I realize it can take a while, but I'm curious how long it usually takes after you submit your url to them?

Thanks!

Holly

Hi Holly!
Submitting won't do much unless you have other sites (that are already in the SE index) pointing links at you. Skip submission, but get relevant backlinks. Then watch your logs to see when the SE bots visit by finding those links and following them to your site. From when it is found until it is in the index, for a new site, don't assume anything is wrong if it takes 10 days or longer.

Getting a backlink from relevant and already indexed sites is the best option to get your site indexed in SE in a short time.

Well, submit a sitemap to the three big search engines, start building backlinks from related sites (including in your forum sig), post in the comment section (don't spam!) of related blogs (preferably that are not 'nofollow'), etc.

You can usually get your site beginning to be crawled within a day or two.

Let's face it, any premature indexing by the search engines is pretty much our own fault. A simple robots.txt file will stop the indexing if you truely do not want it.

I always put a link to any new site I launch from my personal homepage (which is already indexed) and Google generally picks it up from there in just a few days. Yahoo and MSN are often quicker at picking them up with NO links to them at all, I've found.