Paying Search Engine to get listed

I was just wondering if anybody has paid any of the Search Engines just so they will at least look at your site to get listed, or to get listed faster. Seems like today many of the non-google search engines all want your money to get listed. Some still offer the free service (like Altavista, however takes forever to get listed), and some simply only offer the pay services. Excite is one example of a search engine that I cannot find a way to get listed without paying. I think Webcrawler as well. So my question is if any of you have ever paid to get listed in any Search Engine.

that would sorta corrupt the entire process of getting accurate search results if you got a whole listing of paying listees. quite frankly some of the most helpful content and results that i get are from hole in the wall sites or newsgroups that would never consider paying for a listing.

Never, because if your site is popular/ good enough you'll be listed anyways on google. And without the popularity/ recognition you prolly
wont be noticed ANYWAYS.

i agree with GIA. I'd never pay for that as well. I think my clients and
even potential clients are going to always come from wor-of-mouth. If I
ever get a client that tells me they got my company from an SE, I'd faint.

I've paid to be included in Inktomi, Ahha, Google Adwords & the odd one or two others. I was running a mobile phone web site and with the amount of other sites also selling mobiles, buying a top place was my best option.

So did it pay off? Did you profit or take a loss after paying the advertising?

I took a loss !
I was getting the traffic, but my phones cost too much. I was lucky with Inktomi tho because i managed to change the link within the first month and pointed it at my search engine.
Ahha gets you lots of traffic, but i found people only looked at the frontpage. I didn't get many clicks with Google Adwords though and kept getting email from google saying i should try other keywords.

how many hits does your search engine get?

The hit rate did shoot through the roof at one point, but it down to next to nothing at the moment. I needed to make sure everything was working fully before starting to promote. Anyway i don't think i'm going for a promotion as a search engine. Instead i'm about to start promoting as a high paying affiliates program. I think getting more sites with my search box on them is the best way to go.

This may be a late reply, but I thought it would have been nice to add another opinion option in the poll, like:

"No, I have never paid to get listed by a search engine, and I don't ever intend to"

It seems like a few people strongly object to the idea. I think the point is, if you want to buy time, it might help to promote with money, but only worth it if your site is 100% finished, otherwise you're not going to get the best bang for your buck.

P.S. CasTiger, on your 12noon.net page your link at the top for "reciprocol" is mispelt.

I added that dr nick, thanks.

I would never pay a search engine like Google to get my site crawled faster. I would prefer to wait 3 - 6 months for them to find my site and then crawl it for FREE.

I would prefer to put the money to other forms of advertising, like ppc search engines.

All you know, you could pay Google to look at your site, and they may not even accept it!

Or less that's only Yahoo! that does not accept all sites that!