We recommend that you register your web site with the major search engines such as Yahoo, WebCrawler, Excite, Hot Bot, Lycos, and AltaVista. Look for an "add URL" option at each of these sites as well as links to other search engines. Currently, there is no charge to register with the aforementioned search engines. If desired, you can register with a site called, Submit-it!. This site allows you to enter your information one time and then submit to the many of the major search engines; however, a fee may be required.

Updating Your Web Site's Listing on the Search Engines

You should update your listings in the major Search Engines and Directories (Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, HotBot, Excite, etc.) if you have made any significant changes to your web site such as: changing your domain name, changing file or directory names, moving pages to different directories, adding or deleting files, or making significant changes to the text on a page for which you want your listing updated quickly.

To update your listings with the Search Engines, you can re-submit the URL of your index page and let their spiders 'crawl' through the rest of your site or you can re-submit the URL of each of the pages that has changed.

You can delete an old listing for an outdated URL by submitting the URL of the old page once that page has been removed from the web server. When the Search Engine tries to index the non-existent page, it will get a "File Not Found" error and will delete any entries it has for that URL.

If you simply move your entire web site (including your domain name) from one web hosting provider to another, you will not need to update your listings with the search engines.