ABC Search Engines is the place to find information on placing, ranking and optomizing your site's potential on the web and for listing the best search engines for your needs in every category.

http://www.google.com/
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
http://www.google.com/options/
http://www.google.com/dirhp

General Info
Deservedly the current top dog in both percent of people using it and actual performance. Google's site ranking relies heavily on link weight but Google also makes intelligent use of directories. Users who click on the "More" link/option get additional Open Directory results. There are many other options as well for the advanced user.

Submitting:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Getting noticed:
Submit your site to a directory. Get linked.

http://www.yahoo.com/
http://search.yahoo.com/
http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8
http://dir.yahoo.com/

General:
Yahoo is a portal page first and a search engine second. Initially it had its own directory with its own editors but now uses the crawler based results returned by its own engine. To get to Yahoo's directory results follow the link http://dir.yahoo.com/

Submitting:
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Getting noticed:
Pay to get noticed. Yahoo has a new (2004) Content Acquisition Program (CAP) which unifies its previous paid and free submission programs.

http://search.msn.com/
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2

http://www.ask.com/
http://web.ask.com/webadvanced?o=0

General:
Ask Jeeves started as an editor based service but now also gets its results from a crawler-based engine, Teoma, which it owns. When available, we will provide additional information as to the exact method Ask Jeeves uses to integrate the two. For submitting and gettng noticed see Teoma below.

http://www.teoma.com/
http://s.teoma.com/AdvancedSearch?q=

General:
While it has a smaller index than either Yahoo or Google it does a good job of returning relevant results. Plus it has a refine option with additional categories to narrow your search.

Submitting:
Get linked and Teoma will eventually find you - Open Directory anyone?

http://www.alltheweb.com/
http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced?advanced=1&&q=
http://www.alltheweb.com/customize?backurl=Lw&withjs=1

General:
A slick repackaging of the Yahoo engine. Some nice features. More search oriented.

http://www.hotbot.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/adv.asp?prov=Inktomi&tab=web

General:
HotBot provides easy access to Google, Teoma and Yahoo. It is not a true meta engine because it does not blend the results. Basically it serves as a single place to launch the top three engines.

http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.altavista.com/web/adv

General:
AltaVista is now owned by Yahoo. You can think of it as Yahoo without the portal.

http://www.gigablast.com/
http://www.gigablast.com/adv.html

GigaBlast is the new kid on the block. It is an interesting combination of a standard crawler and a meta engine. In particular, check out their custom search.

http://dmoz.org/

"The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors."

"The ODP powers core directory services for some the most popular portals and search engines on the Web, including AOL Search, Netscape Search, Google, Lycos, DirectHit, and HotBot, and hundreds of others."

"The ODP is hosted and administered by Netscape Communication Corporation."

"Other directories such as Yahoo! and LookSmart are developed and managed by small paid staffs. The ODP was founded on the premise that directories with small staffs can not scale to the growth of the Web, and still maintain a quality, current directory."

For submitting a site follow the directions at http://dmoz.org/add.html