once

This is the way your old buddy Joe does it every time. I go to a site named Submit-It! Yes, there are other sites that will do this, but this is the only one I've ever used. If you know of another, feel free to let me know. I'll put a link to it. Freedom of choice--that's what I always say.

Submit-It has two levels: a free and a pay level. The free level is pretty good. You'll get 10 or so search engines for that. How long it will be free I don't know, so I'd hop to it. When you get to Submit-It you will be asked the same type of questions above and then go to another page with a whole lot of buttons. Each button sends your information to a different search engine. There you'll probably answer a few more questions. The whole process to register one page takes about 20 minutes.

Here are a few others dabis@netshel.net I'm told are pretty good:

[Add me]
[Add URL]
[PostMaster]

That's about it. Go and register a page just for the heck of it. Let one of the engines walk you through the process. You'll find that the number of visitors to your site goes up a bit, if not a lot. Mine did.

See you on the Net....

[Registering Pages, What's That?]
[How It's Done]
[Registering At Each Page]
[What Are The Questions?]
[Registering Many Pages At Once]

Enjoy!