In many cases the major search engines have partners and the results returned from a search come from one or more databases. A search at MSN.com may display results from 4 different databases; Real Names, Looksmart, Direct Hit and Inktomi. A submission to MSN.com is actually a submission to Inktomi but here is where one needs to be careful. Submissions to MSN.com, Hotbot.com, Canada.com, iWon.com and many other engines are actually submissions to Inktomi. Is it a benefits to submit to each of these engines? Absolutely not and in some cases this could actually hurt a site's rankings.

Sound confusing? It is. But the good news is that Submit Director will guide you through the submission process and not allow you to spam the search engines.