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Below are listed the major directories and engines, with links to each for adding pages. Much of the information below
has been determined through years of experience, coupled by information obtained from Search Engine Watch.

• Alta Vista
Alta Vista is a simple and effective engine, using spiders to crawl the web to bring information to its users. Alta Vista has three basic methods of submission - Basic Submit, Trusted Feed, or Express Inclusion. It is claimed by Alta Vista that those who pay for the Express Inclusion feature will have their site updated weekly, keeping users at the top of the list. Submission is self explanatory, click on the link above.

• AOL Search
AOL Search allows its members to search across the web and AOL's own content from one place. The main listings for categories and web sites come from the Open Directory (see below). Inktomi (see below) also provides crawler-based results, as backup to the directory information. It is my opinion that registering with DMOZ is more relevant than going through the AOL process.

• AltaVista
AltaVista is consistently one of the largest search engines on the web, in terms of pages indexed. Its comprehensive coverage and wide range of power searching commands makes it a particular favorite among researchers. In addition to crawler-based web page matches, it also offers news search, shopping search, multimedia search and human-powered directory results from LookSmart (see below). AltaVista opened in December 1995. It was owned by Digital, then run by Compaq (which purchased Digital in 1998), then spun off into a separate company which is now controlled by CMGI. Alta Vista offers several advertising options, click on the link above to obtain information.

• Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question.

• Direct Hit
Direct Hit measures what people click on in the search results presented at its own site and at its partner sites, such as HotBot. Sites that get clicked on more than others rise higher in Direct Hit's rankings. Thus, the service dubs itself a "popularity engine." Aside from running its own web site, Direct Hit provides the main results which appear at HotBot (see below) and is available as an option to searchers at MSN Search. Direct Hit is owned by Ask Jeeves (above). Some Direct Hit information appears at Ask Jeeves. See the Using Direct Hit Results page to learn more about Direct Hit.

• Excite
Excite offers a medium-sized crawler-based web page index, as well as access to human-powered directory results from LookSmart. Excite was launched in late 1995. It grew quickly in prominence and consumed two of its competitors, Magellan in July 1996, and WebCrawler in November 1996. Magellan was discontinued in April 2001. WebCrawler continues to operate as a separate service, but it provides the same results at the Excite.com site itself. Excite is simple to register with. Click on the link above.

• Google
Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them.Yahoo and Netscape Search.

• Inktomi
Originally, there was an Inktomi search engine at UC Berkeley. The creators then formed their own company with the same name and created a new Inktomi index, which was first used to power HotBot. Now the Inktomi index also powers several other services. All of them tap into the same index, though results may be slightly different. This is because Inktomi provides ways for its partners to use a common index yet distinguish themselves. There is no way to query the Inktomi index directly, as it is only made available through Inktomi's partners with whatever filters and ranking tweaks they may apply.

• LookSmart
LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. In addition to being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to MSN Search, Excite and many other partners. Inktomi provides LookSmart with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's reviews. Click on the link above for their advertising options.

• Lycos
Lycos started out as a search engine, depending on listings that came from spidering the web. In April 1999, it shifted to a directory model similar to Yahoo. Its main listings come from the Open Directory project, and then secondary results come from the FAST Search engine. Some Direct Hit results are also used. In October 1998, Lycos acquired the competing HotBot search service, which continues to be run separately. Click on the link above the register with Lycos.

• MSN Search
Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web sites, with secondary results that come from Inktomi. RealNames and Direct Hit data is also made available.

• Northern Light
Northern Light is another favorite search engine among researchers. It features a large index of the web, along with the ability to cluster documents by topic. Northern Light also has a set of "special collection" documents that are not readily accessible to search engine spiders.

• Open Directory (DMOZ)
The Open Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998. It was acquired by Netscape in November 1998, and the company pledged that anyone would be able to use information from the directory through an open license arrangement. Netscape itself was the first licensee. Lycos and AOL Search also make heavy use of Open Directory data.

• Yahoo
Yahoo is the web's most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has well over 1 million sites listed. To register with Yahoo, one must scroll through categories to the most appropriate topic, then click on the submit a site option at the bottom. Depending on the category, there may be a charge to register. In general, registering is free.

Order of importance has been determined through many attributes, including and not limited to - bulk of indexed pages, overall accuracy, advance search capability, popularity in terms of users and ease of navigation.

• Google
Over the past two years or so, Google has developed itself into far and away the heavyweight search engine, now indexing nearly 1.4 billion pages. This is due in large part to its advanced search capabilities. While many engines will only scan through a page's meta tags, Google scans an entire HTML page to determine relevancy of information. What this means is much greater accuracy for users. Google also lists in terms of hits; how many times a page has been visited. A page with 20,000 visits will be ranked higher than a page with 20 visits. Because of this advanced technology, Yahoo now draws heavily from Google resources. One way to know if you are getting Yahoo information or Google information: Go to Yahoo, if your search yields small arial (It will look like this) you are recieving your search via the power of Yahoo. If your search yields large arial (It will look like this), you are receiving your search from Google.

• Open Directory
Open Directory, otherwise known as DMOZ, is huge because AOL and Netscape draw from their database. DMOZ is powered by you and I, people volunteer, and if their lucky, are elected to become editors. Editors are typically professors or those that cannot profit from listings, thus making it very difficult for those of us in the industry to become editors. Lycos, Netscape and AOL Search all draw heavily from the enormous resources of Open Directory.

• Northern Light
Northern Light has been on the incline over the past two years, giving competition to the other engines. Northern Light now claims to have indexed well over 500 million pages.

• Excite
Over a year ago, there were reports that Excite was on its way out. With over 370 million pages currently indexed, Excite remains a very strong contender.

• Yahoo
Yahoo is the web's most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has well over 1 million sites listed. Yahoo also supplements its results with those from Google (beginning in July 2000, when Google takes over from Inktomi). If a search fails to find a match within Yahoo's own listings, then matches from Google are displayed. Google matches also appear after all Yahoo matches have first been shown. Yahoo is the oldest major web site directory, having launched in late 1994.