How soon can I see results once I've submitted my site to the search engines?

That depends on how well you have optimized your content and how long it takes for the targeted search engines to review and include the submitted pages. Each search engine and directory has its own site submission and review policy. The turnaround time and site review procedure largely depend on the size and popularity of each engine. Some smaller search engines add submitted pages to their indices immediately following submission — or in a matter of days. Other, larger search engines might require a number of weeks due to meticulous reviewing procedures and high volumes of new Web page submissions.

Generally speaking, search engine optimization is a continual project. This means that to achieve success through the Internet's search engines you need to optimize your content carefully, ensure that your content is indexed by the top search engines, and that those search engines rank your pages highly for critical keywords and phrases. — And because competition for high rankings with the top search engines can be fierce, you need to be patient: A top 10 Google ranking cannot be secured in a matter of days. It takes several months to reach Google's, Yahoo!'s, and MSN's upper echelon for anything but the most obscure keywords and phrases.

It's important to understand that Google® and Yahoo!® both rely on so-called "sandboxing" concepts when reviewing newly indexed pages. Web pages that reside in the sandbox are deliberately kept out of the top rankings for as much as several months. The search engines do this as a countermeasure against search engine spamming. Sandboxing pages let search engines take the necessary time to carefully review new pages to assess their quality and importance. As well, sandboxing let's the search engines prevent pages that rely on blatant link spamming from tainting the search results. Once a page leaves the sandbox it competes on equal terms with the billions of other pages in the search engines' indices. Sandboxing can be frustrating and irritating for Webmasters, but because the major search engines are forced to combat increasingly innovative search engine spamming, the sandboxes appear to be a necessary evil.

Note that due to the search engines' different policies and practices Search Engine Visibility cannot guarantee that a submitted page will be listed, or that a listed URL will achieve a high ranking. You can check to see if your page has been added to a search engine's index by using Search Engine Visibility search engine listing feature, or by visiting the engine's home page and entering "url:" followed by your full domain name (example: "url:www.domainnamegoeshere.com") in the search entry box. If your URL is listed, it is returned as a search result. The Search Engine Visibility search engine listing feature lets you to check your Web page's search engine ranking for up to three keywords at a time.