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Dear Dan,

The cost for submitting the first URL to the Inktomi database for one year is $39 and the cost for a second is $25. Once a URL is submitted to the Inktomi database for the first year is there any need to submit the URL for subsequent years? Could you review the pros and cons of submitting for the second year versus not submitting?

Thank you. Harold Nash www.lanierfishingguide.com Dear Harold, The pros and cons are the same in the second year as they were the first year. Pro: The pages you pay for are guaranteed to be included, and revisited often. Con: It costs money, and there's no guarantee of good rankings. Paying Inktomi guarantees that a page will be included, as long as you keep paying. If you stop paying, well, they no longer guarantee that your page will be included. Inktomi provides search results to MSN, but Inktomi results are secondary to Looksmart results. So while Inktomi is an important search engine, it's not the most important by any means. Any site that has a good number of quality incoming links shouldn't have to worry about being included by Inktomi, without paying. I wish you success.

Dan Thies is a well-known writer and teacher on search engine marketing. He offers consulting, training, and coaching for webmasters, business owners, SEO/SEM consultants, and other marketing professionals through his company, SEO Research Labs. His next online class will be a link building clinic beginning March 22