All about Search Engines.
The two most common questions are "How do I get my site listed by the search engines?" and "Why isn't my site listed by the search engines?".
You have to understand that, believe it or not, search engines do have some ethics. If your site isn't listed in a few weeks, there has to be something wrong with you or your site. That's right, I said you! A very common mistake is to use various softwares or disreputable web sites to submit your site to a huge batch of search engines. Do you really think that you can tell a multi-billion dollar company how to do its job? This is the easiest way to be permanently banned from search engines. You don't need any help to get listed! The search engines will find your site themselves.
If you haven't done anything naughty and your site still isn't listed, then there are many things that could be wrong with the site itself. Are you sure that you haven't included a link to a banned site? When a site is banned, all traces of it are also banned.
What do you need to do to make your site attractive to search engines?
First, your site must have original content and not be made up of advertising material only. That content must be text! A search engine crawler is a machine, not a human, so it cannot see images. That includes the super 'cool' sites which consist entirely of Flash - they will never be listed. Also, the "now you see it, now you don't" dynamic JavaScript generated pages wont be seen.
The main requirement is seen to be plain HTML, and good quality code at that! Correct coding with equally correct style (CSS) is essential. Textual content should make up a large proportion of the page.
The <title> should be descriptive of the page contents.
The common meta tags should be present with the "description" and "keywords" being the most important. The description should be meaningful but concise, with correct spelling and grammar, and it shouldn't conflict with the title of the page. The keywords should actually be included in the page content, not just in the meta tag. Not more than 15 keywords or phrases is recommended.
A heading (<h1> to <h6> tags) should be placed at or close to the top of the main section of the page. This should have a relationship with the title and description.
The more specialized the content, the better chance of getting a high listing position. This content must be written for human reading - pages designed specifically for search engine crawlers will be rejected. No content may be hidden in any way.
Your site should not contain illegal material such as mp3 recordings that do not have valid copyright approval. Or anything associated with warez.
If your site meets these requirements then, with a correct robots.txt and sitemap.xml, you should be on Google within a week.
How can I speed things up, or ensure that I will be listed quickly?
The best way is to have a link to your site from another busy, legitimate site. Forums are good for this. You should be a member of a forum and post a meaningful thread or reply to a thread, somehow including a link to your site in the text. You risk incurring the wrath of the moderators, but if your link remains just for a day or two, the job is done.
Ok, that's Google. What about the others?
Well, there aren't any others to match Google in size. I really don't know how the others work, but many must be either stealing from Google or using some unknown form of magic. This site is listed on search engines that have never sent a bot.
The main competitor is Yahoo, but it really isn't in direct competition because it is an entirely different kind of search. Yahoo is in fact a human reviewed directory of sites. You can submit your site to Yahoo for review. Make sure that you do it yourself and not by a software or third party. I've read that currently it may take about 5 months before you see any result and since it is reviewed by a real human being, there is no guarantee that you will be listed, or indeed how your site will be described. Having said that, there must be some element of competition because some sites appear on Yahoo that haven't applied for review.
Search engines should be left alone to do their own work. You just have to be patient and adopt a "What will be, will be!" mindset.