Speeding up the search engine submission process is out of our hands. Each search engine is different; they are individually owned and operated; and they do not fall under the standards of a watchdog organization, although groups are starting to form. Essentially, search engines operate under their own set of rules and guidelines – what they say goes.

So, a search engine can take as long as they want to index and rank your site, and there’s little you can do about it. I’ve seen some sites appear in search engines within a week of submission, while others take several weeks or months. It’s one of the things that drives web designers and search engine optimization services nuts.

Some search engines promise to look at your site faster if you pay them a fee. How quickly your site appears in their results depends on how often they update their databases. They may review your site quickly, but still take a month before they update their databases.

Mitey Kukey Design is a search engine specialist so we can help you wade through a lot of this: Which search engines are worth paying for; which ones you should forget about. We subscribe to several e-zines and search engine newsletters so that we can keep up-to-date with what’s happening in the business – who’s hot and who’s not.