Untangled Web

Entrepreneur, June, 1997 by Cassandra Cavanah

It's also an easy-to-use program. Upon opening the program, you're asked if you want to create a new entry. A tabbed listing of the various components of www.SitePromoter pops up. First, you input basic information such as business name and address, Web site address, phone number and so on. Click on the "Keyword" tab to input key words, key phrases and descriptions used by search engines. You can input as many as you like, and if you need to add more or delete inappropriate ones at a later date, www.SitePromoter lets you easily do so. Then you are asked for a site title and headline. A "Category" tab lists the common categories used by search engines (for example, automotive, entertainment, finance, etc.).

What's so great about www.SitePromoter is it allows you to input all the information about your site in one sitting. If you attempted to do this task without such a tool, you would need to visit all 150 search engines www.SitePromoter works with and retype information each and every time. This program even sends an e-mail message to search engine operators, telling them about your site, and counts the characters and words in various descriptions so you can be assured they fit all the varying criteria.

After you've input the data, it's converted to HTML format, and you are required to launch a Frames-capable Web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, for example), which allows you to view the frames used in designing and organizing a Web site. Here the program falls short in terms of ease of use; you're asked to locate two oddly named files in the www.SitePromoter directory (Frames001 and Frames002). The first file lists the top 50 search engines along with their submitting guidelines; the second file lists a hundred or so business-oriented search sites. You can then submit your site automatically or make changes to a previous submission.

Cassandra Cavanah is a contributing editor of Portable Computing Direct Shopper magazine and has reported on the computer industry for eight years.