How to get website published on search engines?

[mmakrzem]

Can someone tell me how I can get my game dev. website roamed by seach engine robots?

Does this cost money or is it free?

[Teq]

Most search engines (worth submitting too) allow you to enter a link and/or description of your site on a page, then eventually spider your website, though its not necessary for those that do DNS record searches.

[mmakrzem]

Most search engines (worth submitting too) allow you to enter a link and/or description of your site on a page, then eventually spider your website, though its not necessary for those that do DNS record searches.


I looked for this link on google but I couldn't find it. Do you have any URL's showing where I go to ask a search engine to spider my url?

[Savant]

I'm loathe to say anything since you're running yet-another-million-dollar-home-page, but if you have actual content on your site - the spiders will find you. Just be patient.

[Tom Gilleland]

Most search engines (worth submitting too) allow you to enter a link and/or description of your site on a page...

I've read that you NEVER want to submit a page, you want the spider to find it on it's own.

Tom

[ErikH2000]

I've read that you NEVER want to submit a page, you want the spider to find it on it's own.
I'm curious, why? Do search engines rate you lower in their results if you submit a page?

-Erik

[Pogacha]

You can submit your page, but it will take more than 3 o 4 month to get entered really ... the best way is link your site from a big site (hi-ranked) and wait untill the robots visits this site ... it's take a day or two, at last case a week.
The same for googles and yahooes.

[Tom Gilleland]

I recently put up a couple of new pages and linked to them from a couple of my PR5 sites. I watched Google and it took about three days for them to be listed. Do a google on your site and look at the date on the cached version. It seems that the Google spider is coming by my sites every 5-6 days or so. I think it is also good to have unique names so the site is not lost in the sea of sites. For major titles we're registering the name of that game and making a site for that title. For example, our site "vegasjackpotgold.com" is the name of our title "Vegas Jackpot Gold", and it has become a good site for people to find our casino game. Then we just have the ordering form link back to our company (beachware.com) site's order form.

Tom

[digriz]

I submitted my site to google, yahoo and msn. Getting people to put a link to you from their site helps a lot.

The more people link to you the better really. A few people on here were kind enough to put a link to me when i started my website.

I believe that the more links a crawler finds to your site the higher up the rankings you will go.

I'm also led to believe that if you change your webpages fairly regularly the rankings can go up too. I was told that the search engines can ban your links if they think your website is no longer updated.

[soniCron]

I'm also led to believe that if you change your webpages fairly regularly the rankings can go up too. I was told that the search engines can ban your links if they think your website is no longer updated. Then explain why my site has a PR of 5? ;)

[Polycount Productions]

Here are some tips:
1) Submit news to different sites "Announing the launch of..." - sites like gamedev.net, indiegamer.com, devmaster.net, gamershell... etc. etc. etc.
2) Make a proper comments to some game blogs like game matters, games are art, joeindie, a shareware life etc. - and stick your website url in the comment
3) exchange links with other people
4) put your weblink in forum signatures
5) submit your site to different directories
6) include link to wikipedia (if it's related to your site)

Eventually it will be picked up by crawlers - and your rank gets higher.

[Tom Gilleland]

Originally Posted by Tom Gilleland
I've read that you NEVER want to submit a page, you want the spider to find it on it's own.

I'm curious, why? Do search engines rate you lower in their results if you submit a page?

-Erik

The article said that it does lower your score a little bit. It sort of makes sense because a site would seem to be "better" if a second person linked to it (found it interesting), instead of just the creator promoting it.

Tom

[soniCron]

The article said that it does lower your score a little bit. It sort of makes sense because a site would seem to be "better" if a second person linked to it (found it interesting), instead of just the creator promoting it. I'd just like to point out that it would be silly for Google to penalize your site for submitting it. It simply wouldn't have the same score as it would if it was spidered through a link, because someone else linked to it, not because they penalize you. That is some shoddy logic some folks have going. (I've read all those speculative articles.) If you were Google, would you penalize webmasters for submitting a link? Would you put a "Self Destruct" button on your service? That's silly! ;)

[oNyx]

If you want that spiders index your page you only need to post one link (or one image) at some often crawled place. Like say... your signature in this forum or in another one.

If crawlers can find you, they will visit you asap.

[Tom Gilleland]

I guess you could argue it either way, I was just passing on what I read.

Of course I could just make something up, write it down, read it, and then quote it as "something I read somewhere!" :)

Tom