http://www.grub.org/ with its grub free directory entries http://www.zeal.com/ - a good way to get into looksmart SE results if you have a non-commercial site that qualifies for free directory entry ! grub bot used by the SE family of: wisenut, looksmart, zeal and others .. http://aboutus.looksmart.com/about.jhtml? using grub as bot .. i get regular visits since long time 806 this months question: do you have any experience about the grub client used on your site - about grub.txt ? do you use grub.txt for EACH subdirectories of your domain or only top level ? is the data actually USED by that SE family ? so far the looksmart-SE-family-visits/referrals are just one of many - like AOL or netscape .. but may be better crawl by grub could improve visits from those entire SE-family ?? ! any experience with grub's API ? http://www.grub.org/html/tools.php?op=services i just downloaded my own grub client ( available for win and linux ) to see what can be done to build up THEIR database by crawling own site locally as they offer somehow it makes sense - it saves time for them and give control about pages found or 404 .. to be instantly corrected of bot loops or fails to find all any one using grub as well ?
I've never used any of these things you dicuss. The question I have is do you get any traffic as a result of all this work. My experience is that Google delivers the greatest number of visitors followed by Yahoo and MSN. Then everything else is not really in the picture. So my question is why bother with Looksmart and Grub?
Bod YES for me too Google is by far the greatest supplier - but i do get trafic from more than 2500+ referrers/month - the first 240 or so referrers 10-10'000 requests per referrer-group - from some 110+ countries monthly and many or them from secondary SE and directories. Of course it's a question of how much effort and time- and money for the efforts and time - you want to invest for each additional 1000 requests per months or so ... approx 50 % of all traffic is coming for free from Google - another 33% by direct requests and the other remainder % as a result of a full months or so each year additional work from MANY other referrers. 2-3 months ago there must have been a new ISP or so - in Poland - and i get up to 1 % traffic sometimes. I remember many years back the old SE like excite, infoseek, altavista, lycos, netscape, and a few others they all made up a FAR greater percentage and there was NO leader at all. my traffic was evenly distributed among many SE. With the easy ( for us site owners ) situation about Google - i think that some may have the tendency to abandon all other SE. ME TOO - it is convenient to wait just another 24 or so hrs until any new page IS FOUND by G rather that to submit ... 20 % more or less traffic - 20-50 more or less countries - may make a difference and a few ten thousand or more happy people soemwhere out on this planet. the SE family i mentioned is actually quiet large - and the Grub bot pretty active even if in beta stage. the inend of Grub is to have site owners crawl their own site and may be another few additional sites on a daily or weekly basis to have fresh content in a central db that is then used by that SE family. As a result of extra SE efforts with smaller foreign SE - i get now regular visitors from China, arab countries, africa and S-E Asia .. countries that use much of their own smaller SE and own directories. A big such market area - depending on YOUR product / service is for example India - having many SE and many directories - and if i invest the time to submit and maintain the entries - i get regular daily visitors ( of course also by Google-in !! ) EVERY time i care for another NEW group of SE or world region ( like last Nov/Dec China / Hkg / Bangladedsh / Pakistan / Thailand / Vietnam / Cambodia .. i really get additional traffic . each month again form THESE new areas via the NEW SE / directories. Zeal i made 2 entries about a year or 2 ago - it was a good experience because they require an online test as editor. The same rules as for their test apply for dmoz/yahoo and other directories - and as a result of Zeal directory and as an added benefit - Looksmart - a commercial pay SE uses Zeal directory entries - for free ! on an annual basis i have at least several hundred thousand hits from minor SEs and directories. and i think i could have more if i wouldn't be so lazy thanks to Google's efficiency !! today i was checking looksmart and saw that only aobut 50 pages are listed - hence no wonder only a few visitors are coming .. thus my efforts to get ALL pages in there as well - also to MSN ( via bcentral .. they DO crawl the site - but for some reason no deep crawl only the pages actually submitted ( same seems to apply for Grub bot .. ) Grub at present - and since end last year - crawls about half as much as Yahoo/slurp .. and 10% of Googles daily crawl - thats still a lot. my very personal feeling is these past few years many of the SE owners made a lot of experiments - and many screw up and may even regret having done so. many large SE 5 years ago are almost death now. however it appears that with the high quality of G a few good old ones like yahoo, msn and others are waking up again and