Hi Paul,

That was a great post!

I agree, it does help to look at things from the search engine owners' point of view.... It helps to understand their mentality, and why they might make certain decisions. Like most people, they want to offer a quality product to their customers, and here their "customers" are the people who use the search engine (more so than those who list their web sites there)....

Ken, I also think a good way of getting noticed is probably to be unique in a memorable and positive way.... If you can achieve this, you might be able to stimulate "word of mouth" discussion and get people to mention your web site to others (and you may find others even linking to you)....

My first attempt at a commercial web site was Entrepreneur-Web, which I started in 1998.... It's a bit out of date now (I'm planning to update it), but I was pleasantly surprised by the "word of mouth" discussion that got around about Entrepreneur-Web. I aimed to create a very useful online resource. Where I tried to be unique was to be the most comprehensive list of online marketing forums around.... I found as more people came to know about Entrepreneur-Web, they told others too, and some even linked to it....

I think the importance of occupying a unique position in people's minds cannot be understated.... Most people DON'T do this, and I think it is why they are not as successful as they could be. It takes some thought to do it, and some work too, but if you succeed you could find people mentioning your site in surprising places. :)

- Dien Rice