Some search engines make it easy to confirm that your web page is in their catalogs. With others, it can be more difficult. Below are the best ways to find your web pages in the major search engines.
Go (Infoseek)
Go makes checking easy. Simply enter your URL in the keyword box, such as: url:searchenginewatch.com
url:ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mysite/
url:members.aol.com/mysite/mypage.htm
The first method reveals every page under the root domain. If you are under someone else's domain, the second method will narrow the search to pages under your area. The last method will find a specific page.
Note that the URLs don't include the www prefix. You can add this, but if these search engines have indexed your pages without them, the pages won't appear. You're covered both ways by leaving off the www prefix. Don't use the http:// prefix, either.
HotBotM
At HotBot, to find everything from a particular web site, simply enter the domain in the keyword box, using the domain: command as shown below:
domain:searchenginewatch.com
After your search, you will usually be shown either one or two web pages from any site that contains the domain you entered. For example, two pages are listed from Search Engine Watch because it can be found at either http://searchenginewatch.com or http://www.searchenginewatch.com. Although both addresses resolve to the same place, HotBot still considers them to be different sites. Therefore, it displays one page for each site.
In order to see all your pages, you next need to click on the "See results from this site only" link, as circled below.
What happens if you need to see pages from a particular section of a web site? This is especially important for those hosted within someone else's domain, such as with CompuServe or AOL. In these cases, you would have a web address such as:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mysite/
http://members.aol.com/mysite/
HotBot offers a Check URL page that can help you narrow your focus. It can be found at:
http://www.hotbot.com/help/checkurl.asp
Unfortunately, the page isn't particularly intuitive. Instead, you may find it easier to use the domain: and originurlpath: power commands.
We've already seen how the domain: command works above. We can combine it with the originurlpath: command to narrow a search to a particular directory within a site. For example, this search:
domain:searchenginewatch.com originurlpath:reports
works to find all pages from within this section of Search Engine Watch:
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/
Similarly, this:
domain:searchenginewatch.com originurlpath:ekgs
finds only pages from this subsection of the section below:
http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/ekgs/
For the CompuServe and AOL examples above, these commands would bring up pages from those sections:
domain:ourworld.compuserve.com originurlpath:mysite
domain:members.aol.com originurlpath:mysite/
AltaVista
At AltaVista, follow the same instructions as for HotBot, except use the host: command and select the "More pages from this site" option to see all your pages, as shown below:
Should you need to find a particular page or a section of a web site, use the url: command, which works just as at Go.
Excite
There's no easy way to do a URL check in Excite. The best method is to enter the URL without the http:// prefix, such as:
www.searchenginewatch.com/news.html
Bear in mind that any pages containing this URL will appear, with no guarantee yours will be first. Generally, your page will come near the top, if it is in the catalog.
You might also try seaching for the root domain, to find many pages from the same site at once. Enter your root URL, such as:
www.searchenginewatch.com
then choose List By Web Site, which will help concentrate your pages together.
Lycos
Lycos has a Check URL service:
http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html
Unfortunately, this service really only confirms if a page has been visited by the Lycos spider. That's not the same as the page actually being present in the Lycos index. To see if your pages are really in the index, you'll need to search for them creatively.
Start off by searching for your root domain, such as:
searchenginewatch.com
Usually, some of your pages will be listed. If not, try the search again, but drop off the www prefix and any suffixes, such as .com. For example:
searchenginewatch
To find particular pages, or if the suggestions above fail, try searching for unique text on the page or for words in the title.
Enter your page title, or several words from it. Remember, if the words are common, you may not find the page among the others that will match your search.
WebCrawler
As with Lycos, finding your actual listing can be tricky. Entering the URL may turn up anything but your site. Again, try searching for unique words.
Other Resources
There are services that can check search engines for your URL automatically, including checking on how they appear in relation to particular keyword phrases. These are listed on the URL Checking Services page.
--Danny Sullivan
reprinted from SearchEngineWatch.com
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