tim's journal

SubmitFire search engine submission

I usually shake my head in skepticism when I see search engine optimization (SEO) sites claiming submission to 1000s of search engines as I did when I first saw an ad for SubmitFire. I was suprised when I looked at the site and saw that CoffeeCup was an affiliated company. For those of you who don't know, CoffeeCup released a pretty nice HTML Editor in the early days of the web. It was shareware, though I never did get around to registering my copy - and moved on to direct coding shortly afterward. So, is it worth it?

How do these sites work? A lot of times they have some backend software which registers your site with one search engines which is then duplicated thousands of time. Probably not what you really wanted. I've read (though I can't recall where) that this can sometimes even lead to diminished rankings on Google. They give a partial list of the sites. If you are already listed on many engines, is it worth it?

Possibly. I took by random one of the listed sites, Chubba. This is a premium listing site, charging $24.99 for the "slow" listing, and $49.99 for the "express" listing. Yikes, who is going to pay that? Who even uses Chubba. A search on a relevant keyword "download patents" reveals not only my absense but Overture premium listings. I wonder if anyone even uses this site.

My experience is that the major sites will eventually find your site and crawl it. The big question is whether these small time sites are worth even listing on. It may well be a gigantic pyramid like scheme, where people join, and try to get other people to join so they can collect the commission. See, to become an affiliate,

First, Join the Program, it only takes 5 minutes. Then place banners, buttons or text links on your Website. When someone clicks any link and then makes a purchase within 30 days you get 20% of that sale !

Sounds mighty suspect. My guess is that most people sign up in order to be affiliates. Buyer beware - even if it is from the developers of CoffeeCup Software.

Google Groups has a thread on submitfire started by the proprietor of www.jaya123.com. His review on the customer service is rather critical, though unclear whether or not the service eventually worked. His site has a PageRank of 4, 22 links none of which were search engine based. I would say that it didn't work.

Posted by torque at October 1, 2004 10:23 PM | TrackBack