text: search engine registration necessary? i have a new website setup with necessary domain registration. but do i need to register google or yahoo etc to make sure that the website can reach broad target audience? or it is totally necessary? thanks for any input! registering your website is important, especially in the beginning as not many sites will be linking to you. submit your website to all of the major search engines manually (aol, msn, google, yahoo) and to open directories (dmoz.com, zeal.com), this is free.   having your website listed on these search engines will not assure you that your website is reaching a broad audience, if your not listed in the top 3 results pages of any search engine for whatever search string your website reflects you are missing approximately 90% of the search engine traffic. not very many people go beyond the first couple of pages.  make sure your website is optimized with the correct meta tags. update your content often and try to establish good links with other websites in your particular area of expertise.