fre-considering their policy .. like Y accepting free submissions again and also increasing crawl each months msn leanig a back door open via bcentral once you are IN a directory or SE db - most likely you stay their no matter what future policy is going to be. I was in Y before they commercialized .. and stayed in there all the time - for free. once you are in - the bot comes and comes again - .. because thats what THEY are getting THEIR money from - form having as many sties - for free or NOT - in their db to be able to deliver RESULTS ... else all go to G as the many year lasting efforts to get into many SE / directories .. what happens if G chanes commecial ? i lose traffic but still have without G more than a year ago with G. hence it creates a inner freedom to know that your own business never depends on a single SE or suppolier. the single greatest nr of surfers is direct requests for me ( bookmarks OR LoveCards .. ) that all have a few links ot my site and are used more and more - for free ) when i look at my country list / stat - then i see THERE must be many OTHER SE acting there - because countries that are quiet high tech have far less visitors than proportional to their size .. hence G and Y are by far NOT all over. example HERE in the PH i have NEVER seen so far an internet cafe having G as start SE on thei page - all use varous other SE. same in Hkg - i go here ever year a few days. mostly Hongkong SE - with their OWN db and directory - same China and many other countries. i guess that with G, Y etc the market WE tap is only 10-20 % of all existing surfers worldwide. this may change with G expanding .. but there are simply too big cultural differences and NEEDS in some countries for G to be competitive with a ONE face SE in all countries. Indcia - 1 BILLION population - all their SE are totally different in look than G or Y. may be there is a cultural reason. and one secure way is to adapt to the needs and submit there to get in touch with them. India # 17 in my country hit-list most comes form all local SE Singapore - a tiny city island # 20 in my country hitlist - last year i entered in more or less all local SE i found from Singapore 0.37% from total tgraffic ( only -- really only ?? .. several DOZEN individually picked countries wiht the language i publish ... all add up to a double in traffic during the past 12 months .. all arab countries - almost each has a FEW SE and local directories - different because different mentality / cultrue / religion - no G or Y - but still similar content in homepages and surf behavior ... IF they find you late last year for the first time i spent many days just for arab countries SE registration - now saudi arabia, qatar, libanon, israel, jordan, all middle east - are coming regularly .. still to improve but better than nothing at all form such countries. the question always is do you need do you want do you have time do you have the resources to cater to another country different from typical G & Y countries the looksmart group of directories / SE may be one of the bigger ones beside G and Y and AOL, MSN so i make the efforts and let you know YES for me it all paid off - all efforts again and again more happy visitors from more different countries more feedback and as a result of overall increase in all - also more satisfaction and the certitude that i know why i do it .. just to create another smile somewhere what's the price for helping one other person out there helping in any way professionally technically or like me spiritually its all the same to care for ALL if i look at the nice 3 green apples on your site and what YOU offer then i could imagine that some of your services or products could well find new customers here in asia - china, hongking, india and the many other countries - or anywhere else outside US and europe - outside the monopoly of G & Y & Co .. but many HERE never heard of G & Y ! and still have plenty of PC and cellphone and high tech or ecommerce in daily life .. look for example at www.yehey.com the largest and most popular local SE here ( with directory ) with ecommerce ( your domain ?! ) and almost NOTHING on THEIR website worked the last seveal days and months .. hence THEY may need help ... or a teacher or web designer or programmer .. or tech support /assistance .. unless they are happy with what they miss
I am the admin of a site called http://btfsc.us.tc. My review of GRUB is I don't like grub, looksmart, wisenut, zeal or lycos. After I used grub my computer is messing up more and it's more slower. Grub would not let me locally crawl my site. In zeal I was forced to take a quiz and got up to 85 but that score was not good enough for zeal. Zeal would of rejected my site after all that work. Looksmart I was forced to pay $0.20 per click Wisenut I was forced to goto Looksmart or Zeal
Zeal is a joke with it's pointless quiz, just who do they think they are? If people had any sense they would ignore them. Looksmart will never bring you any visitors, I don't know how they have the nerve to charge 20 cents per click. People use proper search engines for quality content.
I get 95% From google so I have not really even looked into Looksmart and Grub, they don't send that much hits to me.