The days of just submitting your website name to a search engine for free and having it listed are pretty much over, at least for the top search sites.

Yahoo! – cost: $199. No ifs, ands or buts, to be listed on Yahoo!, your business will now end up paying $199. This practice began in November, though there is a "grandfather clause," in that, if your site is already listed there, there’s no need to pay this fee. The good news is that if Yahoo! approves your site for listing, it will be listed within a week. The bad news is that, if for some crazy reason, your site does not meet Yahoo’s criteria (for instance, if it is built incorrectly), you will still be billed the $199. Just a footnote here, let’s say you’re doing a Web site on your family history. That type of Web site can be listed on Yahoo! without the $199 fee. The fee holds only for commercial sites.

Infoseek/Go.com "Optional" – cost: $199. If you type in "Infoseek," the search engine is now pointed to Go.com. That means by typing in www.Infoseek.com, you’ll end up using the Go.com search engine. This site offer two options, the "Premium Service" and the "Basic Service." They break down like this: Premium Service – cost: $199. Paying the $199 ensures that your site, if it meets their approval, will be listed within 48 hours.
Basic Service – cost: free. You may only attempt this once in their time period, but you may still list your site for free there. Unfortunately, you won’t know for sure if your site has been listed for 10 to 12 weeks.

Lycos – cost: free. Listing your business Web site with Lycos is still free. According to Lycos, you must wait 2-3 weeks before you know if your site has been listed after your submission. How long this will be free though, I can't say.

AltaVista/LookSmart "Optional" – cost: $199. To be listed on both AltaVista and LookSmart, you must pay the $199. Your site will be listed in several days. If you don’t mind being listed on just AltaVista (and not on LookSmart), then the listing can be free. However, using the free avenue to list your site does not guarantee it will be listed, nor will it include submission to various categories of AltaVista’s directory.

GoTo.com – cost: varies. This is an interesting search engine. While updating this info, I went there and typed in the word "boats." On the first page returned to me, there were 40 separate listings. Each one of those listings/Web sites pays a different amount for its listing. And it tells you right there how much it costs that Web site each time someone clicks into the Web site. For example, the Web site at the top of the page – the number one listing – was paying $.50 every time someone visited its site from that GoTo.com listing. The last listing on the same page was paying only 4 cents every time someone visited from GoTo.com. So, the further away from the top listing one goes, the less the listee pays for that spot, but the less chance of someone clicking on your link. I have several clients that pay for a listing in the top 5 positions, and think it is well worth it.

HotBot.com – cost: free. Yes, like Lycos, at this time, it is still free to list your Web site on this search engine!

Obviously, there are a lot more search engines out there, some of which offer free listings, others of which now demand a fee in order to list your site. The reason I’ve chosen the ones above is because they are some of the most commonly used search engines. It would be nice to be able to address them all, but not really necessary as the majority of your hits will come from these sites. However, it doesn't hurt to list to every search engine and directory that you can. I typically submit your website to 50 different additional search engines/directories myself.

One word of warning though: Be wary of companies that offer to list your site with "10,000 search engines for the low, low price of $19.95." That may seem like a great deal – especially in light of the new charges being imposed on commercial Web sites. But obviously, they aren’t listing your site with the top search engines – not when they’re only charging you $19.95 for "10,000 listings" and Yahoo! is charging you $199 for one listing.

Next, the Planning Worksheet.