Search engines are the first stop for most people trying to find information, services, and products online. Because of this, it is essential that your website become visible as soon as possible in search results.



The Internet includes numerous search engines, some of which offer what is termed paid inclusion. This means that you pay the specific search engine a yearly fee for your web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has a robotic program commonly called a spider; the spider is that which indexes all of the web pages it locates online, and it does this freely. Therefore, whether you pay or not, all Internet search engines will eventually index your web page, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is then, how rapidly your

page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed.

If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will in most case, index your page almost immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centers on the annual cost. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is an annual fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine's index. If you go the method of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page could be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.

It is simple to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will ultimately index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by considering your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are apparent: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages become indexed speedily and added to search results in a very short time after you pay the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages and when the paid spider will is a matter of months, not days. The spider for paid inclusion usually

indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you do not have any incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will return to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The benefit of this is that you can update your pages constantly to increase the ranking in which they appear in search engines. The paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.

Primarily, the disadvantage is the cost. For an individual or a small business, the purchasing of the paid inclusion can be a financial burden. There paid inclusion, in order to be maintained, may also include an annual fee. As I just mentioned, how relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, account for most of the organic keyword searches done on any day. That means that your choosing to pay for inclusion in any other engines will amount to but a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis. Paid inclusion also usually does not guarantee that you will end up near the top of the listings which makes your site more visible.

Google, the most used search engine, usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index every day.

One way to discern whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to think about some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be advantageous. This is because your pages were already indexed and ranked by the conventional spider. If this were the case, your money is better spent by updating your pages to increase your standing in search results. Once you accomplish this, it is at this point you can consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take the regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most significant factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it is a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the complete picture: what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive merchandise that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the paramount investment for you .The biggest search engines do not offer it [ although Yahoo directory listing cost $299.00 per year ], and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. Then again, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is in all probability an excellent investment.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages [e.g. flash] are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically produce website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Every now and then, a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen; but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility.

Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are various factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your circumstances. Assess your business needs and your website to decide if paid URL inclusion is a sensible investment for you reach your business objectives.