Paid URL Inclusion

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some ofwhich offer what is known as "paid inclusion." This meansthat you pay the specific search engine an annual fee foryour web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automatedprogram commonly called a "spider" that indexes all the webpages it locates online, and it does this for free. Sowhether you pay or not, your web page will eventually beindexed by all Internet search engines, as long as thespider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is,then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses anextra spider that is programmed to index the particularpages that have been paid for. The difference between thespider that indexes pages for free and the spider thatindexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid forinclusion, the additional search engine spider will indexyour page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centers around theannual fee. Since the regular spider of these searchengines would eventually get around to indexing your webpage anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee isnecessary to keep your pages in the search engine's index.If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be awarethat at the end of the pay period, on some search engines,your page will be removed from their index for a certainamount of time.

It's easy to get confused about whether you would benefitfrom paid inclusion since the spider of any search enginewill eventually index your page without the additionalcost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paidURL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros andcons that you will be able to decide whether to spring forthe extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapidre-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will beindexed quickly and added to search results in a very shorttime after you have paid the fee. The time differencebetween when the regular spider will index your pages andwhen the paid spider will is a matter of months. The spiderfor paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day ortwo. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to yourpages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to yourpages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this isthat you can update your pages constantly to improve theranking in which they appear in search engines, and thepaid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matterof days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a tenpage website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from$170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have topay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the costfactor is will depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is thelimited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest searchengines, Google, Yahoo, and AOL, do not offer paid URLinclusion. That means that the search engines you choose topay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of thetraffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there isno way you can speed up this process. You will have to waitfor the Google spider to index your new pages no matter howmany other search engines you have paid to update theirindex daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updatestheir index that your pages will show up in Google, Yahoo,or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a gooddeal for your company is to consider some common factors.First, find out if search engines have already indexed yourpages. To do this, you may have to enter a number ofdifferent keywords, but the quickest way to find out is toenter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear whenyou enter the URL address but do not appear when you enterkeywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. Thisis because your pages have already been indexed and rankedby the regular spider. If this is the case, your moneywould be better spent by updating your pages to improveyour ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this,you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want tospeed up the time it will take for the regular spider torevisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paidURL inclusion is to decide if it's a good investment. Tofigure this out, you have to look at the overall picture:what kind of product or service are you selling and howmuch traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requiresa large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion maynot be the best investment for you; the biggest searchengines do not offer it, and they are the engines that willbring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if youhave a business that offers an expensive service or productand requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, apaid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updatedfrequently. If the content changes on a daily or weeklybasis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages areindexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed bythe paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywordsare entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion inthis case will guarantee that your pages are being indexedin a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not yourpages are dynamically generated. These types of pages areoften difficult for regular spiders to locate and index.Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamicallygenerated website will insure that the paid spider willindex them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its searchengine, although these pages usually reappear in a fewmonths. There are a number of reasons why this can happen,but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid thepossibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pagesare indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, thesearch engine will be on the lookout to locate themimmediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider whenit comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuableinvestment depending on your situation. Evaluate yourbusiness needs and your website to determine if paid URLinclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.