Unlike search engines, directories are managed by people. Directories can be general and accept any type of listing or they can be specific to a hobby, business type/field, locale, etc. They are built and controlled by people who, if they choose, review and approve each and every submission.

It is important to submit your website to directories because they offer increased exposure and the chance of being found by robot/crawler/spider driven search engines (like Google).

Each search engine, directory, etc. has it’s own rules and requirements for accepting submissions so there is no all-purpose answer to this one.

Here are some possible reasons why your site wasn’t submitted to one or more particular search engines:

• the engine’s requirements do not fit your site
• many do not accept free submissions at all anymore
• free submission requires a reciprocal link (a link back to the engine) and your site does not have a links page or section
• the engine requires a physical location and you do not provide that information on your site
• the submission process requires an email address from the same domain name as the URL being submitted and you are not using your domain for email

When High Aspirations, Inc. completes a site design project and does the first ever submissions on that web site, it takes approximately 8 to 10 hours.

Each hand submitted search engine, directory, etc. has it’s own rules and requirements which is very time consuming. There is also a follow-up period of approximately 2 hours within the next two days to review emails resulting from the submissions and handle any further requirements such as validating email addresses, activating accounts, etc.