Your website’s appearance in a search engine depends on the engine. Ones that are fairly new and trying to build comprehensive databases will get your site indexed and ranked in a couple of days. They’re eager to build popularity and loyalty, and no one is going to use a search engine if it has a low number of sites.

A search engine’s popularity and position in the market place has a lot to do with how quickly – or slowly – your site appears in the indexes. Those search engines that are sliding out of popularity or gasping for their last few breaths can take a long time to get sites indexed and into their database because they’re cutting staff and resources to a bare minimum.

Likewise, search engines that are very popular will be inundated with sites wanting to be indexed.

Most of the big search engines claim turn-around times of between four and six weeks.