| Search engine woes  [+ favourites]
I need to vent.
I've been reading up on search engines and trying to promote all the sites in the UGN Network and MAN oh MAN is everything ridiculously commercialized!
I remember back in the day when you would do a search and turn up personal homepages! That isn't possible anymore because every search engine out there charges you an arm and a leg to get listed.
How ridiculous is it you ask?
MSN, AltaVista, and actually every single search engine out there says they have a free submission service. You enter your site URL, and they will "index" it. By index, that means they will go through it and every link in it and enter that info in their database.
Sounds good.. the only catch is they don't actually do this. It can take upwards of 6 months to get touched by their spider, and even longer to get in the search results. So lets conclude that it isn't even an option.
THen they have hte paid subscription (which is the only real way to get in). How much you ask? $39 PER PAGE... what I mean is, they don't index anything... you must pay and submit EACH page you want listed.
Knowing Captain Cynic, for example, has about 40,000 unique pages (with the posts and threads and what not) it would cost 40,000 x $39 to be indexed.
Every single friggin search engine on the web does this except for Google. Altavista, Lycos, MSN, Looksmart, Excite... everyone.
Very dissapointing that all the search results will be a reflection of those that can pay for their information, rather than those that have good information. I am baffled that these search engines still exist and people still use them.
Google is by far the best. It is impossible to pay to get into Google. They don't even accept money for listings. That's the way a search engine should be. Free information, unbiased.
"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."
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